Fmcg Salesmans Guide to understand difference between shelf life and expiry date
Is shelf life and expiry date same?
No. shelf life starts when you break/cut open a product. If you buy Jam and its shelf life is 45 days. it means you should consume the Jam in 45 days after opening the bottle. and if expiry date is of 3 month of manufacturing then its nothing to do with open or closed bottle. Once 3 month has lapsed after manufacturing date the Jam has expired.
What are the shelf life, half life, and expiry date of drugs?
Shelf Life – the time period from when the product was manufactured to it’s ‘expiry date’ -i.e. The time period the product is expected to be safe , effective and fit-for-purpose provided it has been packaged and stored in recommended conditions throughout this period,
Expiry Date – all drugs tend to deteriorate /degrade from the point of manufacture and the ‘expiry date’ of a product is the end point of its shelf life taking into account a tolerance of degredation ( normally less than 10%). Degredation is normally due to hydrolysis (chemical degredation by water) or oxidation ( reaction with oxygen) or by microbiological contamination . Drugs produced in liquid forms ( e.g. Oral mixtures , injections) are generally less stable and degrade more quickly than the same drug in a solid formulation ( tablet /capsule) . Degredation is also temperature dependant , and some formulations are designed to be stored at room temp (25 degrees C) whereas some must be refrigerated ( 4–8 degrees C).
Half-life. This is usually a reference to the time taken for the body to eliminate 50% of the dose of drug after the time of administration. It varies with different drugs and between individual patients but ‘average’ half-lives’of drugs may be found in the literature. E.g. Most penicilllins – half lives around 20 mins , digoxin ( a heart medication) – half life = 36 hours – both assume normal kidney function etc.
What kind of food has a 120 year shelf life?
Anything freeze-dried, assuming the packaging isn’t compromised in the 120 year time period.
What are some foods that have a long shelf-life? Are there any foods that never expire?
The only food I know of that doesn’t expire is pure honey, if left unopened and tightly sealed. I think it is the only food that will not spoil while in an edible state. After extremely long storage it may crystallize.
What is a product without an expiry date?
Honey is anti-microbial and can be eaten indefinitely. In 2003 it was reported that the world’s oldest honey had been discovered in the country of Georgia, west of Tblisi, during oil pipeline construction. Archaeologists estimate the honey is about 5,500 years old. Three types of honey were found – meadow flower, berry and linden. Much like in ancient Egypt, the honeys were in ceramic vessels in the tomb of a noblewoman so they could journey with her into the afterlife.
Honey will virtually never go bad. Ever.
It can last for “millennia,” according to the Smithsonian Institute. This is because of honey’s acidic nature, and because it is “hygroscopic,” which is fancy way of saying it contains little moisture.
Honey is so hardy that scientists opening up ancient Egyptian tombs have found completely edible pots of honey among the 5,000-year-old mummies
Does Sugar expire?
Sugar can be good for at least 10 years. It won’t taste “old”
What are the three differences between an expiring date and the shelf life of a drug?
The expiry date on a package is the shelf life of an UNopened package in most cases. It means the article should be removed from sale by that date.
There are a few exceptions such as a loaf of bread or a quart of milk in which the expiry date means when the product will be getting stale and they coincide whether it is opened or not.
With items like medications in liquid forms especially , the active ingredients become less active usually by 30 days after opening , even though the expiry date on the box may give it 3 or 4 more months , if unopened.
Most eyedrops for instance can be good for another 6 months on the shelf , but once the container is opened it expires after 30 days and should be thrown out.
Is it safe to buy a product that is in its last month of the expiry date? How do companies determine the expire date?
Essentially nothing has an actual expiration date. Rather, they have “sell by” and “best if used by dates.”
There is no way a manufacturer can possibly predict the environmental conditions the item will be exposed to after you purchase it.
Further, very few things are good one day and then become toxic poison the next.
Manufacturers produce their product and then leave it on the shelf. After some amount of time, they open a bottle and test it to see whether it’s still good. After some time, they open another bottle and test it. They continue this process until their product has degraded to the point of no longer being usable.
Based on their studies, they assign a “best if used by” date that is reasonably certain to be long before the product is no longer good to use.
Why do some products have a short shelf life while others have an extended one?
Shelf life is mostly estimated at the start of developing the product before manufacture. There is a minimum that it must have like for lets say bread of 3 days or a cosmetic of 1 year. To determine the shelf life you do stability trials to prove it. Yes there are methods for everything you can think of and how to do it. Books on the subject and regulations you must follow and show your work to the authority if they ask for it.
