Information failure - what does a ‘sell-by’ date really mean?

According to the Food Standards Agency and the government, the sell-by or display-until labels on food have little to do with whether the food remains edible, but are only to there to help retailers with their stock rotation. But DEFRA say that five million tonnes of edible food is discarded by UK households annually - the equivalent to £680 for a household with children - because of confusion over the date labelling. They would like to see the use-by dates on packaging used only for foods which actually become unsafe to eat, like meat, fish and prepared foods, and all stock rotation dates removed completely. They believe that this would help to avoid confusing shoppers with unnecessary information.

However, the Food Director of the British Retail Consortium says that a better solution to the problem of food waste lies in better education for consumers. “Helping consumers understand that food past its best-before date can still be eaten or cooked could contribute to reducing food waste and saving people money,” he said. Retaining the display-until labelling on foods which don’t actually go off, such as crisps and biscuits, helps consumers to know how long they have been on the shelf, and pick out those that are more recently made and so may have lost some quality, even though they are quite edible.

There is a little more on the report here.