Best before dates on food items must be replaced with expiry or use by period
For a long time, I have been arguing that the ‘best before’ dates on food packets should give way to ‘expiry’ dates or ‘use by’ dates, so as to remove the existing ambiguity in the information on the shelf life of the product.
My point of view has been that the ‘best before’ date does not give the consumers, the most crucial information on the product — its shelf life —beyond which the food is considered unsafe. And in the absence of that information, consumers treat the ‘best before’ as the ‘expiry date’ and discard food past the ‘best before’ date.
Now in the last few years, several studies in Europe and North America have added another dimension to the ‘best before’ date – their contribution to largescale food wastage. These studies point out that the ‘best before’ dates marked on food products refer only to the quality of the product (or the date up to which it is best in all respects) and that the food is still safe after that period and can be consumed. However, consumers are discarding food after the best before date under the mistaken impression that it is unsafe, thereby contributing significantly to large amounts of food wastage in these countries.
And given the increasing concern worldwide over food wastage, several governments are now taking a relook at the ‘date’ information on the food packages. In Europe, for example, the European Commission estimates that a considerable share (15-33%) of household food waste could be linked to the best before date marking and consumer misunderstanding of the date. The commission is therefore exploring how best to reduce such food loss without compromising consumer safety and consumers’ right to information.
In India too, the Food Safety and standards (packaging and Labelling) Regulations, 2011, in its definition of ‘best before’, says that beyond the best before date “the food may still be perfectly safe to consume, though its quality may have diminished”. But how long after the best before date is the food perfectly safe to consume? Without that information, how are consumers to determine the safety of the food? An expiry date on the other hand, gives that information and helps consumers make an informed decision with regard to its consumption.
Of course, in India, compared to the harvest and post-harvest loss of agricultural produce (estimated in value terms to be a whopping ₹92,651 crore per year, according to the Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology) and the massive food wastage at weddings and other social gatherings, the loss of food from discarding of packed foods well beyond their ‘best before’ date would be relatively low. But then, any wastage of food is bad and as more and more food gets sold in packaged form, this could well become a major source of food wastage in India too and it is best to nip this in the bud.
So there’s more than one reason for us to do away with ‘best before’ date and change over to ‘expiry date’. However, for it to be effective and serve its purpose, it must be printed in a conspicuous manner and the date of manufacture and the best before date should be one below the other and in numerals (as on medicine packages) so that it is understood by even those who do not read English.
The method adopted at present for giving the ‘best before’ information, for example, is anything but consumer friendly. Mentioning that ‘the food is best before six months (or nine or 12 months) from the date of manufacture is certainly not the best format. In fact it unnecessarily complicates a simple information on shelf life.