Use-by and best-before dates for UK food businesses

What you are trying to achieve

Date marks only work if the people handling the food know which mark is which. Catering teams see use-by, best-before, best-before end, display-until and sell-by on the same delivery, sometimes on the same day. Two of those phrases are legal durability dates. The others are shop instructions. Mixing them up is how ham gets a new sticker, how a tin is binned while it is still fine, and how a salad is served the morning after it should have gone in the waste.

The Food Standards Agency and Safer Food, Better Business both treat the use-by date as the line you do not cross. It is against the law to serve food after that date. The pack says so in the stock control and chilled storage safe methods, because this is not a preference. Best-before dates still matter. They tell you when the manufacturer expects the food to be at its best, and they belong in your rotation. They are not a second use-by, and they are not permission to ignore damage, mould or a blown pack.

This page is for kitchens in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The core rules come from assimilated food law that applies across Great Britain, and from the food information regulations in each nation. Temperature limits for chilled display are stricter in the way they are written in England, Wales and Northern Ireland than in Scotland. Where that difference matters, it is spelled out. Scottish businesses should also follow Food Standards Scotland and CookSafe rather than copying an English exception from memory.

The legal difference

Assimilated Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, the food information regulation, requires most prepacked food to carry either a date of minimum durability or a use-by date. Article 24 draws the line. If a food is highly perishable from a microbiological point of view, and is therefore likely after a short period to be an immediate danger to health, the date of minimum durability is replaced by a use-by date. The words "use by" have to appear. After that date, the food is deemed unsafe under Article 14 of assimilated Regulation (EC) No 178/2002. Article 14 is the rule that unsafe food must not be placed on the market. Deemed unsafe means you do not get to argue that this particular pack still seemed all right.

The Food Information Regulations 2014 in England, and the matching regulations in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, are how those duties are enforced. The Food Standards Agency's business guidance states the practical result: food with an expired use-by date must not be sold, supplied or stored for sale. Safer Food, Better Business tells caterers it is against the law to serve food after the use-by date because it might not be safe and could make customers ill. That includes food you were going to cook, food for a staff meal, and food you had already put on a buffet. Once the date has passed, it comes out of use.

A best-before date is the date of minimum durability. It means the food should keep its quality until that date if you store it as the label says: the flavour, texture, colour and appearance the manufacturer had in mind. It is not a safety cut-off. Food past its best-before date is not automatically deemed unsafe. You may still use it or sell it if it is safe, if it is not unfit, and if you are not misleading the customer. "Best before end" is the same idea for foods that keep longer, often shown as a month and year. The food should be at its best until the end of that month.

Unfit is a separate question. The Food Safety Act 1990 still applies to food that is injurious to health or unfit for human consumption, whatever date is printed. A swollen can, a leaking pack, mould on soft cheese, or a carton that smells clearly wrong can be unfit before or after a best-before date. Do not serve it because "it is only a best-before". Do not keep a use-by food that looks perfect after the date because "it smells fine". You cannot smell the bacteria that matter. The Agency makes that point to the public, and it is the same point in a professional kitchen.

For the date to mean what the manufacturer intended, you have to follow the storage instructions. A use-by date on a pack that says keep refrigerated is not a promise if the pack sat in a warm car or a warm kitchen. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, cold food that needs temperature control must be kept at 8°C or below. The practical way to hold that line is to run fridges at 5°C or below. The Food Standards Agency gives the same 8°C figure as a legal requirement in those three nations and as the level Scottish businesses are recommended to achieve. If the pack says use within three days of opening and keep refrigerated, both parts apply. The fridge temperature log guide is how you show the food was actually cold enough for the date to be valid.

Marks that are not legal safety dates

Display-until and sell-by are retailer instructions. They are there to help a shop rotate stock and take food off a shelf while it still has life left for the customer. They are not required by food information law, and they are not a use-by date. A packet can show a display-until date and a use-by date. Safety follows the use-by date. You may still sell or use the food after the display date if it is within the use-by date, stored correctly, and otherwise fine. You may not keep it after the use-by date because the display date was generous.

