Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address this motion. I support it in principle, but I do have some concerns about the intent and the interpretation of the dates.
The motion talks about a best-before date in consumption of food products and beverages and also an expiry date. This is an excellent approach because consumers should have a better understanding of the quality both in freshness and nutrition of the product that they are getting.
However I wonder about the actual interpretation of the dates. In the presentation of the hon. member for Winnipeg North on April 12, reference was made to the expiry date being the date of the shelf life of the product in the shop. Further in the same presentation a reference was made to products that have or are considered to have a shelf life of 90 days or less having a best-before date on them. As there is one date on the package this could be confusing to consumers, are they actually looking at an expiry date or best-before or a "what is the difference" kind of thing, as the situation stands now.
Food and beverages are perishable products and there definitely is a time factor involved as to the quality of the item. We need to identify that time factor in much more explicit terms through our dates, because there really is not any other way of establishing it that I can see.
If we were to think of the expiry date as it is now as the shelf life date, we would be indicating to the proprietors of shops that the product must be sold prior to that date, and if not it comes off the shelf. On the other hand, if we think of the expiry date as the date on which the food product must be consumed, then we are setting up a situation concerning the date on which that product may get purchased. What happens to it when we get it home? Unless we request the manufacturer to start putting things on such as "must be refrigerated when open" or various other kinds of instructions for us, we need to have some sort of sense of what that date means.
Does the expiry date mean shelf life in a shop, does the expiry date mean as long as the product stays in the package that it was originally packaged in but once opened the situation is different, or does the expiry date mean the date the product is actually consumed?
Following that same kind of argument, if you look at the time of deterioration of a product being from the time it is packaged to the time it is consumed, then you can run into standards or criteria. Probably debates will arise out of what would constitute a valid expiry date.
If we see a product that has the two dates on it and the expiry date indicates the shelf life date then the owner of a shop must sell it before that date or take it off the shelf. Then the best-before date would be slotted in there as an earlier time.
Are we actually looking at two different situations now which could create a marketing system? For example, fresh bread and day old bread would be sold at a certain price to the best-before date and then at a different price from that date to the expiry date. The other thing that would happen from a marketing point of view would be to get into debates again as to what really is the best-before date and what is the criteria.
The other thing that comes to mind on these dates is this. If the expiry date is not the shelf life date but the actual consumption date, then we are getting into a situation where there would be different criteria applicable to different types of food products. All these would have to be listed on the packaging to tell us how to store it once it is opened.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North made reference to a tin of tomato sauce, I believe it was, that was put into the frig. Once it was opened the expiry date on that tin of tomato sauce was irrelevant. The sauce would be no good within three or four days. I believe the expiry date was longer, a year and a half or something like that.
We are dealing with two different sorts of things here that have to be clearly addressed in this bill. What does the expiry date actually mean? Is it the shelf life in the shop, or is it the time that the product must be consumed? RIf it is the shelf life in the shop and we slot it in between packaging and the expiry date on the shelf life of best-before we may be running the possibility of setting up a marketing situation.
The other possible ramification that comes to mind in relation to this approach to the dates would be the guarantee. I would think by having the expiry date, the shelf life and the best-before date spotted somewhere in between, we are actually asking manufacturers to guarantee that their product, if the packaging remains unchanged, will be the quality on the best-before day that it was on the packaging day. After that there would be a gradual deterioration occurring. It is still safe to consume between best-before and expiry and can be sold.
Those are some of the concerns I have in relation to the actual dates. I think we have to clarify them very specifically for the public. As it is now, I can go and look at a date on a particular product-