Food Dates Were Never One National Safety Clock
California's new two-phrase system exposes an old problem: a printed date can describe quality, safety or shop rotation, and the same words have not meant the same thing everywhere.
In short
What happened. California’s food-date law took effect for covered foods manufactured from 1 July 2026, replacing a thicket of consumer-facing phrases with two jobs: “BEST if Used by” for quality and “USE by” for safety.
What it means. A date was never one universal expiration clock. In the United States, most federal date labels have been voluntary quality information; elsewhere, including Scotland, a use-by date is a safety instruction.
Risks and impact. Treating every date as danger wastes edible food. Treating every date as optional can be unsafe where the wording really does mark a safety limit.
What can be done. Read the phrase before the number, follow storage and after-opening instructions, and check the regulator for the country where the food was sold. Do not use smell to overrule a genuine safety date.
What to watch. California’s rule may influence national packaging, but it is not a federal standard. Watch whether the FDA and USDA turn their voluntary recommendation into a uniform national policy, and whether consumers learn the distinction rather than merely seeing different ink.
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What happened
California Assembly Bill 660 was approved by Governor Gavin Newsom on 28 September 2024. Its main labelling provisions apply to covered food manufactured on or after 1 July 2026 and sold in the state.
The law assigns different phrases to different purposes. “BEST if Used by” or “BEST if Used or Frozen by” indicates a quality date. “USE by” or “USE by or Freeze by” indicates a safety date. Consumer-facing “sell by” wording is prohibited for covered products, although coded stock-rotation information can remain out of ordinary view.
The law does not require every food to carry a date when no other rule does. It governs the words used when a manufacturer, processor or retailer chooses, or is required, to display a quality or safety date. It also exempts infant formula, eggs and pasteurised in-shell eggs, and beer and other malt beverages.
Federal practice remains different. A December 2024 FDA-USDA notice said dates on meat, poultry and egg products under USDA jurisdiction may generally be applied voluntarily if they are truthful and not misleading. Infant formula is the notable federal case requiring a use-by date. The agencies recommend “Best if Used By” for quality, but other truthful phrases have not been prohibited nationwide.
What the evidence supports
The legal record supports a change in language, not a discovery that food suddenly spoils according to two perfect clocks. California’s statute explicitly separates quality from safety and says passing a quality date does not prevent sale, donation or use. It also preserves the manufacturer’s responsibility to determine the date.
The federal record shows why standardisation was sought. In 2024 the FDA and USDA opened a formal request for information about industry practice, consumer understanding and food waste. They noted that manufacturers used phrases including “Sell By,” “Use By” and “Best By,” and that the same variety could prompt people to discard wholesome food.
The FDA news release attached an estimate: confusion over date terms accounts for about 20 per cent of food waste in the home. It also said an average family of four spends at least $1,500 each year on food that goes uneaten. Those figures describe the scale of the wider waste problem; they do not prove that every discarded item was safe or that changing two words will recover all of it.
Evidence of confusion is therefore strong. Evidence about the full effect of California’s rule is still developing. Labels on products manufactured before the effective date can remain in circulation, exceptions remain, and understanding depends on education as well as typography.
How the story is being framed
For a shopper, a date looks like a boundary. The number is precise, the package is official-looking, and throwing something away feels safer than accepting uncertainty. That response is understandable. The old vocabulary asked people to distinguish private inventory instructions, quality promises and safety limits without telling them which job a phrase was doing.
For food businesses, a date has several possible functions. It can protect flavour and texture expectations, manage rotation through a shop, support logistics or mark a validated safety period. One universal number cannot express all four. California’s answer is not to abolish dates but to narrow the public vocabulary while allowing hidden coded information for retailers.
Waste advocates see avoidable cost and landfill emissions when a quality date is treated as a disposal order. Food-safety regulators see the opposite danger when advice to “trust your senses” escapes its proper boundary. Food Standards Scotland says a best-before date concerns quality, so appearance and smell can help after that date. It says a use-by date concerns safety and should not be overruled by a sniff test because harmful microbes may not announce themselves.
