‘Drop use-by dates on food’

Overly cautious labels are leading to massive waste and should be simplified, proposed guidance states

SUPERMARKETS must stop telling shoppers to throw away good food by using “overly cautious” and unnecessarily restrictive “use by” dates, the Government has said in new guidance.

Retailers have been urged to overhaul the way they label foods to help drastically reduce the 2million tons of produce thrown away in the UK every year because it is not used in time. Currently the amount of time consumers are given to eat food once it is opened may be “overly cautious” and should be reviewed, as just one more day could prevent millions of pounds worth of good food being thrown out, it says.

The draft guidance, produced by the Food Standards Agency, Defra and food waste charity Wrap, urges businesses to put “use by” dates only on food that could cause food poisoning or other harm after that date.

SUPERMARKETS have been told to stop telling shoppers to throw away good food under new government guidance which says “overly cautious” shelf life dates should be extended.

“Use By” dates should also be scrapped in favour of “Best Before” on food that will not cause food poisoning so that people can choose whether they still want to eat it past its best or it can be given to charity, it says.

The draft guidance, written by the Food Standards Agency, Defra Labelling and the charity Wrap, is aimed at reducing the 7.3 million tons of food thrown away in the UK each year.

It calls on food businesses to end confusing multiple dates by scrapping the “Display Until” or “Sell By” labels and to extend the time the shopper has between opening the food and eating it, warning many of the “consume by” dates may be “over-cautious”.

Supermarkets and food businesses choose “conservative” dates on how long food can be kept because they risk legal action or loss of custom if a consumer gets ill or the food is not the standard they have paid for, experts say.

But the result is that people are throwing good food in the bin, which could be perfectly edible days after the dates on the packet if kept in the right conditions.

The guidance suggests that an “increase in product life of all perishable foods’ of just one day could help prevent up to 0.2million tons of household food waste, potentially saving consumers £600million on an annual basis.”

Andrew Parry, special adviser of food and drink at Wrap, who helped to draft the guidance, said: “There certainly seems to have been a movement to shorten these dates over recent years, some dates used to be longer.”

Wrap has already made progress on extending the open life of bagged salad, which the industry has now agreed to label so it can be consumed within two days rather than one.

But the guidance calls on all businesses review their open life guidance by standardising it across products and stores, carrying out more robust testing and “challenging quality dates which may be too cautious”.

Mr Parry said there was a “virtuous circle” where the more that industry can do to educate consumers on how they can keep food properly, the more it can do to extend food life dates.

The guidance also orders retailers to rid products of “Use By” dates except where food is highly perishable and could pose a harm to human health.

It is a breach of food safety and labelling law to sell or even give away food that is passed its “Use By” date, meaning charities are unable to pass the food on. But many of these strict restrictions are unnecessarily applied, it is said. Producers have recently switched pasteurised fruit juices and hard cheese onto “Best Before” dates, which shows when food is at its highest quality but does not place restrictions on sale and redistribution.

Mr Parry said the issue was covered in the guidance as there was still a long way to go, even suggesting that milk may be one product that can be switched over as research indicates it turns sour before it causes harm.

It is feared retailers are reluctant to change dates on food because, as the guidance clarifies, it is “an offence for a person to sell or supply food which does not meet food safety requirements, or which is not of the nature, substance or quality expected by the consumer.”

The guidance, which is under consultation until August, also states that packaging should clearly instruct cus- tomers how to store food, and use the snowflake logo to indicate that most products can be frozen.

The instructions to “freeze on day of purchase” should also be scrapped, as it is unnecessary and instead people should be told to “freeze as soon as possible” or by the use by date.

Thérèse Coffey, Environment Minister, said: “The food and catering industries have made strong progress in reducing household food waste by a million tons since 2007, but there is still a way to go.

“We know that confusing labels can contribute to food waste by suggesting items need to be thrown away sooner than is necessary, which is why this new guidance will make packaging much clearer for people as they do their weekly shop.”