Date published: 2009/06/09
The BBC says:
The days of sell-by and best-before dates could be numbered as ministers look at ways of reducing the amount of food needlessly thrown away.
Ministers are considering phasing out some guidelines and re-phrasing others but face opposition from retailers who say it will not reduce food waste.
The idea is part of a new UK-wide strategy on packaging and recycling.
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said people must "re-think" their attitudes and report cases of excess packaging.
...
On food, Mr Benn said many people were confused by the various guidelines and were disposing of perfectly edible items in huge quantities.Instructions could be improved, he said, by focusing on whether food was still safe to eat by a certain date.
Sell-by and display-until labels - used by retailers for stock control - could be phased out completely if stores agree.
Benn is kidding. The best-before (or use-by) dates are there (surprise) to provide an estimate of when the food should be used by. So is he claiming that these dates are wrong (so he knows better than the supermarkets) or is he saying that he wants less food waste and so is willing to put up with more food poisoning as a consequence (for which the supermarkets and the NHS, not Defra, will pick up the bill)? Of course most people themselves make judgements about whether food is edible, and just use the dates as a guideline. But the academic middle class control freaks who run the country evidently think the peasants are fools. And the idea that people "must re-think their attitudes and report cases of excess packaging" is just another patronising indication of the same thing.
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