Expired foods

BaldacchinoR wrote: »

See my posting about Best Before dates under the heading "Gone Off".


I did not know that by law, you cannot sell food after the "use-by" date has passed.


I thought you can sell any food regardless of any date on it, provided it is fit for human consumption.

Use by dates - its not fit for consumption after that date.

These often have a built in safety margin of a few days.
The reason for the date can be based on a few reasons
1) micro count gets to high
2) rancidity

I know people will go I ate this 4 days out of date and I was fine.
In certain issues - e.g. e.coli the bad strain. You only need 1 person to be severely ill out of a million plus servings sold. To close down your food production unit.
So while you were fine, so were the other 999,999 people. Hence you put a use by date on to cover worst case scenario.