“A bill to establish requirements for quality and discard date phrases that are voluntarily declared on the food label to display calendar dates.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section defines terms for use in the Act, including (1) administering Secretaries, meaning the Secretary of Agriculture for poultry products, meat food products, or egg products and the Secretary of Health and Human Services for other foods; (2) discard date phrase, meaning a voluntary label phrase on food packaging signifying the end of estimated shelf life after which the product should not be consumed; and (3) quality date phrase, meaning a voluntary label phrase indicating when product quality may deteriorate but the product remains apparently wholesome food.
This section establishes uniform national standards for voluntary quality date labels ("BEST If Used By" or abbreviation "BB") and discard date labels ("USE By" or "UB") on food packaging, including conspicuous placement, month/year or month/day/year format, allowances for small-package abbreviations and technologies such as QR codes or time-temperature indicators, and optional "or freeze by" language, with labelers retaining discretion on inclusion and applicable foods. (As background, quality dates indicate peak quality such as taste or texture, while discard dates signal potential safety risks; prior to this, inconsistent phrases like "sell by" or "best before" contributed to consumer confusion and an estimated 30-40% of U.S. food waste.) It further directs the administering Secretaries (HHS and USDA), in coordination and consultation with the Federal Trade Commission, to provide consumer education within two years of enactment and enforce standardization; excludes infant formula; preempts state requirements for different phrases or bans on sales past quality dates (while preserving state bans past discard dates and certain state timelines using the uniform phrases); and includes savings provisions for civil remedies under common law or statutes such as the Federal Trade Commission Act.
This section amends the misbranding provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, Poultry Products Inspection Act, Federal Meat Inspection Act, and Egg Products Inspection Act to deem labeling in violation of section 3 of the Food Date Labeling Act of 2025 (or, for FDA-regulated foods, sections 3(a)-(c)) as misbranded.