Milk Sold By UK Supermarket Tesco Was Not Fit For Human Consumption Customers Urged to Check Dates

Feb. 15, 2011 - PRLog -- One such story is that of a Peterborough woman who purchase milk on her local Tesco store, earlier today, 3 weeks after was considered fit for human consumption according to the 'best before' date.

The lady, has yet to speak to the store manager but on her initial contact with the store and was offered her money back and the same again as a goodwill gesture - the princely sum of £3.  

Now, people say England is far too overzealous health and safety laws, rules and regulations, so how can it be a supermarket chain like Tesco can be flouting food storage and hygiene laws. That milk should not have even been on the premises, never mind for sale on the shelf and now in the home of an unsuspecting customer!

Management and supervision of stock rotation, storage and cleaning has been clearly lacking at the Tesco store which sold the 3 week out of date milk. No doubt we will hear more in the coming days as Tesco explain how this happened in one of its stores.

I for one will check packing best before dates more carefully from now on! Hearing this story has seen me brush up on packaging terminology too!

What Package Terms Mean:

“Sell By” – This is really meant to be used as guidance for the store or market to direct them when to remove items from the shelf. Lots of shelf-stable products, like canned fruits and vegetables, have sell-by dates and you really shouldn’t purchase these products after their respective dates.

“Best If Used By” or “Best Before” – This term refers to the flavor or quality of foods and in most cases, products will be safe for some length of time after their best-before dates. Packaged baked goods, for instance, often use a best-before date to indicate when the product will start to taste stale.

“Use By” – Products display a “use by” date as more of an expiration date. This should be treated as a slightly less formal expiration date and is also the last date that manufacturers are going to vouch for a product’s quality.

“Expiration Date” – It is safer to discard products after their expiration date. While other terms have some ambiguity, treat this one as what it says.

Read more:  bit.ly/RiskToHealthFromOutOfDateMilk  Healthline.com - Connect to Better Health

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