A New Bill Could Clear Up Some of That Confusion About Date Labels on Food Packaging

When Emily Broad Leib, the director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, first began working on the issue of food waste a few years ago, she found that she had to offer up an explanation. “People looked at me like they had no idea what that meant,” she says. “Now, people are realizing that it has very real impact.” One example: unstandardized food labels—those muddy, hard-to-parse “use by,” “sell by,” and “best by” notices. They exact a toll on consumers’ purse strings and the environment at large. But a new bill proposed this week hopes to curtail it.

On May 18, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree introduced the Food Date Labeling Act, which calls on the USDA and FDA to cooperate to standardize and regulate date labels, which are famously difficult for consumers to digest. In a recent national survey—which I wrote about on May 11—84 percent of respondents indicated that they at least occasionally tossed food that near the date printed on the label even when they weren’t sure whether the date related to quality or safety. With so many phrases used seemingly interchangeably, it can be hard to differentiate between a gentle reminder and an exhortation.