“On grocery store shelves today, there are more than 50 differently phrased date labels on packaged food,” the law’s author Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin said, according to Fox 40. “Some phrases are used to communicate peak freshness of a product or when a product is no longer safe to eat. Others, like ‘sell by,’ are used only to inform stock rotation in stores but mislead some consumers into thinking the product is no longer safe to eat.”

Products are prohibited from displaying a “sell by” date, which Irwin said leads to “consumer confusion.”

Food & Wine clarifies that “There aren’t any federal requirements for the language on food date labels, outside of baby formula. This has produced a wide range of words and phrases that are employed, including options like ‘display until,’ ‘freshest by,’ or ‘best before.’ Without consistent standards, customers are often confused by what these labels actually mean (so much so that we’ve even published a guide to interpreting them), and end up throwing out or not purchasing food that is perfectly fine to eat.”

The California law requires that all packaged foods use a uniform labeling system by manufacturers to indicate their freshness by July 1, 2026. Manufacturers must use the phrase “best if used by” to inform peak quality and “use by” to communicate product safety.