To Combat Food Waste, Japan Will Raise Food Expiration Limits

For a culture that prides itself on not being wasteful, Japan wastes a lot of food. A new government recommendation seeks to address that.

Japan has had a problem with food waste for a while. However, it’s also one of the countries that’s most aggressively tackled the problem. Now, Japan’s government has announced it’ll take the next step in its battle against waste by changing its approach to food expiration dates.

Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency (CAA), as reported by Asahi Shimbun, is setting new criteria for both expiry dates (消費期限; shouhi kigen), the date before which food can be safely consumed; and freshness dates (賞味期限), the date for eating the food at peak flavor.

The CAA will specify that manufacturers should use a safety coefficient closer to 1 in their freshness and expiration dating tests, which will lengthen the expiry date on most current packaging. The safety coefficient provides a safety buffer by shortening a product’s measured expiration date. For example, if a product has a 10-day shelf life, a safety coefficient of 0.7 means the expiration date is seven days.

Additionally, the government will specify that businesses that use freshness dates make clear what the date means so that consumers know food is still safe to consume past that date. It’s…