I'm working on a mod where I would like a small set of specific items to spoil, but I don't want Space Age to be required. I've been mulling over your code for, like, an hour and I cannot for the life figure out how you got around that requirement. Every time I try to add spoil_result and spoil_ticks to my mod, I get an error that spoilage is not enabled. What is your secret?!

Depending on what you want to do, you can set it in the info.json
You need to set "spoiling_required": true
This just means the user needs 2.0 and maybe to own the dlc, but can have the space age mod itself disabled or optional. This way you should be able to have spoilage in regular freeplay.

This absolutely worked! I had no idea that the info.json file could do that kind of thing. I just assumed it was only for information purposes lol. Thank you very much!

You can find more:
https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/auxiliary/mod-structure.html#info.json

Good info! Thank you very much!