Dating game: How confusing food date labels lead to food waste in America

In a nation where 40% of our food goes uneaten, we need to find ways to reduce the amount of this waste and its impacts on the environment and the economy. In recent years, every entity that has studied food waste—national governments, nonprofit organizations, even the United Nations—has highlighted confusion around expiration dates (e.g., “sell by” and “use by” dates on packages) as one of the key drivers of this waste.

In September 2013, the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and Natural Resources Defense Council published The Dating Game: How Confusing Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America. In the U.S., date labels such as “sell by” and “best before” are largely undefined in law. These dates are not indicators of safety, but are instead manufacturers’ best guesses of peak quality. Our report presented a first-of-its-kind legal analysis of the confusing and piecemeal laws and practices impacting date labels, and proposed a blueprint for food industry actors and policymakers to create a better system that would help consumers maximize their food budgets, reduce food and resource waste, and improve food safety.

This talk will present findings from our analysis of the current approach to food date labeling as well as share recommended changes. Perfectly good food could be saved from the landfill if there was a coherent, reliable, and uniform date labeling system. The talk will also provide an update to our work on this topic and will discuss some next steps for legal and policy research to reduce food waste; in particular, looking at ways to strengthen the laws around tax incentives and liability protections for food donations.