Use by date ?

[longers]

edit: I'm fairly sure I won't be eating the Cocktail just wondering about it that's all.

I would have eaten the beans though, I'd still eat them even though they've been in the bin.

[hellymedic]

Properly bottled foods are unlikely to go 'off' in a harmful fashion. Oils may go rancid but that's about all. The bottling process, like canning should sterilise and seal the product.

[goatpebble]

Interesting thread. I bought some pancetta, neatly sealed in little packs. I put in in the fridge, and forgot about it.

It was opened six months later, well after the use by date. It smelled nice on opening, and so I had no qualms about eating it.

How do they pack this stuff? It really had stayed in perfect condition.

[Zoidburg]

Interesting thread. I bought some pancetta, neatly sealed in little packs. I put in in the fridge, and forgot about it.

It was opened six months later, well after the use by date. It smelled nice on opening, and so I had no qualms about eating it.

How do they pack this stuff? It really had stayed in perfect condition.

It's a cured meat surely not?

I do despair at sell by dates on cured and smoked sausages and meats, does a Chorizo turn to poison on the stroke of midnight?

 

[Bledlow]

I do despair at sell by dates on cured and smoked sausages and meats, does a Chorizo turn to poison on the stroke of midnight?

 

I remember when sell by dates were introduced on beer. I was in a pub where Worthington White Shield was being sold off cheap, & I asked why. When the publican told me it was past its sell by date, I immediately bought a round of it.  One of my better purchases.

[TimO]

A lot of these dates will be very conservative to allow for the sort of cockups in timing for delivery, storage, and the varying conditions which all of this can be done in, as MattH alluded to earlier in the thread

That probably means that for a lot of stuff you can happily eat it some time after it's best before/use by date has expired, but of course you don't know exactly how the food has been handled, so you could be unlucky, and eat something which is actually past it's actual safe to consume date.

Of course, people also vary in the ability to deal with bugs in the food.  No food is entirely 100% clear of nasties, but our bodies are pretty good at dealing with the bugs, and the poisons which they put in the food.  Some people are likely to be more prone to suffering from this (eg the young, the old, and the infirm), so presumably the dates also have to allow for this, and are specified in terms of those in our society who are most likely to suffer (obviously excluding people who have medical conditions which may make them unusually extremely sensitive).

I'm not sure that answers the original question, but four days over their date, at this time of year (when if left badly stored in the back of a truck, or at the supermarket, it won't have suffered as badly as it would have in the middle of the summer), I would have been inclined not to worry too much, so long as the method of cooking was going to ensure a high temperature throughout the meat.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I remember a BBC TV programme where they opened some tins dating back as far as 1914 and the contents were declared perfectly edible.

I'd be more worried about frozen food. It's very easy for them to get unfrozen at some stage - at least, it is in a country where power supply is irregular!

[Marco Stefano]

From RSSL's Food e-News this week:

"The Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention (CFI) has very recently released a report entitled “The Long-Term Health Outcomes of Selected Foodborne Pathogens”. This covers Campylobacter which is linked to Guillain-Barré Syndrome; Escherichia coli O157:H7 which may lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and the long-term impacts of E. coli infections; Listeria monocytogenes which causes premature death and brain infections; Salmonella and other foodborne pathogens which may lead to reactive arthritis (ReA) ; and Toxoplasma gondii which can cause mental retardation and have an impact on vision."
 
  II hate throwing food away too, but the hazards outweigh the risk, for me.

Chill-chain maintenance is carefully controlled and verified as it is integral to the calculation of shelf-life. Tinned food is another thing entirely, the heating process being designed to reduce numbers of Clostridium botulinum spores by 12 logs (i.e. >1,000,000,000,000 down to <1) - "commercial sterility". They can still spoil and 'blow', though if you open such a can you would be unlikely to eat it ... 

[hellymedic]

Clos botulinum got into some tinned fish in the early 1980s with fatal results.
Bug doesn't like acidic environments though, I believe, so fruity foods are less off a worry.