Teach the words on purpose. New staff often treat every date as an expiry. That causes two failures. They throw away sound dry goods the week after a best-before, which is waste, or they treat a red "display until" sticker as the only date that matters and miss the use-by printed underneath. Put a short key in the safe method and next to the prep bench: use-by means do not use after this date; best-before means check quality; display-until is not a safety date. The stock rotation guide is how those dates are kept in order on the shelf so the earliest real date is the one people pick up first.

What staff may do with a use-by date

You may use the food on the use-by date itself. The date is inclusive until the end of that day. "Use by 26 September" means it can be served or cooked on 26 September. It does not mean it can be served on 27 September. The Food Standards Agency describes midnight on the date as the last point for freezing a use-by food. The same midnight is the last point for using it. After that, stop.

On or before that date, and only if you have stored it as instructed, staff may:

• Serve it or cook it, if the rest of the safe method is met.
• Freeze it, if the food is suitable for freezing and the manufacturer does not say otherwise. Label what it is and the date you froze it. Use it within 24 hours once it has thawed. Details are below.
• Apply a shorter date. If you open it and the pack says use within two days, the shorter life wins. A kitchen sticker can bring a date forward. It cannot push a use-by date back.
• Cook it on the use-by date and then give the cooked dish its own life under your safe method, if cooking is a real kill step and you cool and store it properly. That new life is not an extension of the old pack date, and it is not available once the use-by date has already passed.

After the use-by date, staff may not serve it, sell it, cook it, freeze it, blend it into a sauce, or keep it for staff. Cooking expired food does not undo the deeming rule. The Agency's public advice is explicit that after the use-by date you do not eat, cook or freeze the food. Business guidance says it must not be sold, supplied or stored for sale. Take it out of the fridge so it cannot be used by the next person who did not see the date. "Stored for sale" includes sitting in the service fridge because nobody has walked it to the bin yet.

Do not relabel a use-by date with a later one because the tray looks fresh, because a customer is waiting, or because the delivery was expensive. Changing a durability date is only lawful in narrow cases where the change does not mislead anyone and does not reduce protection. A catering sticker that adds three days to cooked ham is not that case. If you cannot read the original date, you cannot invent a comfortable one. Throw the food away and record why the label was lost.

What staff may do with a best-before date

You may use or sell the food after the best-before date if it is still safe and still fit, and if you are honest about it. Check the pack. Sound tins and jars, intact seals, no swelling, no mould, no unexpected smell when you open them: those are the usual cues for a quality decision, not a free pass. Taste and texture may have dropped. If you would not be content to serve it, do not serve it. If you sell food past a best-before date, do not present it as if it were still inside the manufacturer's quality life.

You should still rotate best-before stock. First in, first out applies. Leaving a year of old flour behind new flour is how pests and waste build up, even though you have not broken the use-by rule. Damaged packaging overrides the date. The stock control safe method tells you to throw away punctured vacuum packs, swollen packs and badly dented cans, and to check that lids and seals are intact. A best-before date six months away does not rescue a blown can.

Eggs are the example that confuses people, because they are sold with a best-before date and they are a raw food. The Food Standards Agency's advice is that eggs can be eaten after the best-before date if they are cooked thoroughly, until both the white and the yolk are solid, and that they should not be used after that date in foods that will not be fully cooked. A cracked or dirty shell is a reason to reject the egg whatever the date says. Rotate the trays. Do not treat "best before" on an egg box as "ignore the date", and do not treat it as a use-by that forbids any use the morning after. Your safe method should say what you do, especially if you make mayonnaise, mousse or any dish that uses eggs which are not fully cooked.

Some long-life foods carry a best-before because the hazard is quality, not a rapid growth of bacteria, as long as the pack stays as the manufacturer intended. Once you open that pack, the situation often changes. An ambient jar that must be refrigerated after opening, and used within a stated number of days, has become a short-life food. Follow that instruction. The best-before on the lid is no longer the only date in the conversation.

