Thank you for that information.
We will actually change it to:
if(method_exists($app,'stringURLSafe')){
$prod->alias = $app->stringURLSafe($prod->product_name);
}else{
$prod->alias = JFilterOutput::stringURLSafe($prod->product_name);
}
The new stringURLSafe method which is in the JApplication class handles the slug automatically and should be used so that the code won't need to be changed anymore in the future should the slug option be moved somewhere else or another modification.
That will be included in next release.