I work in a grocery store. I was a stocker for about a year. I noticed that many canned foods have date codes that can only be understood by the people who work at that food company. Today some little microwaveable spaghetti bowls got returned because a woman had bought several and got sick eating one of them. My co-workers asked me if the stuff had expired and I had no idea.
Why is it not law that all date codes must be a certain format; “Consume before June 12 2002”?
I don’t know about the rest of the US, but the following is true for the Las Vegas, NV area…
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF THE BREAD YOU’RE BUYING IS FRESH?
It’s easy. Bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week. The color of the twist tie on the plastic bag tie, indicates which day it was delivered.
Monday is BLUE, Tuesday is GREEN, Thursday is RED,
Friday is WHITE and Saturday is YELLOW
(there is no delivery on Sunday or Wednesday. This info is true for all the bakeries in this area at least.)
I think, however, I read here somewhere that Twinkies have a shelf life of 6 decades.
So do these things actually go bad and cause illness, or do they just get crappy and not tasty?
I ask the question because canning and bottling are actually pretty good and stable processes. They’ve been using them for a while for a reason. It’s not like it’s protected from spoiling for a year, but will go rancid the day or month after that. The method assures that a) the bacteria and such aren’t going to get in and b) they weren’t there to start with. Which means no bacteria to make you sick. The food itself may break down in some way, and not taste good, but that’s not gonna hurt you.
A code date expert here even though I know you are talking about canned and bottled foods.
I work for Kraft, more specifically Oscar Mayer. I slice Bologna and Cotto.
I started as an inspecter which means that after the meat is sliced and packaged it gets code dated, cut from a sheet into a smaller package, then down another conveyor past the inspectors and put into boxex which also have a code date on them.
Our USDA guy is really picky. (which is a good thing)
Our code dates consist of which line and shift it was run, and the day it is good till. It also has a USDA code for the product and then the USDA stamp.
If any of this info is missing or hard to read the finish product gets pulled off the line since it cannot be sold with botched or hard to read dates. This even goes for the boxes that the packages are put in.
Now, you have no idea how this woman prepared the food. She could have opened it and let it sit out, been allergic to an ingredient, or numerous things.
To get some answers or something done call the company who makes the stuff. You must have all the code date information when you call, so they can trace back the product to see if it was a bad batch, or possibly a bad seal on the can or something like that.
If they are a good company they will make an effort to look into such things so this doesn’t happen again. Make them aware otherwise they might have no idea that they have a problem possibly with equipment.