US food date labels are broken. The government is trying to fix them

Zahra Hirji, Bloomberg News on Dec 14, 2024

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There’s a good chance that you or someone you know has trashed perfectly good food over confusion about date labels. Now, the U.S. government is looking for a fix.

A group of four federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, announced last week that it is requesting information from the food industry on labeling practices and preferences, as well as for research results on how consumers perceive date labels and any related impacts on food waste. The public is also encouraged to share its perceptions, with comments accepted through Feb. 3, 2025.This effort is a crucial first step toward possible regulation, which could save food from unnecessarily being trashed. But the incoming Trump administration is keen on reining in government spending and red tape, which puts the possibility of any new regulations in limbo.

The problem is clear: The public is struggling to understand dozens of differently worded labels, often incorrectly assuming they all refer to food safety. There are currently no national standards in the U.S. Instead, there are voluntary labeling guidelines set by the Food Industry Association and what is now the Consumer Brands Association — both trade groups — though not all companies abide by them; Moreover, implementation of those guidelines vary due to a patchwork of differing state laws. That makes widespread consumer confusion understandable, according to Dana Gunders, president of the U.S.-based nonprofit ReFED focused on reducing wasted food.

“Consumers regularly misinterpret date labels to be indicating the safety of food when in fact they are not,” she says.

The three most commonly used labels are: “used by,” “best if used by” and “sell by.” The first is commonly used as an expiration date — and the one consumers need to pay most attention to, says Roni Neff, a food waste researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, while the second typically refers to a food’s peak freshness. (The school is supported by Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, parent company of Bloomberg News/Businessweek/TV etc.)

The “sell by” label, meanwhile, generally refers to the date when stores need to pull products from shelves, and is typically a date set in advance of when food might spoil. “Consumers should really ignore that one,” Neff says.

The Biden administration is targeting food waste due to its heavy climate toll. Nearly 60% of the potent greenhouse gas methane emitted from municipal solid waste landfills in the U.S. comes from decomposing food, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In June, the administration released a national strategy for reducing wasted food that identifies consumer confusion over date labels as a major issue. The Department of Agriculture estimates between 30% to 40% of the U.S. food supply is wasted, with households being the largest the contributor.

“We’ve got a national goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030,” Neff says, “and we’re really quite far behind on it.”

Some of the efforts the Biden administration has taken were set in motion during the first Trump administration, according to Emily Broad Leib, founding director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. The Trump administration launched an initiative in 2018 between multiple agencies aimed at improving coordination and communication on how to better educate Americans on reducing food waste. That same year, Trump signed a farm bill that “created the first-ever food loss and waste federal liaison position” to work across agencies, Broad Leib explains.

Experts are hopeful the process will continue regardless of who is in the White House because, apart from the environmental reasons, cutting food waste is a way for consumers to save money at a time when grocery bills have soared. The average U.S. household spends about $1,500 to $2,000 a year on food that’s not eaten, according to Broad Leib.

“It may even be higher with food prices being higher the way they are now,” she says.

Trump could make use of the food date label information gathered to help consumers stretch their food budgets further in a time of high prices, ReFED’s Gunders says.

“So if this is something that has bothered you in the past,” she adds, now is the time “for people to actually write in and say: ‘yeah, this is confusing — we want some clarity.’”