CANADA: When to worry about 'best before' dates

04.jun.11
lfp
Elizabeth Hames


Once firm, juicy and brilliantly red, those reduced-price tomatoes are looking a 
According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), best before dates don't indicate whether a product is safe to eat. Instead, they tell shoppers when food loses its optimum freshness. After the best before date, perishables like meat, dairy and salad greens may lose some colour, but they are probably no more dangerous to eat than the day before.
"Best before means best before. It doesn't mean don't eat after," says Eunince Li-Chan, a professor with the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Faculty of Land and Food Systems. "(People) shouldn't need to throw stuff away, as long as they've kept it properly."
But Li-Chan is skeptical whether consumers understand the difference between a best before date, which appears on packaged goods with a shelf life of 90 days or less, and an expiry date, which appears on products such as infant formula and dietary supplements. You might even see food in the bakery aisle sporting a packaged on date: the day the product was placed in the package in which it is to be sold.
With all the different labels, some consumers may accidentally throw out food that is perfectly edible, thinking it's no longer good to eat because it's passed its best before date, and in a time of rising food costs, this is no small investment.
In the United Kingdom, shoppers are so bewildered by the different dates on packaged foods that the coalition government is considering scrapping best before dates altogether.
Those who argue for dumping the labels say it will help curb food waste. 
Kevin Allen, an assistant professor of food microbiology in the Department of Food Nutrition and Health at UBC, also thinks the government-regulated date labels may be confusing shoppers.
"What I think people do is equate that best before date with some sort of implication of food safety, which you absolutely cannot do," he says, adding that best before dates don't guarantee a product is free of harmful bacteria, either before or after the date has passed.
Most likely, if a product is contaminated with a pathogen, such as salmonella, it was tainted long before you brought it home.
Allen says 30% of the poultry we consume will have Salmonella on it, and 60% will have Campylobacter (another bacteria that causes food-borne illnesses). These pathogens can cause diarrhea, abdominal cramping and fever, and the symptoms usually stay for a whole, agonizing week.
"It's fairly safe to assume that when we have poultry in our refrigerator at home, we also have pathogens on it," says Allen.