A clip of beer was 1 day past the “best before” expiry, which implies a quality degradation not a safety matter. The grocer refused to sell it to me and said she had to put it in the back room. So I’m wondering, what’s the law on this, considering the EU has banned food waste?
I might assume the “consume before” dates on highly perishable food might be more controlled than quality dates on things like beer and sauces. I wonder if the grocer was treating all dates the same, and whether the store policy is equally simple.
What do grocers do with expired food in Belgium?
Note that in some countries it’s legal to sell expired food, so the answer isn’t necessarily obvious.
According to this page, the rule in Belgium depends on whether the “best by date” is a DDM (best by) or DLC (use until). If the date is a DLC, then they can’t legally sell it after that date.
DLC products are specifically listed as being refrigerated, so if the beer isn’t refrigerated I would assume its date would be a DDM.
The only reason beer is ever refrigerated is to sell it to people who want to drink it cold right away after purchase. The dates are always /best before/ dates on beer.
So IIUC, the grocer could have legally sold me the beer. In principle, a grocer could care about quality and decide not to sell anything past the /best before/ date… Though I am skeptical that that would happen. The impression I got was that the staff at the grocery store did not even think about what kind of date it was… just saw the date had passed and thus would not sell it.
So I have to wonder what happened to the clip of beer. The sensible thing for them to do is to put a -50% sticker on it, as they do with other beers that are just slow to move. I hope they did not pour it down a drain.