California bans sell-by dates

Recent and related:<p><i>California first state to ban &#x27;sell by&#x27; &#x27;best before&#x27; label to reduce food waste</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41775298">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41775298</a> - Oct 2024 (61 comments)

When my wife and I moved in together, we had a spat about what &quot;sell by&quot; dates actually meant. She had been throwing away loads of perfectly good food because she misunderstood the meaning of the sell-by date. I don&#x27;t remember who taught me what they actually mean, but I was able to point her to a USDA site that showed the actual meaning.<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure that was the only time I have ever been right when she and I disagreed about something kitchen-related, by the way.<p>I think the ban makes sense when you consider that CA still has a provision for a &quot;best by&quot; date. Some more education is still necessary, though. Certain foods can go months or years past their &quot;best by&quot; date and still be perfectly safe - even if they might taste a little funky.

Montana uses Sell-By dates to artificially ban out-of-state milk.<p>They want to promote in-state business (dairy farmers).<p>Montana purposefully has short Sell-by diary dates, because it makes it prohibitive for an out-of-state dairy to transport their milk into Montana.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nrdc.org&#x2F;bio&#x2F;dana-gunders&#x2F;how-montanas-sell-date-sends-good-milk-down-drain" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nrdc.org&#x2F;bio&#x2F;dana-gunders&#x2F;how-montanas-sell-date...</a>

&lt;must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety.&gt;<p>This sounds perfectly sensible and uncontroversial?

You know who hates food waste more than Gavin Newsom? Every greedy supermarket market executive that throws away 30% of their inventory. Especially when their profit margins are often in the low single digits.<p>The article says there is no mandates on any types of dates. So I imagine these dates serve some purpose, otherwise they wouldn&#x27;t be there. Laws like this often sound like they&#x27;re helping but since no one is forcing the hand of retailers, so I would be they end up increasing costs. Maybe not food waste per-se, but some costs that originally tipped the retailers to have these dates in the first place.

This all makes massive sense to me. The people in my life treat any date on food as an expiry date and throw out massive amounts of perfectly edible food. Also, people do not seem to have any concept about the rate at which different food products spoil. Some things can be used way past the dates I see. Others really are going off by then.

Here’s the actual USDA article describing the difference between “sell by, “use by”, and “best by” terms: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fsis.usda.gov&#x2F;food-safety&#x2F;safe-food-handling-and-preparation&#x2F;food-safety-basics&#x2F;food-product-dating" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fsis.usda.gov&#x2F;food-safety&#x2F;safe-food-handling-and-...</a><p>I don’t have time to find a source that supports this, but I understand that these dates also refer to the durability of the “food safe” container&#x2F;packaging. Ever drink water from an unopened plastic bottle that has been stored for awhile? That taste is not from the water decaying or otherwise breaking down.

If I see a sell-by date, I only use it to compare between individual items. If there&#x27;s a shelf with bread and two items have different sell-by dates, I choose the one with the later sell-by date.

Many foods are unregulated. It&#x27;s strange that milk, for example, doesn&#x27;t have any requirements for its expiration date. One brand widened their &quot;best buy&quot; date and I noticed their milk was souring 3 days before the &quot;best buy&quot; date. After contacting them several times, I told them that they gave me no option but to escalate this to authorities, they didn&#x27;t seem concerned a bit, and after doing my research, I found out that they can put anything on the label without repercussions. The manufacturer even recommended the record stupid stuff like using the milk in smoothies and other odor and taste masking means to make it &quot;best.&quot; So, even &quot;best buy&quot; for foods that can make you sick is meaningless!

In Brazil products are marked with two dates: - Manufactured&#x2F;Packaged by. - Valid until.<p>The valid until is related to food safety and is regulated by the federal sanitary authority for each product by a federal standard. The &quot;freshest by&quot; is something that consumers have to infer by themselves probably as a midpoint between those two dates.

&gt; To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety.<p>Infant formula is required federally, so OK. Eggs are an oddly specific one, but I guess I can see it (although I&#x27;d wonder why some other products like milk, or meat might not be similarly required). But why beer??? Legit question--I don&#x27;t drink so maybe it&#x27;s obvious and I&#x27;m just a knucklehead.

A requirement that the &quot;best by&quot; or &quot;use by&quot; date be <i>clearly visible</i> would also help.<p>I&#x27;ve spent way too much time spinning packages scanning for any date, sometimes having to give up, sometimes having to whip out my phone&#x27;s camera to try to discern tiny black print on dark blue background, in small font, partly malformed, ...

The headline would be better served if it said something to the effect that sell-by dates will be replaced with another date suggestion. Instead they chose this misleading headline. The whole thing is also a great example of politics pretending to advocate for the consumer. It’s really a ploy to keep the product sellable for as long as possible. Who gets to decide what best-by date means? If you really want to serve the customer put a made-on date and let me decide if this one-year old can of tomatoes is really something I want to use by day 366. Now, we’re still at a race to the bottom by a combination of gaming the best-by date and putting preservatives to the maximum allowable extent possible. Packaged food industry.

This article claims that 12 million tons of food are wasted in California annually, and that this law will save 70,000 tons of food from going to waste. California&#x27;s population is 39 million. Does that mean that every Californian is wasting a pound of food every day? That seems suspiciously high to me. I&#x27;m curious how they came up with those numbers.<p>I think this law is like plastic straw bans, or mandated bag fees, or prop 65 cancer warnings: a feel-good law that causes more problems than it solves. Anyone who makes food for sale in California will have to redo their labelling (or at least pay people to audit their product labelling). These costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of increased prices. Some manufacturers will choose to not sell in California, reducing consumer choice, reducing competition, and increasing prices. And for what? To reduce food waste by 0.6% in the best case.<p>It seems to me that the problem with food wastage isn&#x27;t the extra food, it&#x27;s the externalities created by food production, distribution, and disposal. It would be much more effective to tax these externalities than to make ineffective laws about product labelling.