Food you open, cook or decant

The date on a sealed pack applies to the sealed pack, stored as instructed. Opening it starts a second clock if the label says so. "Once opened, use within three days" and a use-by date ten days away means three days from opening, and never later than the printed use-by. If you open it the day before the use-by, you have until the use-by, not three new days. Write the date you will use it by on the container. Throw the scrap of pack away only after that date is on the tub. The classic failure is a clean gastronorm of ham and a wrapper in the bin.

Safer Food, Better Business tells caterers how to handle food they have prepared themselves. For dishes you have cooked or opened, use stickers or another label so you know when the food must be used or thrown away. Follow the manufacturer's storage instructions. High-risk ready-to-eat foods should be kept for a maximum of three days in total, the day of cooking or opening plus two, unless you have evidence that it is safe to keep them for longer. "Evidence" means a real shelf-life assessment, not a busy week and a wish. If you do not have that evidence, use the three-day maximum. Day of cook plus two means food cooked on Monday is finished by Wednesday, not kept until Thursday because Monday "does not count".

Cooking on the use-by date can be the start of that new life, because a proper cook kills the pathogens the use-by date was managing, and you then chill the dish and give it the life your safe method allows. The Food Standards Agency's advice to the public makes the same distinction: you may cook food until the end of the use-by date and then cool and keep it, and you may not do that after the date. Cool it quickly. A new sticker does not fix a pot that sat out all night. The cooling guide is the method. Label the cooled dish with the name and the date it must be used by before it goes into the fridge.

Vacuum packing and modified-atmosphere packing need extra caution. The Agency's guidance on those chilled foods is driven by the risk of Clostridium botulinum, which can grow without oxygen at chill temperatures. The usual recommendation is a maximum of ten days unless you have specific controlling factors that have been validated, such as a colder storage temperature or other hurdles set out in the guidance. Do not give a vacuum pouch of cooked meat a three-week date because the machine made it look professional. If you do not have a validated longer life, stay inside the Agency's limit and inside the shorter rule in your own safe method. Ten days is a ceiling in that guidance, not a target, and it is not a relaxation of a use-by date that is already sooner.

Freezing before the use-by date

Freezing is a pause, not a rubber stamp. The Food Standards Agency's business advice on chilling is to freeze food with a use-by date before that date has passed, to note the date you froze it, and to use the food within 24 hours of thawing. Freeze it as soon as you decide to, not at the end of a long day out of the fridge. Divide it into portions you will actually defrost. Label the bag with the name and the freeze date so it is not an unnamed portion at the bottom of the drawer. Defrost in the fridge. The thawing guide covers why the counter is the wrong place.

Follow the packet. Some foods are marked as unsuitable for home or kitchen freezing, or the quality will not survive. Ready-to-eat foods need particular care: check that freezing is appropriate, and once thawed use them within 24 hours, kept cold, unless you cook them as part of that use. If you will cook the food, cook it thoroughly, steaming hot all the way through, inside that day after thawing. Do not thaw it, decide you do not need it, and slide it back into the freezer. Do not freeze food after midnight on the use-by date because the evening service was quiet.

If you freeze food only for your own kitchen to use later, that label and the 24-hour rule are the working controls. If you freeze food and place it back on the market, sell it, or supply it to another business, you take on the labelling duties in the Agency's bulk freezing guidance. That includes a date of freezing where the law requires one, a best-before date as the date of minimum durability, your business as the operator responsible for the new label, and clear instructions for storage, defrosting and use. The name should show that the food is frozen if leaving that out would mislead. You must not change a use-by date in a way that reduces protection. A caterer who occasionally freezes a tub of soup for next week's service is not in the same position as a business redistributing frozen food for sale, but the line is the moment someone else is asked to rely on your label.

