Usage

lebensmittel — a CLI for the official lebensmittelwarnung.de product-warning RSS feeds. This is the use-case-driven cookbook; for the option reference see the README, and for domain terms the Glossary. No API key is required.

lebensmittel [global options] <command>

Global options

Each option that takes a value may be given once; a repeat (--timeout 5000 --timeout 10) is a usage error (exit 2) before any request, rather than the last value silently winning.

warnings — current product recalls

The heart of the tool: the portal’s currently active warnings, each with its reason, manufacturer, affected Länder, lot numbers and best-before dates.

lebensmittel warnings

[
  {
    "title": "ja! Beerenmischung, tiefgefroren, 750 Gramm Beutel",
    "product": "ja! Beerenmischung, tiefgefroren, 750 Gramm Beutel",
    "link": "https://www.lebensmittelwarnung.de/.../Meldung.html",
    "pubDate": "Wed, 8 Jul 2026 16:00:00 +0200",
    "published": "2026-07-08T14:00:00.000Z",
    "reason": "Krankheitserreger",
    "manufacturer": "Eurogroup España Frutas y Verduras S.A.U., …",
    "affectedStates": ["Nordrhein-Westfalen", "Bayern", "…"],
    "lotNumbers": "L-26085",
    "bestBefore": "Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum: 15.03.2028",
    "packaging": "750 Gramm",
    "imageUrls": ["https://www.lebensmittelwarnung.de/.../Bild.jpg?__blob=normal&v=1"],
    "images": [{ "url": "https://www.lebensmittelwarnung.de/.../Bild.jpg?__blob=normal&v=1", "credit": "© Firma …" }],
    "fields": { "…": "…" },
    "rawDescription": "<img …/><br/><b>Grund der Meldung:</b> …"
  }
]

# One line per recall: date (German time, from pubDate), product, reason
lebensmittel warnings | jq -r '.[] | "\(.pubDate | split(" ")[1:4] | join(" "))\t\(.title)\t\(.reason // "?")"'

# How many warnings does the portal list? (not only recent ones: the feed goes back years)
lebensmittel warnings | jq length

# Every product-photo URL
lebensmittel warnings | jq -r '.[].imageUrls[]?'

# … with the credit of each photo (a notice can have several photos with different credits;
# fields.Bildquelle joins all of them without saying which photo each belongs to)
lebensmittel warnings | jq -r '.[].images[]? | "\(.url)\t\(.credit // "")"'

Narrow by federal state

lebensmittel warnings --state bayern
lebensmittel warnings --state nordrheinwestfalen | jq length

--state selects the warnings distributed in that Land (server-side): the ones whose affectedStates list names it, whoever issued them. Run lebensmittel states for the sixteen valid slugs; an unknown slug is a usage error (exit 2), never a silent full-feed fallback.

The feed has no field for the issuing Land. The notice URL carries it as a Land code in the folder name (…/260904_03_BW_diverse_Kaesesorten/…, BVL for the federal office), a naming convention rather than data:

lebensmittel warnings | jq -r '.[] | select(.link | test("/\\d{6,8}(_\\d+)?_BY_")) | .title'

Narrow by product type

lebensmittel warnings --type lebensmittel          # food only
lebensmittel warnings --type kosmetischemittel     # cosmetics
lebensmittel warnings --type babyundkinderprodukte # baby & kids products

Run lebensmittel types for the five valid slugs. Each takes one value (a repeated --state/--type is a usage error; for several states, run once per state and merge). --state and --type compose:

lebensmittel warnings --state bayern --type lebensmittel | jq length

title is the product name. In September 2026 the portal served every item’s <title> as an unrendered template ($esc.escapeXml($cms.oneLineText($m.title)); real product names were back by 2026-10-05). When it serves one, the CLI takes title from the notice’s Produktbezeichnung / -beschreibung, which is always in product too.

Narrow by date, product name, and count (client-side)

# Only recalls published on or after a date
lebensmittel warnings --since 2026-07-01

# Only recalls whose product name (title or product) contains a term
lebensmittel warnings --search schokolade | jq -r '.[].title'

# Spelling doesn't matter: käse, Kaese and KASE find the same Käse recalls
lebensmittel warnings --search kaese | jq -r '.[].title'

# The 5 most recent
lebensmittel warnings --limit 5

# Combine everything
lebensmittel warnings --type lebensmittel --since 2026-07-01 --search bio --limit 10

--search compares the product name (title and product) with case, umlaut spelling (ä/ae/a), ß/ss, accents, Unicode normalisation (a decomposed ä pasted on macOS) and runs of whitespace folded away, so kaese, weisse and Erdnuss find “Käse”, “weiße” and “Erdnüsse”. It is still a substring match: another word form needs a stem (Tahin finds “Tahina” and “Tahin”, Tahini finds neither), and a term that is only in the reason, the manufacturer or another field is not searched (filter the JSON for those, see the recipes below).