Some would be professional manufacturers slap on a Shelf life because they have to before selling a product they make, by simply looking at other products like they make and think if they can do it we should also be able to.
Most good manufacturers do not stop there, they also keep retention samples of batches made and check them regularly during the shelf life of that batch. Good ones will keep checking even after it expired and see how long it lasts and if they find that it lasts longer, multi batchs all last longer, they will increase the shelf life on all new batches sold. This applies for consumables like personal care products and food items and things like aerosols and household cleaning products. Pharmaceutical companies must do this work on shelf life, like it or not.
If you see two products the same made by two different companies but different shelf life, it indicates that one with a shorter shelf life did not do the extra work or the quality is not as good and it does not last. Sometime the material the continer is made from or the size of the container can change the shelf life of the product inside it and manufacturers have to test every pack size and container material. Then you have the trouble with terms used like ‘shelf life’ or best before date’ or ‘expiry date’ and some just put a manufactured date where its a code not something the customer will know how to read.
Are the expiry dates on groceries the actual expiry dates?
In most instances, no. The date on most foods is a quality date – the date of peak freshness. If saltines are past the date on the box are they bad? No. They may, however, not be the tastiest saltines. Will they make you sick? No. Dates on milk are stock rotation dates. Typically, milk is good for 7-10 days past the stock rotation date and sometimes longer. The dates that you regard with the most vigilance are those on products that are temperature controlled for safety (TCS). These products have ingredients that are prone to potentially harmful microbial growth – meats, poultry, cut melons, cut tomatoes, premade sandwiches, deli meats – the dates should be adhered to. With fresh meats, freezing by the sell-by date will provide an extended shelf-life. Food items that cannot be frozen, it’s best to discard by the date. Please keep in mind that in the US, sell by, use by, best by, consume by, etc. are not regulated by USDA or FDA. These are all manufacturers self-determined dates and many are based on marketing (selling more products) rather than science.
Why does opening food items immediately reduce its shelf life?
Apart from intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors also affect the product shelf life. These factors are temp, relative humidity, time, phsical stress, gases and other environmental parameters.
When the food is opened it is exposed to these factors which may lead to its deterioration.
When humidity level increases for the dried products after opening, it attracts growth and activities of microorganisms since many microbes grow well in high humid condition.
Exposure to temperature especially surrounding temp exposes the food to mesophiles which in turn deteriorate the food hence lowering it’s shelf life.
In MAP ( Modified atmospheric packaging) the air inside is usually replaced with carbondioxide gas and inert gases so when the pack is opened harmfull microorganisms can use oxygen from the environment and causes food spoilage
Also once food is opened it may be exposed to light, this bad for the foods containing lipids/ fat (e.g meat, fish and milk )as they are attacked by rancidity process which affect the flavour of the food and the overall shelf life of food.
What is the difference between shelf -life and expiry date?
Shelf life of a product is the time period for which it will retain its characteristic properties between production and consumption. Expiry date on the product is put on it based on the shelf life. Shelf life of a product depends not only on its ingredients, but also on type of packaging, and storage conditions. Considering likely variation in these conditions and their uncertainty, generally the expiry date period is slightly less than the product shelf life.
What is the shelf life of a date fruit?
Dates are loaded with many nutrients, fibers and are rich in anti-oxidant properties to serve innumerable health benefits. It improves digestion and reduces the risk of severe diseases. It can be eaten in several ways that include snacks, fruit salads, jams, jelly, sweets, and toppings in desserts.
The shelf life of a date fruit depends upon its quality, if the dates are softer their shelf life would be shorter as compared to dates that are dried. Dates last up to 3 to 4 months at a roof temperature and last for 8 to 12 months if it is refrigerated.
Why are expiration dates important for consumers to pay attention to?
Drug expiration dates reflect the time period during which the product is known to remain stable, which means it retains its strength, quality, and purity when it is stored according to its labeled storage conditions.
How are expiration dates established?
FDA regulations require drug applicants to provide stability testing data with a proposed expiration date and storage conditions when they submit an application for FDA approval of their drug. This testing is designed to provide confidence that the product will meet the applicable standards of strength, quality, and purity throughout its shelf-life. The FDA verifies that an applicant’s proposed expiration date is supported by appropriate studies that the applicant has conducted.
For non-application drugs, such as over-the-counter monograph products, the manufacturer must also conduct stability testing to establish an expiration date and storage conditions to meet FDA’s regulations (see 21 CFR 211.166 as well as related sections 211.137 and 211.160) .