I think it&#x27;s wild how much misinformation and confusion there is about this minor change. I blame this on the legislature trying to hype up their nothing law into some major achievement, and news agencies shamelessly trying to make a story out of it.<p>The law is simply that you cant use various labels like &quot;enjoy by&quot; or &quot;Best by&quot; and instead, all non-safety dates must use the exact words &quot;best if used by&quot;. It wont reduce food waste by 20% as claimed.<p>82001. (a) On and after January 1, 2025, a food manufacturer, processor, or retailer responsible for the labeling of food items for human consumption that chooses, or is otherwise required by law, to display a date label to communicate a quality or safety date on a food item manufactured on or after January 1, 2025, shall use one of the following uniform terms on the date label:<p>(1) “BEST if Used by” or “BEST if Used or Frozen by” to indicate the quality date of the food item.<p>(2) “USE by” or “USE by or Freeze by” to indicate the safety date of the food item.<p>(3) “BB” to indicate the quality date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (1).<p>(4) “UB” to indicate the safety date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (2).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;legiscan.com&#x2F;CA&#x2F;text&#x2F;AB660&#x2F;id&#x2F;2837671" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;legiscan.com&#x2F;CA&#x2F;text&#x2F;AB660&#x2F;id&#x2F;2837671</a>

I don&#x27;t pay dates much mind. If it looks good, smells good, and tastes good I eat it. We are pretty adept at smelling and tasting spoiled food.

Sensible change. But I wonder if it will encourage retailers to treat the secondary now more food safety related &quot;use by&quot; date as the real &quot;best if used by&quot; date.<p>If you&#x27;re like me and slightly paranoid about food expiration dates and sometimes checks things in corner stores, you might notice they like to sell items that can be razor thin on the &quot;sell by&quot; date.

This was introduced a few years ago in the Swiss retailer chain Migros. The span between the sell-by date and the use-by date (typically around 1&#x2F;10-1&#x2F;5 of the entire lifespan of the product) would give the consumer the safety that the product was usable for a few days without checking the dates.<p>Without it, you need to check the date of every perishable product you buy if you want to consume it even the next day. If the store forgot to remove the product for a day (which happens regularly), you would buy a potentially harmful product if you don&#x27;t always check the date.<p>On the positive side, the food can be sold regularly just until its expiry date, preventing food waste.

I wonder, do sell-by dates harm the bottom line of groceries due to more unsold perishable goods, or does that cost get passed back to the vendors? Either way this rule would seem to be advantageous to either the retailer or the wholesaler. Perhaps that helped to get it passed.

I prefer &quot;packed on&quot; dates. With &quot;best by&quot; dates you have no idea what the actual age of the product is. Either for comparing freshness when buying it or for deciding whether to consume it later.

Europe has the MHD (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum)[0] but I think I never saw it exceeding 2 years which for some products is misleading since they would be good for very much longer like seeds or marmalade for example.<p>It will probably help to prolong certain products shelf life but it isn’t a perfect system.<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum</a>

I realized food waste was a good thing during Covid. We had a 50% buffer on food supply during a global crisis. Had we been ultra efficient we would have been experiencing mass starvation due to the lack of automation in many parts of the local supply chains.

No date printed on a food item is ever going to be accurate to the day. Unless something is wildly out of date, just use your senses. If it looks, smells and feels fine, it is fine. You’d be surprised by how much longer everything in your friend (and outside) can last.

I wonder, if someone purchases and eats a spoiled food item that would have had a sell by date before the ban, will they have legal standing to sue the state? I assume this is different than expiration date?

I had a friend who always said &quot;Best-before doesn&#x27;t mean bad-after&quot;

Won&#x27;t the producers just leave the same date in, but change the wording before it?

Let&#x27;s hope this catches on elsewhere!

&gt; To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety.<p>I mean, personally a big fan. I recently started seeing &quot;Packed on &lt;date&gt;&quot; and like wtf does that even mean. Was the corn also picked on that date?<p>Like these dates have been on products for as long as I can remember. Might was well have some rules around them finally.

&gt; To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety.<p>&quot;Use by&quot; is dumb, it&#x27;s too close to &quot;Best if Used By.&quot; If there&#x27;s a safety issue, the term should be &quot;expires&quot;, &quot;expires on&quot;, or something like that.

Yet another surprise. I wish CA lawmakers would stop operating in the dark.

Why ban such dates? I would want this data if I am a consumer. Sure the food may not be expired yet, but it may go bad sooner. I don’t understand why California feels the need to continuously pass hundreds of bills and impose so much control.

I find food in the US contains too much toxin that harms the body. They have a lot of synthetic chemicals and preservatives. Many of which have very bad long term damages to the body. Even with these labels, sometimes it doesn&#x27;t really tell the whole story about the ingredients. Most of the food that sits on the shelf for weeks shouldn&#x27;t be consumed.

I&#x27;m glad I don&#x27;t live in California. How are you supposed to know if you have milk that will quickly go bad etc.? While some of this can cause waste, many food items do start to go bad after they sit on the shelves too long. That said I&#x27;m sure the people behind this would prefer that you don&#x27;t buy dairy and that you pick the mold off your bread and eat the rest. Thanks, but no thanks.