Exhibit: The Dates

Best if used by  10 2026
Sell by  Oct 12
Use by  Oct 14

Voluntary · Manufacturer-set · Not required by federal law, except infant formula

The Language

FSIS, the USDA agency that oversees meat, poultry, and egg labeling, tells manufacturers and retailers plainly what phrase to use, if they choose to date a product at all:

"FSIS recommends that food manufacturers and retailers that apply product dating use a 'Best if Used By' date." — USDA FSIS, Food Product Dating

The one place a date is not optional carries different, mandatory wording. Federal regulation for infant formula requires:

"A 'Use by ______' date, the blank to be filled in with the month and year selected by the manufacturer, packer, or distributor of the infant formula on the basis of tests or other information…" — 21 CFR § 107.20(c)

And where a state has gone further than the federal government ever has, the operative language changes again. California's AB 660 requires food sold in the state, starting July 1, 2026, to be:

"…labeled for quality using the terms 'best if used by' or 'best if frozen by' or labeled for food safety using the terms 'use by' or 'use or freeze by'…" — while banning consumer-facing "sell by" dates outright. — California AB 660 (2024)

Plain-English Translation

For nearly every food in a grocery store, the date on the package is not a safety deadline and not a federal requirement. Manufacturers add these dates largely at their own discretion, to flag a window of expected peak quality, not a point after which the food turns dangerous. Decoded:

Specimen: reading the dateThree phrases, one system
Best By / Best if Used By
A manufacturer's estimate of peak quality: the phrase FSIS specifically recommends. Not a safety date; food is generally fine past it.
Sell By
Aimed at the retailer, not the shopper: it tells the store how long to keep a product on the shelf for stock rotation, not the consumer when to throw it out.
Use By
A quality date in almost every case. The one true exception is infant formula, where federal regulation requires it: set by the manufacturer's own testing.
With the sole exception of infant formula, no federal law requires a date label on packaged food at all.

With the sole exception of infant formula, no federal law requires a date label on packaged food at all, and where a date does appear, federal law does not require it to say anything about whether the product is safe to eat.

Before This Language Existed

Long before any of today's phrases existed, manufacturers already dated their products, but not for shoppers. A 1975 federal report on food labeling described the practice bluntly:

Companies "dated their products for their inventory control and to help retailers rotate stock on the shelves, but this information was usually coded and was of no use to consumers." — Comptroller General (GAO forerunner), 1975

That coded, internal-only practice is what the report calls "closed" dating, as distinct from "open" dating, uncoded information a consumer could actually read.

Unconfirmed

Some popular accounts trace coded dairy date-stamping to state and local rules as early as the 1930s and 1940s. That specific history could not be confirmed against any primary ordinance or municipal record for this piece, and should be treated as unconfirmed rather than established fact.

By the mid-1970s, demand for open, consumer-readable dating was clearly building. The same report notes that more than twenty labeling proposals had been introduced in the 93rd Congress alone, and its authors formally recommended that Congress consider establishing a uniform open-dating system for perishable and semiperishable foods.

None of it produced a general federal date-labeling law. Decades later, the gap those 1970s proposals tried to close is still open: outside infant formula, there is still no federal statute governing how food gets dated.

The Rule That Never Came