For those readers who have questions or comments, please comment and ask and I will find the answer for you.
Today, products have some coding on them. Whether it is food or drugs or other manufactured items, some coding is required and some is used for internal tracking by the manufacturer.
On food products, the Bioterrorism Act required that manufacturers be able to track forward one step in the process and one back. In meaning, this is knowing where your ingredients came from and how much and what lot codes and knowing where you sent your products by name and lot number and codes. It doesn't however dictate that code, so that each manufacturer has their own. Normally, the code identifies a product packaged on a certain shift, certain machine, and certain amount.
The code that pertains to a date, let's the manufacturer and sometimes the consumer know what date it was produced or should be purchased by or used by.
The open dating policy is an actual month, day, year. If it states purchase by, then it should be useable for some period of time, after this. The company that manufactures the product should be able to tell you how long it should last past sell by date. Sell by date helps for rotation of product and controls the liability of the manufacturer and retailer. For example: if you purchase milk that shows a sell by date of Nov. 14, 2008 then it should last 3 to 5 days past that point.
Use by date should be the last day that you use a product. Could it still be useable? Yes of course, however the effectiveness and quality of the product may be diminished. It is the last day of guarantee by the manufacturer or retailer. If it is a product that you are going to consume why take the chance.
Sometimes dating is done by Julian date. This would be day of the year with January 1 being day 001 and December 31st day 365. You could also see a year indicated, generally the last two numbers of the year.
Please let me know if you have specific code dating issues and I will search them for you.
Rudy
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment