Ottawa may soon be exploring eliminating expiration dates on groceries

We all know it: you open the fridge, take the milk and see that the best before date has passed.

You hesitantly smell the contents. It smells good and looks like you could salvage what’s left for your morning coffee. But still you wonder: should I pitch it just to be safe?

In an effort to tackle food waste and food insecurity, a report from the House of Commons recommends that the government examine how eliminating best-before dates on food would affect Canadian consumers.

The recommendation is one of 13 in the Permanent Commission on Agriculture and Agri-Food report — released earlier in June — aiming to address Canada’s rising food costs, including a “windfall tax” on the supermarket chain’s profits if the Competition Bureau discovers evidence of price gouging .

As many Canadians grapple with food insecurity and the highest food inflation in four decades, industry experts say best-before dates are misunderstood by most consumers and the government should make significant efforts to improve food date labeling, which has a major impact on consumer behavior. , to revise .

“Best before dates are not best before dates,” said Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue organization. “They are not about food safety, they actually refer to the maximum freshness of a product.”

Best-before dates are required on most prepackaged foods that stay fresh for up to 90 days, according to Health Canada, and the labels are more an indicator of quality than whether a food product is fit to eat. Meanwhile, best-before dates, which must be followed, apply to only five foods in Canada, including baby foods and nutritional supplements.

Because of the lack of clarity about date labels, Canadians often throw out perfectly good foods even when they’re struggling to feed their families, Nikkel said. A recent survey conducted by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University found that only 27 percent of Canadians supported the idea of ​​removing these labels from foods.

Food prices have risen 18 percent over the past two years, and in April food prices were still 8.3 percent higher than a year ago, according to a recent RBC report. At the same time, the number of Toronto residents who rely on food banks has quadrupled.

Yet nearly 60 percent of the food produced in Canada — or 35.5 million tons — is lost and wasted each year, according to a 2022 report from Second Harvest and Value Chain Management International, a food waste management company. For consumers, avoidable food waste can increase the cost of food by 10 percent or more, it estimates.

“Clipping some use-by dates would prevent safe, consumable food from being thrown away and save Canadians money on their grocery bills,” Nikkel said.

Recently, several UK food retailers, including Marks & Spencer and Tesco, have eliminated best before dates on hundreds of products such as fruit and vegetables to reduce avoidable food waste. Marks & Spencer has replaced the labels with a specific code that allows staff to check freshness and quality.

In Canada, more needs to be done about the language and information on food labels for consumers, said Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie’s Agri-Food lab.

“Instead of just stating the best before date, labels can also provide more information about when a product was manufactured or produced,” says Charlebois.

And while Nickel isn’t advocating scrapping any sell-by label, she said food with a shelf life of more than 90 days shouldn’t be stamped with the label and the government should explore other alternatives, such as “freezing.” by” stickers, which would encourage consumers to freeze food instead of throwing it away.

“Salt and water, for example, shouldn’t have an expiration label,” she said. “So let’s make sure the right things are labeled and people understand what it means.”

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