Giving Compass' Take:
- Elena Seeley reports on how the USDA and the FDA are seeking information to inform the nation's standardized food date labeling practices.
- How can donors help prevent food waste through improving standardized food date labeling practices?
- Learn more about key issues in food and nutrition and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on food equity in your area.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently released a joint Request for Information (RFI) to inform the country’s approach to standardized food date labeling. To help eaters voice their support for standardized labels that can decrease food waste, the Zero Food Waste Coalition (ZFWC) published a new toolkit.
The RFI comes from the USDA’S Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the FDA. The agencies are seeking responses by March 5th, 2025 to better understand barriers to standardizing date labeling, research on consumer perceptions of date labels, and the impact date labels can have on food loss and waste and on food donation.
The Coalition’s toolkit helps eaters navigate the comment process. It includes comment templates for individuals, organizations, and industry members. It also contains instructions to submit comments along with sample copy to amplify the RFI through social media and newsletters.
The agencies pose 13 questions and allow commenters to respond to as many as they prefer. ZFWC encourages everyone to provide any data, studies, or other evidence that supports their response.
“Data from ReFED has found that standardizing date labels would have a net financial benefit of US$3.8 billion per year, the large majority of which would be savings to consumers,” Emily Broad Leib, Director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, tells Food Tank. “It is exciting to see USDA and FDA working together to gather information and identify steps for how they can improve the situation.”
WWF reports that food loss and waste contributes to 8-10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Confusion over date labels accounts for around 7 percent of consumer food waste in the United States, according to ReFED.
In 2024, California became the first state in the country to standardize food date labels and ban “sell by” dates to cut food waste, but legislation at the federal level has lagged.
Read the full article about standardized food date labeling by Elena Seeley at Food Tank.