Each perspective catches a real failure. The useful synthesis is not “dates do not matter.” It is “the kind of date matters.”
The background
California’s change has a visible prehistory. A 2017 state law instructed agencies to encourage voluntary uniform terms and alternatives to consumer-facing sell-by dates. Seven years later, AB 660 turned encouragement into a rule for covered products. What began as a request for clearer wording became two legally assigned phrases.
At federal level, the story stopped short of that step. The FDA and USDA recommended “Best if Used By” for quality and, in December 2024, asked industry and the public for evidence on labels, consumer perceptions, costs and food waste. The request itself is revealing: regulators were still asking how firms set dates, whether the date would change with the phrase, and what barriers standardisation would create.
Different jurisdictions also built different conventions. Scotland’s consumer guidance uses the familiar European split: use-by is about safety; best-before is about quality. In much of the United States, the federal government historically did not reserve “use by” as a universal safety term outside specific rules. A traveller, importer or online reader can therefore bring the right lesson from one country to the wrong package in another.
The practical reading order is simple. First identify the phrase and jurisdiction. Then read storage conditions and instructions such as “use within three days of opening,” because the printed date assumes handling that may no longer apply. Finally check recalls or official advice when there is a specific warning. A calendar cannot compensate for a broken cold chain, damaged packaging or a recall.
Who it touches
Date confusion is not evenly priced. A household with room in the budget can discard a doubtful jar and buy another. A household counting every meal has more reason to stretch food and more to lose if broad advice blurs a real safety limit.
Clear labels can reduce that unfair choice, but only if the distinction travels with the product. “BEST” must be understood as a quality marker, not a softer way of saying dangerous. “USE” must retain enough authority that people do not treat it as another marketing suggestion.
There is also a handoff between shop and home. Removing a public sell-by phrase keeps an inventory instruction from masquerading as consumer safety advice. The retailer can still rotate stock through coded information. The shopper receives a date intended for the decision they actually face.
The deeper story
The old label problem was not simply too many words. It was misplaced precision. A stamped day invited the belief that food moved from good to bad at midnight, while the real system depended on formulation, packaging, temperature, handling and the purpose of the date.
We like thresholds because they relieve us of judgement. They also make responsibility visible: before this line, permitted; after it, forbidden. But a quality threshold is not a moral or biological cliff. Crackers may become stale by degrees. A safety limit is different precisely because the hazard may be invisible.
California’s two-phrase rule is a small exercise in institutional memory. It preserves the lesson that the public needs a shared vocabulary, while admitting that one date had been asked to perform incompatible jobs. The reform does not eliminate uncertainty. It labels the uncertainty more honestly.
It also puts a limit on reassurance. Better words cannot rescue food stored at the wrong temperature, and a careful kitchen cannot interpret a phrase whose legal meaning changes at a border. Clarity has to exist in both the label and the system around it.
That may be the broader value of standards. They do not make every decision automatic. They decide which differences deserve to remain visible. Here, the difference is between disappointment and danger. A good label gives each its own word.
Something to sit with
How often does a precise number persuade us that the category behind it must also be precise?
What other household label mixes a private business instruction with the decision a customer actually needs to make?
Sources
- California Legislature — Assembly Bill 660 — https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_i...
- California Department of Food and Agriculture — Food Date Labeling — https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/is/foodrecovery/fooddatelabeling/
- Federal Register — Food Date Labeling Request for Information — https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/04/2024-27810/foo...
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration — USDA-FDA seek information about food date labeling — https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/usda-fda-seek-i...
- Food Standards Scotland — Use-by and best-before dates — https://www.foodstandards.gov.scot/consumer-advice/food-labels/use-...
We report facts from the sources above in our own words and link to the originals. Interpretation is ours, not theirs.
Under California's rule for foods manufactured on or after 1 July 2026, which phrase communicates quality rather than safety?
California reserves “BEST if Used by” for peak quality and “USE by” for safety, while consumer-facing “sell by” wording is prohibited for covered products.
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