FDA recommends that applicants and manufacturers follow the recommendations in internationally harmonized guidance documents on stability testing such as the International Council on Harmonization guidance documents (ICH) Q1(A-F) and Q5C.
FDA inspections of manufacturing facilities may include an evaluation of the firm’s stability testing program to verify that labeled expiration dates are supported by a scientifically sound study and appropriate data.
Can expiration dates be extended?
FDA’s guidance for industry, “Changes to an Approved NDA or ANDA” explains that the manufacturer of an approved drug product may extend the expiration date for the drug product based on their own testing and acceptable data in accordance with a protocol approved in the new drug application (NDA) or abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) (see 21 CFR 314.70). To help alleviate drug shortages, FDA has also approved extensions of expiration dates when data supporting the extension are available.
What potential risks are associated with expired drugs?
It’s important to be aware that there are several potential harms that may occur from taking an expired medicine or one that may have degraded because it was not stored according to the labeled conditions. If a drug has degraded, it might not provide the patient with the intended benefit because it has a lower strength than intended. In addition, when a drug degrades it may yield toxic compounds that could cause consumers to experience unintended side effects. Patients with serious and life-threatening diseases may be particularly vulnerable to potential risks from drugs that have not been stored properly. There are a number of simple steps consumers can take to dispose of expired medications.
Does FDA conduct testing to extend expiration dates?
FDA supports a public health program involving other partners to extend the expiration dates for a limited number of carefully selected drug products. Under the Shelf-Life Extension Program (SLEP), FDA conducts testing for certain products stored in federal stockpiles in environmentally controlled locations. (Federal stockpiles are stores of certain drugs that might be needed to prevent or treat diseases or conditions which may occur during a public health emergency.) SLEP is a fee-for-service program through which the labeled shelf life of certain federally stockpiled products can be extended after select products undergo periodic stability testing conducted by FDA.
Drugs held by consumers may have been stored under varied conditions after entering the market. As a result, it would be difficult to conduct testing to determine expiration dates that would be meaningful and generally applicable after prolonged periods of storage under different conditions. The appropriate conditions will depend on the drug, but may include considerations regarding temperature, humidity, and exposure to light.
Can eggs go out of date?
Can eggs go out of date?
Absolutely! They have a different “shelf life” in various countries depending in how they were processed and stored, but in the U.S., most eggs are good for about a month after the date on the package. When in doubt whether an egg is still good, the easiest way to find out is to put it in water that’s deeper than the egg is tall. If it floats, it’s no longer considered good. If it just stands upright, but doesn’t float, it’s probably still OK. For the record, when eggs are really fresh, they are harder to peel after being hard-boiled, because the inner membrane will stick to the shell.
Why do pharmaceutical drugs have a sell-by/use-by date? Are they less effective after their approximate shelf life?
Drugs and medical devices (and food for that matter) are required by the FDA to have shelf life dates and evidence that the material performs to its specifications up until that date. It is an expensive venture to do shelf life testing on anything; you must procure a sufficient amount of product, write a protocol indicating what time periods will be tested, develop test methods and engage either a lab or a person to run those tests at that time. Some materials need to be stored cold or frozen and must be stored this way during shelf life testing – including having back up generators so that there is no risk of the material deviating from it’s accepted temperature. More expense. There is an entire industry that does nothing but secure temperature storage for drug shelf life testing.
Anyway, a company can choose what their shelf life will be – 24–36 months is typical because this is all of the testing that they want to do to minimize risk and to stop spending money on testing. So the protocol will test over and including a period of 36 months and if all of the data proves to be good, will declare the product good for 36 months shelf life and stop the testing. It could very well be that the product is really good for 20 years! But typically companies don’t test until failure and don’t know what that curve looks like.
Can an expired ointment still be used?
A lot depends on the purpose of the ointment. Is it an antibiotic or anti fungal ointment, or does it serve some other purpose?
Often times the expiry date is a suggested one and some products can be used past the expiry date. My rule of thumb is, if it is not an acute infection which would require a strong antibiotic ointment, then use it for a day or two and see if there is any improvement in the condition for which it is being used. If there is an improvement then it is okay to continue to use it. If there is no improvement then best to dispose of it in a proper manner and buy a new one.
But if there is the likely hood of a serious infection or there already is a serious infection, don’t mess around and go out and get a new one.
I use a number of antibiotic ointments that have gone past expiry dates and I’ve found them to still be effective. But sometimes with other products the efficacy of the item is not as strong as it was when it was new.
If a poison crosses it’s expiry date, is it more poisonous or less poisonous?
