Do you have to follow use by dates?

I have just returned to the office after the first holiday I have had in quite a while and I deliberately did not do or think business or food safety for the whole 10 days. However it was interesting, and I had to bite my tongue, to hear a lady in the supermarket one day say to her husband that “we don’t have to worry about that use by date – they only put those on to sell more product”.

As a Food Technologist who specialises in food safety, I was amazed by this attitude but then after talking to a few friends about the incident I was told that this is quite a common belief.

As an industry we obviously have not done a good job in selling what use by date, best before and baked on mean and how important they are, if people out there have that sort of belief.

These date codings have been around now for quite a few years and if people believe this sort of thing, then we have a significant potential problem.

Another one I was told by my fiends was, that use by dates contribute to the massive food wastage we have in the world, with food being thrown out unnecessarily and for no real reason.

So if use by date is only used on foods that have a high enough bacterial content that can grow to dangerous levels if not properly handled, and can therefore make people sick – why is that people don’t take notice?

Best before is a quality issue and not related to food safety, but a lot of people do not seem to get the difference.

So what can we, as the food industry, do to improve this situation, and make sure that the public take us seriously, and believe us?

Because that is the problem, we are fighting the mass of myths out there.