Food-safety people hate "best by" food labels because consumers
mistakenly think once a product is past the date, it's longer safe to
eat, which wastes tons of decent food, reports Josh Zumbrun in his opinion for The Wall Street Journal.
"Food experts broadly agree that the expiration dates on every box of
crackers, can of beans and bag of apples waste money, squander perfectly
good food, needlessly clog landfills, spew methane and contribute to
climate change." No oversight body regulates product "best by" labels.
Martin Wiedmann, a professor of food safety and food science at Cornell University,
told Zumbrun: "Those dates are not about safety, that's not why they're
there, that's not what they're doing. . . For many foods, we could
completely do away with it."
Andrew Harig, vice president at the Food Industry Association,
a Washington trade group representing food retailers and producers,
told Zumbrun, “It’s intended as a sort of consumer guide to be helpful.
It’s just that it morphed into less of a guide and more of a rule, and
that’s one of the challenges. Food technologists and food-safety people,
they absolutely hate these labels.” Zumbrun reports, food-safety
experts prefer using just two labels: "'Best if used by,' which
indicates the product might not taste quite as good after that date but
is still safe, and 'Use by' for those cases where the food might
actually be unsafe, such as meat from the deli counter."
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