A poison is miss used medicine and a wisely used poison could be a medicine
At the end all chemicals/biological substances termed as Poisons are chemical entity that is subjected to be degrade under natural conditions
The common man termed expiry date is normally Shelf life of any medicinal consumable. It is the period till the product remain effective in original state or within defined effectiveness limit.
It is not true to believe that after expiry date all medicine become harmful/poisonous(except some biological products). They may have lost their effectiveness up to certain extent varied product to product. And vice versa dont even think that after Expiry date poison become neutral (non harmful). It may have lost its 20% effectiveness, but still able to damage the body system
First off, “expiration dates” are not some kind of deadline, where it was fine yesterday and worthless tomorrow. They’re the time in which the manufacturer claims that the product will be up to their quality standards. It makes no claims after that.
“Not up to quality” for a poison could mean anything. It could be more toxic; it could be less. It could be differently toxic, so that it’s no longer as effective against its target but could cause severe harm to other species. It only means that one chemical may have started to degrade, and the end product of that degradation could be very different.
So don’t get too hung up on the category “poison”. Poison are just chemicals, and time affects them in the same way other chemicals change over time. And don’t get too hung up on expiration dates, either: they’re just guesses given the wide range of storage conditions.
What drugs have an unlimited shelf life?
The expiration dates on medications seldom if ever mean that the medication is no longer “good” or effective. It just means that the medication has exceeded an arbitarily assigned number. The vast majority of medications have an almost unlimited shelf life. It’s against the law in the United States to relabel medications with a new expiration date. So the drug companies often are stuck with large quantities of perfectly good medicines with expired expiration dates. They relabel(if they even bother to do that)and sell them overseas. You hear about the terrible big pharmaceutical companies unloading large amounts of expired drugs on an unsuspecting world. Well they may be expired but the vast majority of these meds are still effective. AARP puts a price tag on this policy of many billions of dollars annually.
How are expiration dates assigned to foods?
We have been consuming milk for thousands of years, and I am sure in the ancient times there were no lab, no concept of pasteurization, bacteria, keeping quality and expiry date.
How did we check milk for consumption?
Well, Almighty/Nature gave us a laboratory within ourselves.
In Dairy/Food/Flavor industry we call Organoleptic Test, which means taste and smell.
In dairy science, lesson 101 is to train a student with various flavors/tastes of milk and billions of liters of milk is bought and sold in addition to we call them platform test and sensory evaluation.
FYI, expiry date on milk is not an exact date; it is based on the history of that plant which packs that milk. We do self-life study and assign or forecast the expiry dates. It is the same exercise which an actuary in an insurance company does, to forecasts life expectancy of various clients/groups.
The expiry date of milk is the best estimate, milk may go bad a few days earlier than expected and it may last a few days over the expiry date.
Why?
Milk is a natural material, and with all the precautions, care and controls, the first quality of liquid may vary from day to day.
First pour the milk into a small cup and smell it? The milk Smells okay. It is pasteurized milk. Therefore, you may taste it, but do not swallow, spit it out and rinse your mouth. It tastes Okay, it is good to go.
Heat that milk to boil. Does it curdle? No good. Well, it did not thicken (curdled) pour it into a dish/plate and see for tiny clots. No clots, milk is okay to use. You may also smell the heated milk, does it smells normal? Yes, milk is good.
In olden days when we received giant tankers of milk, we did this test on raw milk, it is called COB, test. Clot on boiling.
What happens to food after the expiry date?
How do supermarkets dispose of expired food?
The short answer to your question is, yes, a lot of food gets thrown out.
The long answer is that most supermarkets do a very good job of minimizing this waste. Almost all departments, especially ones with perishable items, order to sell out and should come very close to running out before their next order arrives. Think about that the next time your supermarket is out of fresh wild salmon. Would they really bring in one extra twenty pound case just to sell you an eight ounce fillet at 8PM the night before fresh fish arrives? Depends on the market and how aggressively the store wants to capture sales, but mostly, no.
The blanket rule for food past its expiration date is this, if it is unsafe in any way, shape or form, it gets thrown out. They find a way to use almost everything else.
Produce – Fruits and vegetables don’t come with clear expiration dates. I will tell you that you will probably never see a banana that’s turning brown on the racks in the produce department. If some produce isn’t sell-able it usually gets shopped around the store. A department that handles any type of prepared foods will use these items to make items for hot bars, salad bars, soups, etc. The same goes for meat and seafood that is past its sell by date but still within its best by date.
Composting seems like the natural answer for all the other produce that can’t be used. This issue has been explored and explored at our supermarket and there are two major roadblocks to seeing it in action.
