For years, both agencies and other stakeholders have recommended the food industry voluntarily apply the ‘Best if Used By’ food date label, which FDA and USDA explain in a Federal Register notice published today “notes the date after which quality may decline but the product may still be consumed.”
The agencies reason in the notice that the “Best if Used By” label is ”most frequently perceived by consumers as communicating quality, among the food date labels assessed by researchers at Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, which supports standardizing this label.”
Industry supports standard ‘Best if Used By’ label
Leading industry trade groups have long echoed this sentiment, and previously predicted “complete adoption” of the “Best if Used By” label by January 2020 following a collaborative effort by 25 CPG companies.
Support for standardizing the “Best if Used By” label was reiterated by stakeholders this summer in response to the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious goal to reduce food loss and waste in the US by 50% by 2030.
Despite the agencies’ recommendation and broad support for the use of the “Best if Used By” label, food and beverage manufacturers legally continue to use a “variety of phrases such as ‘sell by,’ ‘use by’ and ‘best by’ on product labels to describe dates,” which “may cause consumer confusion and lead to the premature disposal of wholesome and safe food, because it is past the date printed on the package,” according to the notice.
The agencies acknowledge in the notice that the diversity of date label claims reflect the “complexity of food products in the marketplace along with significant variability in the environmental, storage and distribution conditions of food,” which can “create challenges for standardization of food safety or quality date labels.”
What FDA, USDA want to know
To better understand these challenges, FDA and USDA seek “additional information on industry practices and barriers for standardizing food date labeling, research results on consumer perceptions of food date labeling and any impact date labeling may have on food loss and waste.”
Specifically, the agencies want to know:
- Which products contain date labels and why they may or may not be used,
- What criteria manufacturers and producers apply when selecting a date and a date label phrase,
- How the date and date label phrase influence each other,
- What challenges or limits food manufacturers face when establishing or changing food date labels,
- The costs associated with changing date label phrases or dates,
- How retailers determine when to pull items from the shelf and the extent to which they consider the phrase or date on the label,
- What research is available on consumer perceptions of dates and label phrases,
- How to most effectively present food date labels, and
- Whether a national education campaign could reduce consumer confusion about date labels.
The agencies also seek information about:
- Research on the effects of date labels on food waste,
- What factors are considered when determining whether to donate or discard food, and
- How much food is discarded due to date labels and its value.
Those interested have 60 days to comment.
Could standard date labels ease consumer perceptions of inflation?
Given the prevelence for which industry already uses the “Best if Used By” label, it is unclear if designating it as the standard would actually impact consumer behavior.
However, standardizing date labels and an education campaign about their role could help consumers struggling to manage their food budgets.
According to USDA, the average US family of four spends at least $1,500 on food that they waste, which the Environmental Protection Agency estimated was equal to about 66 million tons of wasted food in 2019.
