A Date with Safe Food Labels
When it comes to food, calendar dates relating to time and temperature are important and sometimes confusing. Terms we use are: 1) food product or code dating used for commercial food manufacturing and 2) date marking used for food prepared onsite in a restaurant. In a restaurant at the receiving step or the retail food store as a consumer, “Sell by July 14” is a type of information you might find on a meat or poultry product. Are dates required on food products? Does it mean the product will be unsafe to use after that date? Here is some background information, which answers these and other questions about food product dating.
There’s a big difference between “product or code dating” from the manufacturer in an unopened package and “date marking” (as required by the 2013 FDA Food Code) in the restaurant once a perishable, ready-to-eat (RTE) food package is opened for use or prepared from scratch.
What is Food Product Dating? “Open Dating” (use of a calendar date as opposed to a code) on a food product is a date stamped on a product’s package to help the store determine how long to display the product for sale. It can also help the purchaser to know the time limit to purchase or use the product at its best quality. It is not a safety date.
Is Dating Required by Federal Law? Except for infant formula and some baby food, product dating is not required by Federal regulations. However, if a calendar date is used, it must express both the month and day of the month (and the year, in the case of shelf-stable and frozen products). If a calendar date is shown, immediately adjacent to the date must be a phrase explaining the meaning of that date such as “sell by” or “use before.”
Believe it or not, there is no uniform or universally accepted system used for food dating in the United States. Although dating of some foods is required by more than 20 states, there are areas of the country where much of the food supply has some type of open date and other areas where almost no food is dated.
What Types of Food Are Dated? Open dating is found primarily on perishable foods such as meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. “Closed” or “coded” dating might appear on shelf-stable products such as cans and boxes of food. In the food service environment, always look for the dates on our perishable foods on the outside of the case at the receiving step.
Types of Dates:
• A “Sell-By” date tells the retail store how long to display the product for sale. Consumers should buy the product before the date expires.
• A “Best if Used By (or Before)” date is recommended for best flavor or quality. It is not a purchase or safety date.
• A “Use-By” date is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. The date has been determined by the manufacturer of the product.
• “Closed or coded dates” are packing numbers for use by the manufacturer.
“Date Marking” in the FDA Food Code & Listeria — At the restaurant level for on-premise preparation, there are specific requirements for re-labeling perishable foods, once the package is opened or ready-to-eat foods are prepared onsite. Date marking is required to control the growth of bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes that grows at refrigerated temperatures. Listeriosis (the disease) can be a very serious infection to any immune compromised persons (elderly, pregnant women, children, or infants) and can cause fatalities. Do a search for more on Listeria. Since it will grow at below 41F, the main measure to keep Listeria under control is TIME, not temperature. The Food Code has expanded on date marking in the past few years to help control Listeria, so we will have more to come on this subject.
Who must use “Date Marking”? All retail food facilities must follow the date marking regulations, including restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, schools, eldercare facilities, and any facility selling or serving food directly to the consumer.
What Foods Must be Date Marked? – 1) Refrigerated ready-to-eat (RTE) potentially hazardous foods that are prepared and held in a food facility for more than 24 hours. 2) Refrigerated RTE potentially hazardous foods that are prepared and packed by a food processing facility and opened in a foodservice facility and held for 24 hours or longer.
How do we Date Mark? The 7 Day Rule — There are more details and some exemptions to date marking, but this is the basic guideline. You design your date mark system in your written food safety HACCP plan, so it’s clear to employees and the regulatory authority. You can use the actual date consumed, sold, or discarded on the container, colored labels, dots, or other similar systems. Whatever marking you choose, stick to it. The 7 day rule covers these items:
1. Foods prepared in foodservice must be held at 41F or below and marked with the day or date by which the food shall be consumed on the premise, sold, or discarded for a maximum of 7 days. The day of preparation is Day 1.
2. Foods from a processing plant must be held at 41 F or below and marked at the time their original container is opened. The date of opening is Day 1. Additionally, the day or date marked by the food facility cannot exceed the manufacturer’s use-by date IF the manufacturers use-by date is based on food safety rather than just food quality. Check with your food manufacturer if uncertain.
3. Foods that may be combined or mixed together must retain the date marking of the earliest prepared or first prepared ingredient. Example: if you use day old fried chicken (properly refrigerated) to make todays chicken salad, you must subtract a day from your date mark on the chicken salad.
Bottom Line: When in Doubt, Throw it Out — Foods can develop an off odor, flavor or appearance due to spoilage bacteria. If a food has developed those characteristics, it should be obvious in a restaurant setting, do not use it for quality reasons. If foods are mishandled, foodborne bacteria can grow and cause foodborne illness — before or after the date on the package. If perishable food is in the “danger zone” (above 41° F or below 135° F), for four hours or more, discard it. For example, if sliced deli meats or prepared cold sandwiches with perishable ingredients are taken are taken to a catering event and left out un-refrigerated for several hours, they wouldn’t be safe if used thereafter, even if the date hasn’t expired.
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About the Author: Lacie Thrall
Lacie Thrall passed away in early 2017 after a long illness. She dedicated her 35-year career to improving the health and well-being of others by promoting food safety best practices. Lacie worked in environmental health for 17 years before joining FoodHandler in 1997 as the Director of Safety Management. While at FoodHandler, she trained employees and customers on safe food handling practices, including proper hand hygiene and glove use. Later as a FoodHandler consultant, Lacie provided the foodservice industry with food safety information and advice through her blog on FoodHandler.com.
Foodborne Illness Myths & Facts
“It must have been something I ate.” That’s the typical statement when a person develops some relatively minor symptoms from food. Maybe not severe enough to go to the doctor so you choose to tough it out without medical care. Sudden onset of flu-like symptoms such as onset of stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting and fever could possibly mean you are the victim of a foodborne illness. The illness is sometimes referred to as “food poisoning”, but it’s often misdiagnosed.
Don’t Compromise: Clean and Sanitize
The subject is cleaning and sanitizing. Chefs, food service directors, managers and staff try to practice safe food-handling at every turn in the kitchen. Don’t let that effort go down the drain by slacking off on the many aspects of sanitation. That includes dish and ware-washing techniques (pots, pans, equipment), and cleaning all the areas that give us that “neat as a pin” appearance in your customers eyes. Customers seldom fail to bring that soiled silverware or glass with lipstick on it to the attention of the manager or wait staff. Improperly cleaning and sanitizing of food contact equipment does allow transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to food and ultimately our customer.
The Route to Safer Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
Although fruits and vegetables are one of the healthiest foods sources in our diet, we continue to have foodborne disease outbreaks of significance from produce, sometimes affecting large groups of people in multiple states because of their wide distribution. The CDC estimates that fresh produce now causes a huge number of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States. Produce needs our continued food safety efforts at the restaurant level as well as at the stages in agricultural production. Occasionally, fresh fruits and vegetables can become contaminated with harmful bacteria or viruses, such as Salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7, Norovirus, and Hepatitis A. This contamination can occur at any point from the field to our table. If eaten, contaminated fruits and vegetables can cause foodborne illness.
Be Cool, Chill Out, Refrigerate Promptly!
The Cold Chain -- Keeping perishable foods at proper cold holding temperatures (between 28°F and 41°F maximum or 0°F for frozen food) from your food producers / manufacturers to your customers has to be one of our strongest links to safe food and high quality. Sometimes that is referred to in the food industry as “maintaining the COLD CHAIN”. Any slip ups in the cold chain, and we have a weak link. Most all of our state food regulations require 41°F as a cold maximum, but colder is a “best practice” policy to maintain.
