And then there are foods which literally do not go bad, at all, no matter how long they’re stored. Thousand-year-old honey is just like honey pulled from the comb yesterday. But honey (and other foods like it) still gets a “best before” date, because consumers expect it.
Yet Amazon REQUIRES Amazon vendors’ food products to have a best-by date of no longer than 5 years. So all food products have to be labeled as such, regardless of whether it’s perishable or not. And since a company isn’t going to use different labels depending on which distributor is sending products to which store, now every store is carrying products with ridiculously incorrect best-by dates.
I worked for a sugar/spice importer and CONSTANTLY had to explain to consumers that their salt hadn’t just expired.
May I tack on a question?
Does this mean that if someone wants to launch a food product with a Best Before date 1 year after manufacture, it’s necessarily going to take at least 1 year of testing, with testing comprised of leaving the food in some room for 1 year and then testing it for mold or bacteria?