New Defra guidelines are asking food businesses to stop using ‘sell by’ or ‘display until’ dates on packaging in an attempt to reduce the estimated 5.3m tonnes of avoidable food waste produced in the UK each year. ‘Sell by’ and ‘display until’ dates have no statutory footing and are used for stock control purposes.
But there is still a lot of confusion about what the “use-by” or “best-before” actually means and I was asked to explain this on BBC Breakfast TV on 15th September.
“Best-before” relates to quality – so it gives an indication of how long the food will be at its best quality. The manufacturer of a product with a best before date will not guarantee the products safety or quality after the best before date. It is not an offence to sell food after the expiry of the “best-before” date, however it is not good practice as the quality may have been affected and in some cases the safety. With some products including fresh produce, you can use your common sense to decide whether to use it or not (trimming bruised apples, and keeping tomatoes after the “best-before” date has expired if they still look fine). Confusingly eggs have a “best before” date but this DOES need to be adhered to.
“Use-by” dates are an indication of how long the food should be safe to eat if stored under the conditions the manufacturer recommends – for example under 5oC. Of course if a fridge operates at a higher temperature, then the food may not last as long. It is an offence to sell foods after the expiry of the “use-by” date, even if it is later proved that it was not dangerous. It is important NOT to rely on organoleptic assessment of foods with “use-by” dates because many of them have been processed, and the normal indicator organisms of spoilage may have been killed; this means that pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus can grow, leaving harmful toxins on foods such as cooked meats, with no tell-tale signs at all. So don’t take risks with “use-by” dates – let’s face it, if you could tell whether a food would give you food poisoning by looking at it, there wouldn’t be any food poisoning would there?!