--since takes a YYYY-MM-DD date and keeps warnings whose pubDate day, in German time (Europe/Berlin), is that day or later. A pubDate without a time zone is read as German time, whatever the computer’s own zone is; one that isn’t a date the CLI knows (RFC 822 as the feed serves it, ISO 8601, DD.MM.YYYY HH:MM) leaves that warning out of --since with a note on stderr (an INFO record, --since left out 1 warning whose pubDate could not be read …), never silently.

pubDate is not always the first publication. The portal re-stamps a notice when it is updated: on 2026-09-26, 45 of 265 pubDates were more than three days after the notice date in the URL’s folder name (…/260616_11_BE_Austern_Meldung.html = filed 16 June 2026, pubDate 18 Sep), one of them years later. So --since also returns old notices that were updated in the window (“new or updated”), and can leave out a notice whose pubDate is earlier than its folder date. When “first published” matters, take the date from the folder name — YYMMDD_ (260616_…) or, for some notices, YYYYMMDD_ (20260701_01_ST_…); a naming convention rather than data. Filter the whole feed, not a --since window, and keep a notice whose folder has no date (shown as ????????) rather than dropping it:

lebensmittel warnings --compact \
  | jq -r '.[] | ([(.link // "") | capture("/(?<d>\\d{8}|\\d{6})_")][0].d // "") as $d
      | (if ($d | length) == 6 then "20" + $d else $d end) as $filed
      | select($filed == "" or $filed >= "20260915")
      | "\(if $filed == "" then "????????" else $filed end)\t\(.title)"'

A malformed --since date (2026-13-40, 10.07.2026) is a usage error (exit 2).

published is the same instant in UTC, so its first ten characters give the day before for notices published in the first one or two hours after midnight German time (many are stamped 00:00:00 +0200). For a date to show, take it from pubDate, which is in German time: .pubDate | split(" ")[1:4] | join(" ") gives 4 Sep 2026. --search/--since that match nothing return [] (not the full feed). A --state/--type feed may be empty ([], exit 0); the unfiltered feed never is — when it comes back with no items, or with <item>s anywhere but directly in its <channel> (an <items> wrapper), the CLI exits 1 with the reason on stderr instead of answering “no recalls”.

states — the valid Bundesland slugs

lebensmittel states

[
  { "slug": "badenwuerttemberg", "name": "Baden-Württemberg" },
  { "slug": "bayern", "name": "Bayern" }
]

Offline (no request). Use it to discover the exact --state slugs:

lebensmittel states | jq -r '.[].slug'

types — the valid product-type slugs

lebensmittel types

[
  { "slug": "lebensmittel", "name": "Lebensmittel" },
  { "slug": "kosmetischemittel", "name": "Kosmetische Mittel" }
]

Offline (no request).

Recipes

# Reasons across all listed warnings, counted (a warning can carry several, joined with ", ")
lebensmittel warnings | jq -r '[.[] | (.reason // "?") | split(", ")[]] | group_by(.)[] | "\(.[0]): \(length)"'

# A daily "anything new or updated in Bavaria?" check (exit 0 with rows, or empty;
# pubDate also moves when a notice is updated, see --since above)
lebensmittel warnings --state bayern --since "$(date -v-1d +%F 2>/dev/null || date -d yesterday +%F)" \
  | jq -r '.[] | "\(.title) — \(.reason)"'

# Look up a specific batch across all recalls
lebensmittel warnings | jq -r --arg lot "L-26085" \
  '.[] | select(.lotNumbers // "" | test($lot)) | .title'

# Save today's full snapshot to a file (--force replaces an earlier run's file)
lebensmittel warnings -o warnings-$(date +%F).json --force

Exit codes

Notes

• Attribution required. The warnings are copyright-protected; if you republish any of them, do so unaltered, in full, and with the prescribed citation. See DATA_LICENSE.md.
• Values keep their line breaks. A notice often gives one batch or product per line (lotNumbers, bestBefore, product) and the manufacturer’s address over several lines; the fields keep those breaks as \n (other whitespace collapsed, lines trimmed). In jq -r output such a value spans several lines — indent them with gsub("\n"; "\n ") or join them with gsub("\n"; " / ") for one line per recall. --search ignores them (whitespace is folded).
• A label gone from the whole feed is warned about. product, reason, manufacturer and affectedStates come from fixed German labels that every notice carries (255 of 255 on 2026-10-06). When one of them is missing from every warning of the feed as served (before --since/--search/--limit), stderr gets one WARN record, none of the N warnings in the feed has the description label "…": the portal has probably renamed it, the typed field is empty, and --search or a filter on that field may miss recalls (the value is still in fields under its new label). stdout and the exit code are unchanged.
• Feed freshness. The channel advertises ttl 60 (minutes). The data is live and changes without notice; a warning can be withdrawn upstream.