Food on display, and food sold loose

Open food on a counter is still dated food. The customer may not see a use-by sticker on a bowl of salad or a slice of cake. You still need to know when it was made or opened and when it must be finished. A prep label in the fridge, a time on the buffet, or a line in the diary can do that, as long as the person serving can check it without guessing. "We made it this morning" is not a system at 4pm if two people could mean two different mornings.

Cold display in England, Wales and Northern Ireland must keep the food at 8°C or below. Safer Food, Better Business describes the exception: if you cannot hold it at that temperature, you may display it out of chill for a single period of up to four hours. You can only do that once. Label the time it left the fridge, or write it in the diary. Food that has been out for less than four hours can go back into the fridge. Food that has been out for longer must be thrown away. Take out a small amount at a time. Use what is on display before you add more, so new food does not inherit the clock of the old tray. Some foods must be kept colder than 8°C. Follow the manufacturer. Scotland does not use the same statutory schedule. Follow CookSafe and Food Standards Scotland rather than assuming the four-hour exception applies because a neighbouring English business uses it.

Do not reset the clock by topping up. A handful of fresh salad on a tray that has already been out for three hours does not make the tray new. The older food is still the older food. Stirring a display, or tipping leftovers into a fresh bowl, is the same mistake. Finish the first batch or throw it away. Then start again with a clean container and a new time.

Packing food for a customer does not wipe dates off the ingredients. Natasha's Law requires the name of the food and an ingredients list with allergens emphasised on food you pack on the premises for sale. That duty is about allergens. It is not a replacement for a use-by date on the ham inside the sandwich, and it does not give the sandwich an open-ended life. Your safe method still has to say how long that sandwich can be kept and sold. The allergen guide covers the label the customer must see. This page covers the date your kitchen must respect. A sandwich made from ham on the last morning of its use-by is not a sandwich you can still sell two days later because the wrapper you added has no date printed on it.

Protect displayed food from contamination while you manage the time. Sneeze screens, covers, separate utensils for ready-to-eat foods, and raw food kept away from open desserts are part of the same service. A perfect date system with raw chicken next to coleslaw is still a failure. The raw and ready-to-eat separation guide is that half of the counter. Dates and separation are checked in the same glance.

What to write down

The safe method should use your menu, not a generic sentence about dates. Say who checks deliveries for use-by and best-before dates. Say that food past its use-by date is thrown away the day it is found. Say how you label food you open, cook or freeze, and that the life you apply is the shortest one the pack or the pack method allows. Say that high-risk ready-to-eat food you prepare is kept for the day of cooking or opening plus two days unless you have evidence for longer. Say what you do with food on display, including the time record if you use the four-hour approach where the law allows it.

Opening checks include a look for food past its use-by date. The diary records exceptions: a delivery rejected for dates, food found out of date and binned, a display that overran and was thrown away, a batch frozen before the date because you would not use it in time. The 4-weekly review looks at whether the same product keeps expiring, which is usually ordering or rotation, not bad luck. The corrective action guide is the note to write when the date was missed: what was thrown away, why it was still in the fridge, and what will change.

Train the difference with real packs from your own delivery, not with a slide. Hand a new starter a use-by yoghurt, a best-before tin, and a box with a display-until sticker, and ask what they may do with each one tomorrow. If they cannot answer, they are not ready to put stock away unsupervised. A signed sheet that says "date training complete" does not replace that conversation.

What environmental health officers check

Officers compare the date on the food with today's date. They look at the back of the fridge, the buffet, the dessert fridge and the freezer. They read labels on food you have decanted. They ask what happens at midnight on a use-by date, and what a best-before date allows. They look at food on display and ask when it came out. Then they read the opening checks.

• Any food past its use-by date that is still available to serve, sell or cook, including staff meals and buffet leftovers.
• Labels that give opened or cooked food a longer life than the pack, or longer than the three-day rule, with no evidence for the extension.
• Food frozen after the use-by date, or frozen food with no name and no freeze date.
• Display food with no time record, or a tray that has been topped up so the start time is meaningless.
• Swollen, leaking or badly damaged packs kept because a best-before date has not been reached.
• Staff who treat every date as identical, or who think a best-before date is a criminal line and a use-by date is a suggestion.
• Storage that does not match the label, such as "keep refrigerated" food held on the pass, which makes the printed date unreliable.

