What a Date on the Package Establishes

Open a cupboard and the dates are everywhere: a number stamped into a carton, pressed into a lid, printed small along a seam. They read like instructions. Most of them are not.

FSIS separates two things that look identical on a package. Open dating is a calendar date applied by a manufacturer or retailer, describing the period for which the product is expected to be of best quality. Closed dating is a code of letters and numbers identifying the date and time of production. The first is an estimate offered to you. The second is a record kept for someone else.

Except for infant formula, product dating is not required by federal regulations. That single sentence rearranges the shelf. The quality date on a jar of sauce, a bag of rice, a box of crackers — in most cases no federal rule put it there. A business chose to add it, using a method it did not publish, to describe a quality it did not define on the label.

But "not required" applies to the quality date, not to every number on the package. USDA does require a pack date on poultry and on thermally processed, commercially sterile products, to identify lots and support trace-back if illness is investigated. Cans must exhibit a code or the date of canning. Egg cartons carrying the USDA grade shield must display a pack date — a three-digit number for the day of the year, 001 through 365. None of those are telling you when to eat something. They exist so a lot can be found again.

Infant formula is the exception that runs the other way. Federal regulations require a "Use-By" date, and consumption by that date is what ensures the formula contains not less than the quantity of each nutrient described on the label. That is a specific claim about nutrient content over time, and FSIS is explicit that a "Use-By" date is not a safety date except on infant formula.

For meat, poultry and egg products under FSIS jurisdiction, quality dates may be applied voluntarily, provided they are truthful, not misleading, and compliant with FSIS regulations. Truthful and not misleading is a meaningful standard. It is also a different standard from verified.

Even the wording is unsettled. FSIS notes there are no uniform or universally accepted descriptions for open dating in the United States, which is why the shelf carries "Best if Used By," "Sell-By," "Use-By" and "Freeze-By" side by side, chosen by different companies, meaning different things. FSIS recommends "Best if Used By," because research shows that phrase actually conveys what it means.

None of this makes dates useless. A date is a statement from the responsible business about its own product. Without the method behind it, that statement belongs in the ledger as Reported: attributed, not independently verified here. What it is not is a line between safe and unsafe. Evaluating a food's current condition is a separate question, and where illness risk is a concern, it belongs with a qualified source rather than this page.

Read one date this week. Notice the exact phrase. Ask whether anyone required it and what narrow purpose the applicable rule gives it. Do not turn that purpose into a broader safety claim.