Second Harvest calls for modernized 'best before' date labelling
Second Harvest says Canada’s “best before” food date coding system on product packaging should be overhauled.
The food rescue organization said almost a quarter of avoidable food waste in the country can be attributed to confusion over the labels.
Second Harvest’s Date Coding and Food Waste Research Report identified an international movement away from the use of “best before” dates to focus instead on food safety where necessary.
It notes Canada is falling behind peer countries like the UK, Australia, Korea, Japan and several EU nations that have identified date coding misinterpretation as a driver of food waste. These countries have begun modernizing their labelling systems as part of broader national food waste reduction efforts.
The federal government is currently developing a National Food Security Strategy and “food waste needs to be a part of it,” says Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest. “It’s a food system failure that we are losing all this food.”
Nikkel says Canada has “a real opportunity” to borrow best practices on date coding from countries that have begun modernizing their labelling systems. “Other countries are doing this and doing it well.”
READ: Ottawa urged to look into best before date system in bid to reduce grocery waste
Canada wastes 46.5% of its food—down from 58% in 2019—representing $58 billion of avoidable food waste. Twenty-three per cent (or $13.3 billion) of that waste can be attributed to misunderstanding of the meaning of “best before” dates.
“Best before” dates, which were introduced in Canada in 1976, are legally only required on packaged products with a durable life of 90 days or less but are common on shelf-stable products even though they are not an indicator of food safety.
“Best before dates are about peak freshness and yet they’re on everything,” Nikkel says. “They’re not about food safety at all.” Expiry dates, meanwhile, are required only on three products sold in grocery store: baby formula, meal replacements and protein bars.
Among the report’s recommendations is removal of non-essential “best before” dates and unnecessary date coding from shelf-stable products in partnership with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, processors, manufacturers, retailers and the wider food industry. If best before dates are maintained, they could be made less conservative by extending the dates, Nikkel says.
Last year, Second Harvest, the Retail Council of Canada, various manufacturers and major retailers set up a working group last year to investigate how the food date coding system can be improved. “There’s buy-in across the board,” Nikkel says of the working group.
Once changes are made to Canada’s food labelling system there will be a strong need for an effective consumer campaign as consumers “believe that a best before date is a safety date and it’s not, so we need to shift the culture.”
The consumer education campaign would ideally take place in grocery stores, “the one place everybody congregates,” Nikkel says. If all grocers adopt the same messaging, “I think we would have a really good shot at changing the consumer understanding about what ‘best before’ dates are.”