One expired pack, found by you and written in the diary, is a different visit from a fridge full of yesterday's dates and a month of perfect ticks. Officers are judging whether the system works tomorrow, not whether you can define the two phrases in the office. The inspection checklist covers the rest of the scoring. Date control will not compensate for a dirty premises, and a clean premises will not make expired food safe.

Worked example

A café makes ham sandwiches to order and keeps a small cold counter of salad pots and cake. The safe method says use-by dates are followed to the day, best-before dates are a quality check, and display-until stickers are ignored for safety decisions. Ham is labelled when it is opened, with the earlier of the printed use-by and two days from opening, because the pack says use within two days of opening. Salad pots made on site are labelled with the day of production plus two days. The cold counter is at 5°C. Nothing sits out on the pass.

On Tuesday a pack of ham says use by Friday, and "once opened, consume within two days". They open it on Tuesday, so the tub is labelled "ham, opened Tue, use by Thursday". Friday on the pack does not win, because opening shortened the life. A pot of coleslaw made on Tuesday is labelled "coleslaw, use by Thursday". A tin of chopped tomatoes with a best-before end of last month is opened, the tin is not swollen or damaged, and the contents are used in a cooked sauce the same day. A separate tin that is dented on the seam is thrown away even though its best-before is next year. The diary records the dented tin, not the sauce.

On Wednesday afternoon they have more ham than Thursday's trade will use, and the tub's date is Thursday. They freeze a labelled portion on Wednesday, with the name and the freeze date, while it is still inside the date. They do not wait until Friday. When they defrost that portion the following week, it is defrosted in the fridge and used the same day, inside 24 hours, in a cooked dish that is steaming hot. They do not put it back for another week.

On Thursday a closer finds a salad pot at the back of the counter labelled use by Wednesday. It is thrown away. It is not offered to staff and it is not stirred into Friday's batch. The diary says "one salad pot binned, use-by was Wednesday, found at back of counter". The manager notices that Wednesday's pots were placed in front of Tuesday's pots at the lunch refill. At the 4-weekly review they add a line to the counter set-up: older pots at the front, and the person closing reads the labels rather than stacking by how full the pot looks. The tin of tomatoes past its best-before is mentioned only as a reminder that quality dates are a look-and-decide, and damaged tins are not. That is date control in a real week, including the pot they did not sell and the ham they froze while they still could.

Common mistakes

• Treating a best-before date as if it were a use-by date, or a use-by date as if it were advice.
• Serving, cooking or freezing food after midnight on the use-by date.
• Giving opened ham the full printed use-by date and ignoring "use within two days of opening".
• Decanting food and throwing the dated wrapper away.
• Writing a longer date on a new sticker because the food looks fine.
• Keeping food past its use-by date for a staff meal.
• Topping up a buffet and restarting the four-hour clock.
• Assuming a sandwich packed on site has no date rules because the customer label is about allergens.
• Using eggs after the best-before date in a sauce that will not be thoroughly cooked.
• Keeping a swollen or leaking pack because the best-before date is still in the future.

Where this comes from

This guide follows Article 24 of assimilated Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 and Article 14 of assimilated Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, as enforced by the food information regulations in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It follows the Food Standards Agency's business advice that food past its use-by date must not be sold, supplied or stored for sale, and the Agency's pages on chilling food correctly and on freezing before that date. The stock control and chilled storage safe methods in Safer Food, Better Business for caterers are the working rules for most English kitchens, including first in, first out, the ban on serving food after its use-by date, and the three-day maximum for high-risk ready-to-eat food you cook or open unless you have evidence for longer. Scottish businesses should follow Food Standards Scotland and CookSafe. Put your own products, labels and display rules into the safe method, and check at the 4-weekly review that the dates in the fridge match the dates you think you are keeping.