Could scrapping best-before dates reduce food waste? Committee says government should look at impacts

In a bid to reduce food waste, a parliamentary committee is recommending the federal government look into the impacts of eliminating “best-before” dates on groceries.

The House of Commons agriculture committee — which undertook a four-month look at rising food prices in Canada and how to address the issue — is recommending the government work with the provinces and territories to investigate the impacts of scrapping best-before dates.

The suggestion is one of 13 recommendations in a new non-binding report by the committee, which comes amid heightened political attention on the rising cost of groceries. Food prices have been increasing at their fastest rate in more than 40 years.

Lori Nikkel, the CEO of Second Harvest Canada, said getting rid of best-before dates on groceries is one of her three top recommendations for what the government could do to prevent food waste.

“Best-before dates are wildly misunderstood. They are not expiry dates,” Nikkel told the committee in March. “They refer to a product’s peak freshness. While Canadians struggle to put food on the table, they are also convinced that best-before dates are about safety and will throw away perfectly good food to protect themselves and their families.”

“Eliminating best-before dates would prevent safe, consumable food from being thrown out and save Canadians money on their grocery bills,” she added.

Nikkel said some other countries have already started experimenting with eliminating best-before dates, including the U.K. and Australia.

“Of course, (the Canadian Food Inspection Agency) has to be involved to make sure that we're not ever making any food unsafe, but when you see a best-before date on water, coffee or a can that's good for two years, people think that's garbage, and they throw it away,” she said. “They could be eating it.”

Nikkel also told the committee she’d recommend bringing back a surplus food rescue program and emergency food security funding “while we work on longer-term, systemic policies.”

“There has to be something in between,” she said. “We’re triaging; all these charities are triaging.”

A study last summer from researchers at Dalhousie University, in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute, found most Canadians prefer to keep the best-before dates, even if getting rid of them could spell a reduction in food waste, while only 27 per cent of respondents said they agreed with doing away with the labels.

The agriculture committee report also recommends introducing a windfall tax on large grocery chains if the Competition Bureau finds the government should, which the independent agency did conclude in its recently published report.

The agriculture committee heard form 58 witnesses on the subject of rising food costs in Canada, over a four-month period, ahead of the release of its non-binding report.

With files from CTVNews.ca’s Noushin Ziafati and Melissa Lopez-Martinez