Does it mean food is actually not good for consumption after the expiry date?

I am Dilip, based in Dubai. Hope this forum will enhance my knowledge in Food Safety and Quality. 

I have been practicing food safety for the last 15 years, privileged  to work with a few great companies/organizations which operates in remote site locations such as oil and gas, military and countries with tense situations mounting day by day. I encountered many a times to determine what matters the most; Quality or safety? Answer obviously would be safety, but where you underline the boundary for safety? Is our standards stringent when it comes to food security and Food Safety? When you put an expiry date on the food packet, does it mean it is actually not good for consumption after the expiry?

Hope the world will come up  with a rather logical approach to draw a line closer with food security and safety, so it can contribute more to erase poverty from the world

Have a nice day pals.

Dilip

Hi Dilip, welcome to the forum :welcome:

I'm not familiar with the way expiry dates work in the UAE, but I share some of your concerns on this. Here we have "best before" dates, where the food is still safe after the date shown (i.e. shelf life limited by quality), and "use by" dates, where the food is unsafe after the date shown (shelf life limited by food safety). Unfortunately many consumers do not understand this distinction, so lots of food is thrown away despite still being perfectly safe to eat...

That's right pHruit. I was infact referring to the bulk food distribution channels where bureaucracy become bottleneck  and bookish many a times which leads to dumping  lot of food when it is utmost required for the needy. 

Dubai is far better in ways to manage food safety with sound expertise and regulations in place to monitor food establishments. 

Hello Dilip,

I also worked in Dubai for about 6 years and have seen organizations waste tons of food , as most of these are either customer centered agreements where they cant share the unused food to other organizations. 

I worked with few catering organizations where customers mention that food unused should not be reused and should be dumped.

It is how it is.

Good morning Dilip, welcome!

Thanks Glen! Hope for meaning full platform for food safety and Quality. 

Hi Kumar,

Observations noted. The point is through out world govt. bodies should consider food wastage is  as important as food security and safety.

I suggest applying a type of 80/20 rule.

80% of the best by/ use by should be weighted towards safety, a subset of quality.

20% weighted towards aesthetics, taste, flavor, texture and customer "perception".

I put perception in "quotes" because as a manufacturer of all shelf stable products, we have pulled in the date codes as short as possible but caused a problem; a customer compared our bag to a competitor and said the longer date must be fresher because there is more time left.  We intended to encourage better shelf turns but came to realize it backfired in this circumstance.

If safety is not a concern, and quality is stable over the long run use the time you have.  if nobody could get hurt and your brand is not harmed by older product you can base the limit on  zero customer complaints if on nothing else.

Dave