California is taking the adage, “You are what you eat,” to heart. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of legislation aiming to improve the Golden State’s food system. One of the pieces was Assembly Bill 660 into law, a first-in-the-nation bill requiring most expiration date labeling on food packaging to either use the phrase “USE by” or “BEST if Used by.” The law will apply to foods manufactured on or after July 1, 2026.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, no federal laws require food packaging to have an expiration date except for baby formula. Currently, “Sell-By” and “Best-By” labels of your favorite foods indicate when a product should be removed from grocery store shelves. They don’t actually indicate whether something is safe to eat and are not supposed to serve as guidelines for when food spoils.
Photo Courtesy Franki Chamaki
“On grocery store shelves today, there are more than 50 differently phrased date labels on packaged food,” Jacqui Irwin, California assemblymember and the law’s author, said in a statement. “Some phrases are used to communicate peak freshness of a product or when a product is no longer safe to eat. Others, like “sell by,” are used only to inform stock rotation in stores but mislead some consumers into thinking the product is no longer safe to eat.”
The bill requires all manufacturers, processors, and retailers “responsible for the labeling of food items for human consumption” to use standardized language to indicate freshness. The law prohibits products from displaying a “sell by” date, which Irwin said leads to “consumer confusion,” but allows for specific variations of the phrasing to include “freeze by” date suggestions. Exceptions to this regulation include infant formula, eggs, pasteurized in-shell eggs, or beer and other malt beverages.
Photo Courtesy Joshua Hoehne
This legislation also aims to combat food waste in California resulting from date labeling inconsistencies. ReFED, a nonprofit that fights food waste, estimates that about 78 million tons of food are thrown out yearly in the U.S., and 3 million tons are wasted due to label concerns. The organization believes this law will prevent 70,000 tons of food from going to waste annually in California alone — a cost savings of $300 million for consumers.
“Right now, we have an opportunity to address one of the leading drivers of food waste — confusion around food date labels,” said Victoria Rome, director of California government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council — a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “Standardizing food date labels is a commonsense solution that will keep more money in people’s pockets and food on families’ plates while reducing climate-warming emissions.”
Video Courtesy How to Turn the Tables on Food Waste | Dana Gunders | TED
A press release from Irwin’s office says, “Decomposing food and other organic waste in landfills accounts for 41% of the state’s point-source methane emissions.” ReFED claims these reductions made from the labeling changes can be equivalent to eliminating nearly 100,000 cars’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions.
“AB 660 is game-changing, not just for California, but for the country,” Dana Gunders, ReFED president, said in a statement. “It will be the first law of its kind to end the ridiculous confusion that causes consumers to throw out almost $15B of perfectly good food nationwide. It will also help reduce the significant toll that wasting food has on our planet.”
