Legislation announced Wednesday by Sen.
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To remove this confusion, two Democratic members of Congress have introduced a legislation demanding standardized food date labeling.
The manufacturers would have to follow the recommendations by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, and the Food Date Labeling Working Group while labeling their products, according to the press statement.
A Harvard study, “The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America”, found that 40 percent – 160 billion pounds – of food in the US went uneaten every year, while almost 15 percent of residents struggled to put food on their tables.
So how did we get to here, where a consumer needs a linguistics degree to parse the minuscule differences between “Best by” and “Best before?”
When Americans moved away from farms during the 20th century – and began buying food in stores – they began to lose their ability to tell how fresh their food was. As the distance from our food sources has grown wider, there was a greater concern about food safety. If these new national laws are passed, they would override state regulations.
“Their first thought was giving the date to the consumer as a piece of information, but we failed to educate the consumer on what those dates mean”, said Prince. “Save The Food”, even comes in different versions, depending on how much time and patience you’re willing to invest.
That’s why Congress wants to standardize expiration dates in an effort to minimize confusion and curtail food waste.
The study also found that more than than a third of consumers consistently throw away food that is close to or past its labeled expiration date, and 84 percent do it at least occasionally. The average American wastes 20 pounds of food per month, and a study in 2014 found that 90 percent of Americans have thrown out food exclusively because of the date on the packaging. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in the Senate and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) in the House, would establish standard federal rules for the dates on food labels. The act will also prohibit states from preventing stores or manufacturers from donating products for which the quality period has passed, which could put more past-date (but perfectly safe) boxes of pasta and cans of vegetables in food pantries and homeless shelters around the country.
Several organizations expressed support for the legislation.
If the bill passes, companies would have two years to comply with the new labeling requirements.
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Blumenthal said the average family of four wastes about $1,500 every year by throwing out perfectly good food and the nation as a whole annually tosses some $165 billion of edible products into the trash.