Storage – Most farms are generally farther away from urbanized (or suburbanized) stores. Because produce deteriorates rather quickly farms would have to pick up compostable produce on a daily basis. Storage at the market is not an option because a large, rotting pile of fruit would attract all sorts of unwanted pests to the store. Daily pickup is difficult and would the extra monetary and green cost of the freight and labor make up for the produce that would be picked up? The logistics of the operation are more involved than one might initially think.
Recalls – Unfortunately, recalls due to contaminated fruits and vegetables do happen. Many of them happen after the produce has been in the store for some time. If the store composts melons, and those same melons are recalled two days later due to a possible salmonella contamination, then you have potentially deadly compost making its way around your local farms. I am neither an expert in food-borne illness nor composting, so I don’t know if there is any validity to this concern, but I do know it sounds scary. And that’s enough to put the issue on the back burner.
Bakery – Almost all old baked goods get donated to the local food bank which disperses it to not for profit agencies in the area. Every morning a big shopping cart of old muffins, donuts and bread makes it way to the back dock and every morning at 10AM a van rolls around and picks it up.
Meat and Seafood – Lately, within the past couple of months, they’ve been testing out freezing meats that have just passed sell by date and donating these to the local soup kitchens. Again, this is still in its infancy and some issues have arisen that have taken the logistics of this back to the drawing board. The main issue becomes, and always comes back too, safety. Just because a product makes it to its final consumer in a frozen state doesn’t mean its 100% safe. What happened to the product in the mean time? Traceability is of paramount importance until it gets to the store, but the cost involved with continuing that traceability until it reaches donations is economically unfeasible.
Grocery and Dairy – Unfortunately, for the same reasons Meat and Seafood can’t be donated, many refrigerated, expired dairy products don’t make the list. The good news is that very few items get thrown out. Longer shelf lives, higher demand and tight orders ensures that they only dairy products that really get thrown out are the damaged ones that aren’t safe for consumption anyways.
Grocery items are given to food banks. I’m sure some smaller markets donate directly. At our store, everything expired is packed and freighted to headquarters and they distribute the goods evenly among the communities that our supermarket are located in. The extra freight may seem wasteful but I am assuming they record their donations for tax deduction purposes.
They have different expiration dates for products which are regulated by FDA/FSSAI government agency. For example, Frozen Sweet Corn may be ok for one years past the date on the can whereas boxed pasta is good for six months past the date on the box. Goods and food require checking expiration dates to see what is still deemed safe and what isn’t.
So basically, if it’s safe it gets donated. If it’s not, it gets thrown out. Definitely some food for thought.
Why does Frozen cheese have an expiry date (shelf life)?
All food items tend to get bad from the time they are cooked or processed. Then comes your question that how these brands ‘Preserve’ their ready-to-cook or ready-to-eat dishes for months?
See…. long shelf life of these packed foods is made possible by several food preservation technologies…really advanced ones! But each of these have certain merits & demerits. I would share some of these techniques with you.
In this first technique, food is cooked and stored in multiple layers of pouches which are then ‘Sterilized’ resulting in removing bacteria that cause food decaying or poisoning. These pouches have a shelf life upto a year and you just need to heat the contents before serving.
The second technique involves adding oodles of ‘Oil’ and ‘Spices’ and keeping the water content as minimum as possible. You can relate it with the ‘Indian Pickling Technique’.
Plus…there are ‘Frozen Foods’ that need ‘Defrosting’ or ‘Thawing’ just before cooking.
Whatever, the techniques are, one thing is common in all…..They do have ‘Preservatives’ ! Definitely, it makes them unhealthy and after eating these meals there are probably more chances that you would feel ‘Bloated’.
Do nuclear weapons have a shelf-life?
Everything has a “shelf-life”.
There are numerous things on a nuclear device that will degrade over time, from the explosives, to electronics, to the nuclear fuel. Old explosives tend to get unreliable, and both the uranium and plutonium isotopes used for the fission reaction will decay over time (although over long enough times that it’s usually not anywhere near being the limiting factor*). The tritium in fusion devices, on the other hand, decays fast enough (half-life of about 12.3 years) that most such devices are designed to make that reasonably replaceable, and it gets done every few years.
Nuclear weapons are usually refurbished on a regular schedule, which can replace many components, and eventually they get retired, and the nuclear fuel is often recycled.
You couldn’t store a Pu-239-based device for more than a few thousand years, for example, since the half-life is only about 24,000 years.
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Great as an idea-likely unenforceable in practice, never mind eh?
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