Clearer food safety labels will help older people

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Many older people are placing themselves at risk of food poisoning because they don’t realise how important use-by dates are for food safety says a report in the Telegraph.

Last week, celebrity chef Clarissa Dickson-Wright TV recommended that people should simply smell their food purchases to see if they had gone off. She was calling for the removal of all food dates saying that they are a "marketing scam, intended to persuade us to throw away perfectly good food so we have to buy more".

However, Andrew Wadge chief scientist of the FSA said that Ms Dickson-Wright was talking "absolute rubbish" and that smelling food would not alert people to salmonella and listeria. He said: "If food is past its use-by date, it could end up making you seriously ill or worse...food safety is a serious business and Clarissa Dickson Wright shouldn't be so cavalier with other people's lives."

Use-by refers to food such as dairy and ready meals which have a short shelf life, whereas best-by refers to quality and freshness of fruit and veg and canned foods. Sell-by and display-until are for retailers’ use.

The Government plans to scrap the sell-by dates but keep the use-by dates for clarification as to food safety and to avoid unnecessary discarding of food.

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