A recent article on Web site Slate.com suggested that consumers ignore expiration dates on labels and use their own sense to determine food’s freshness. It so happens an appellate court took up such issues over a year ago, and, for a change, handed FDA it’s, um, defeat. It’s not every day you see a court decision finding that you can change something on a food label after it’s in commerce and not end up with an illegal, misbranded food, but it happened once last March.
The federal appellate court in Chicago threw out the conviction of a re-seller of bottled salad dressing for having misbranded the bottles, which he had bought and then resold, for having extended the “best when purchased by” dates on the bottles. US v. Farinella, 08-1839, US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
FDA produced no evidence that the law contained any prohibition against changing such dates, so the defendant hadn’t violated any specific prohibition, and no evidence that the food product was unwholesome or even unpalatable, so he hadn’t marketed an actually adulterated food. And there was no evidence about what consumers’ understanding was of these label terms, so there wasn’t evidence that the statements were misleading.
