Sell by’ date confusion causes food waste

The problem of consumer confusion about the differences between ‘use by’, ‘best before’ and ‘sell by’ dates resurfaced last week following environment secretary Hilary Benn’s launch of a new strategy to reduce packaging.

As part of the ‘Making the Most of Packaging’ strategy, ‘best before’ and ‘sell by’ labels could be phased out, claimed the British Retail Consortium (BRC). However, it also said that this would not reduce food waste. Consumers having more understanding of food date labels and improved food management in the home would have a greater effect.
While the ‘use by’ date is a safety requirement designed to warn customers that food is not safe to eat after this date, the ‘best before’ date is generally an indication of quality: a date after which food might start to lose its flavour and texture. In contrast, ‘sell by’ dates help retail store staff manage stock.
The trouble is that years of research have repeatedly shown that many consumers don’t clearly understand these differences. It leads them to throw away food that is otherwise perfectly safe to eat; since - even with ‘use by’ dates - a safety margin is built in to the labels.
This confusion is said to contribute to the 30% of food that the average household throws away each year. As well as being wasteful, it contributes to the huge 19% of greenhouse gas emissions that the UK food system as a whole generates.
Many argue that the current labelling approach is too prescriptive and fails to take account of different storage conditions in people’s homes. It also, arguably, detracts from people making better uses of innate senses such as their sight, smell and taste.
However, BRC director general Stephen Robertson said: “Scrapping best before dates won’t reduce food waste. Customer education will. Date labels are there to help customers but they need to understand what they mean. Retailers are working with the government to improve understanding and to help customers make better choices about buying, storing and using food at home.”
But Owen Warnock, partner and food labelling expert at law firm Eversheds, pointed out that, by EU law, virtually all food and drink products must bear either ‘use by’ or ‘best before’
Warnock said: “I think we are unlikely to see much change [to reduce the safety margins] since it is just too risky for food manufacturers to take a chance on safety.”

He added: “If the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs really intends to tackle this issue they must take the opportunity to try to influence the review of food labelling law currently under way in Europe to change the rules.”
Responding to the government’s new packaging strategy, Julian Hunt, the Food and Drink Federation’s (FDF) director of communications, said: “We agree that it’s important for the government’s packaging strategy to focus on waste prevention. That’s why members of the FDF have a bold ambition to send zero food and packaging waste from factories to landfill by 2015 and are working closely with WRAP [Waste & Resources Action Programme] and others to reduce the amount of packaging reaching households.”