Antony’s Personal Opinion

Today I bought a 1-liter box of orange juice in a big supermarket. When I buy a food product, usually I check the expired date. I don’t what was wrong with me this morning. I didn’t check the expired date of my orange juice. Guess what…. when I arrived at home and check the date, it is written “05-Sep-05″. So the product has been expired for more than 4 months already. Unbelievable…. isn’t it?

Can you imagine that? A very big supermarket in Canada sells expired products. What would happen if the person who bought it didn’t check the expired date?

Anyway, since my first day in Canada, I have been a little bit frustrated with “expired date”. I have visited many supermarkets in Vancouver, Canada, and I have seen many food products that don’t have expired date. Yeah, I am not kidding…. Sometimes, I have to spend a couple of minutes, looking for “Best before…” sign. In some cases, I simply couldn’t find the expired date. There are two possibilities when I am stuck in this situation: 1) trust the supermarket that they won’t sell expired products; or 2) don’t buy the product.

The following picture shows a food product that don’t have expired date. It is a pork luncheon meat sold at a supermarket in Vancouver, Canada. Can you help me finding the expired date?

I am very interested to know, what the policy of Canadian government regarding of “expired date” is. Do they require all food products to have expired date? I don’t believe if a country like Canada doesn’t require expired date on every food products.

Update (30-Jan-06): Yesterday, I would like to buy a cough medicine (I’ve been having cough since three days ago). Guess what… I went to a big pharmacy and they sold expired cough medicine (the expiry date was 2005). Interesting, huh? Even a big pharmacy sell expired medicine. What happen if the buyer don’t check the date? I am not going to publish the name of the pharmacy, but they are one of the big players in Vancouver, Canada.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 15th, 2006 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Life in Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.