Freshness and safety play a paramount role in the wholesale meat South Africa industry, and N1 go to great lengths to ensure that all their food is produced according to the strictest food safety criteria. It’s something that concerns all of us – and one thing that governs many of our food choices is the sell-by date label on an item. I’m sure you’ve found yourself picking up a carton of milk and if you’re not satisfied with the date putting it back in exchange for a fresher item. After all, it’s a ‘scientific’ label so we should heed it, right? Wrong. In fact, you won’t be seeing too many sell-by date labels in the future, because they’ve been abolished. So, if they’re no longer important, how did they come about in the first place and why the mass confusion?
According to the Smithsonian magazine, US sell-by dates began sometime in the 1960s and it was in response to a shift from eating whole foods to processed foods. As people moved towards consuming more of this processed food, they became concerned about the freshness and safety of the ingredients, and the solution to easing that concern was a sell-by date.
And it would seem that the world followed suit. In more recent times (as governed by the United Nation’s policies) one might have found three different labels on a food item:
Best-before date: The suggested date before which the full quality of the product, as marketed, can be enjoyed.
Sell-by date: Refers to a product’s shelf life in-store – the recommended time in which it should be sold to retain marketed quality.
Use-by/Expiry date: The date after which food will perish, and will no longer retain the marketed quality.
But as the health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, declared in Business Tech last month, there was widespread confusion, because the labels meant different things to different parties based on whether you were the retailer or consumer.
He said that the “best-before” date, which consumers often read and confuse for the expiry date, is actually an indicator for producers and retailers of general stock life and quality, and more for them to know when the stock needs to be rotated.
“Best-before does not indicate when food will be expiring, it’s for companies to know that, even though these things won’t spoil, they have been on shelves long enough and they must rotate stock,” he said.
This is similar to the sell-by date, which is aimed at retailers and producers, and acts as a suggested timeframe in which to sell the product.
The expiry date, which indicates the point food will perish, does not mean that food past the date will “automatically become poison”, it just becomes “unpalatable”
New definitions for labelling and dating foods, made by the United Nations’ food standards body, the Codex Alimentarius Commission in July 2018 actually precludes ‘sell-by’ dates. In his address, Motsoaledi said that South Africa too has abolished the sell-by date and that labels will now be a ‘best-before’ or ‘best quality before’ date – which is retail related; and ‘use-by’ or ‘expiration date’ – which is consumer led.
Labels are there to assure us that what we buy is fresh and safe to eat, but rest assured that whatever food product you might buy from N1, leading supplier in the wholesale meat South Africa industry, it will have met the strictest food safety standards and be of the highest quality – every time!
