Use-By vs Best-Before Dates: A UK Guide for Food Businesses
The difference is not cosmetic. A use-by date is a safety instruction — it is an offence to sell food after it has passed. A best-before date is a quality indication, and selling past it is not automatically unlawful. Getting the choice wrong on your own products is one of the easier ways for a small UK food business to end up with an unsafe label or an unnecessary write-off. This guide covers which foods take which date, how small producers actually determine shelf life, and why ambient, chilled and frozen storage give three different answers for the same recipe.
The legal difference in one paragraph
A use-by date is a food safety instruction. It goes on food that is microbiologically highly perishable and therefore liable to present an immediate danger to health after a short period. Food past its use-by date is deemed unsafe, and selling it, offering it for sale or using it as an ingredient is an offence. A best-before date is a quality indication: the date up to which the food can reasonably be expected to retain its specific properties if stored properly. Past that date the food may be tired, but it is not automatically unsafe, and selling it is not automatically unlawful.
Everything else follows from that split: one is about people getting ill, the other about a biscuit going soft.
Use-by: a safety instruction
Use-by dates belong on food where harmful bacteria can multiply to dangerous levels before the food looks, smells or tastes off. That combination — dangerous but not visibly spoiled — is why the date carries legal weight: a consumer cannot inspect their way to safety. Three practical consequences:
- Stock rotation is not optional. Past-date stock must be removed from sale, not discounted, and separated so it cannot be picked up in error.
- The date is a promise about storage too. A use-by date on a chilled product assumes the product has been held at the stated temperature throughout. Break the chain and the date no longer means what it says.
- Freezing changes the position. Food frozen before its use-by date can be kept, but should be frozen as soon as possible and used within 24 hours of defrosting.
Best-before: a quality indication
Best-before dates go on ambient, dried, canned, frozen and long-life goods — anything where the risk after the date is deterioration rather than illness. Flour loses its lift, crisps go soft, a chocolate bar blooms.
Selling food after its best-before date is not in itself an offence, provided it is still fit for human consumption and not misleadingly described; redistribution charities rely on this. But that is not the same as no responsibility: the general duty not to sell food that is unfit or misleadingly presented still applies, and eggs have their own rules requiring sale before the best-before date.
The wording is fixed, and it is not interchangeable. 'Use by' and 'best before' are defined terms. Do not invent alternatives such as 'sell by', 'display until' or 'enjoy by' as the legal date — those are internal stock-rotation markers at best, and printing one instead of the required declaration leaves you with no compliant date on the pack at all.
Which date does your product need?
The deciding question is whether the food could support the growth of harmful bacteria before it becomes obviously spoiled. If yes, use-by. If no, best-before. The table below covers the product types small UK producers ask about most often, but it is a starting point for your own assessment, not a substitute for one.
Two similar products can take different dates. A buttercream-topped sponge sold ambient is usually a best-before; the same sponge filled with fresh cream and held chilled is usually a use-by. The storage condition is doing the work.
Free PPDS label checklist — check what your label needs →How small producers work out shelf life
This is the part people find hardest, because no lookup table will do it for you. Determining shelf life is the food business operator's responsibility, and it has to rest on evidence about your product, made in your kitchen, in your packaging.
1. Supplier data
Start with what your suppliers already know. Specifications for bought-in components carry their own shelf lives and storage conditions, and your finished product can rarely outlive its shortest-lived component. If a filling has a five-day chilled life, the assembled product does not get seven.
2. Published guidance
The Food Standards Agency publishes guidance on shelf life and date marking, and trade bodies publish category guidance for bakery, dairy, meat and chilled foods. This is useful for establishing a defensible starting point and for understanding which hazards matter in your category. It is not a substitute for evidence about your specific product.
3. Shelf-life trials
For anything taking a use-by date, testing is the only sound basis: samples sent to a laboratory for microbiological analysis at intervals across the proposed life — day 0, mid-life, end of life and often beyond — alongside sensory assessment. Challenge testing, where a product is deliberately inoculated to see whether a pathogen could grow, is used where the risk warrants it. Run trials on product made by your normal process, in your normal packaging, at the temperature you will declare.
Whatever you conclude, write down how. A dated record of the reasoning, the results and the sign-off turns a number on a label into a documented decision, and it is what an environmental health officer will ask to see. Our guide to reviewing ingredient and shelf-life data covers how often to revisit it.
Storage conditions change everything
A shelf life is not a property of a recipe. It is a property of a recipe held under stated conditions. The same product will have three different lives ambient, chilled and frozen, and a figure derived for one tells you nothing reliable about the others.
- Ambient. Limited by moisture migration, oxidation, staling and mould. Long lives are common; the failure mode is quality.
- Chilled. Limited by pathogen growth at refrigeration temperature. Lives are short, the date is usually a use-by, and the declared temperature is part of the claim.
- Frozen. Microbial growth is arrested, so texture, freezer burn and oxidation set the limit. Best-before is usual, with defrosting instructions that matter as much as the date.
This is why a label must carry the storage conditions the date assumes. 'Best before 12 Aug' on a product that needs chilling is not a complete declaration.
What must appear alongside the date
The date rarely stands alone. Depending on the product you will also need:
- The date itself in the correct format — use-by as day and month; best-before as day, month and year, shortening to month and year, or year alone, as the length of life allows.
- Storage conditions required for the food to keep until that date, such as 'Keep refrigerated'.
- Conditions of use after opening where relevant, such as 'Once opened, consume within 3 days'.
- The rest of the mandatory particulars — name, ingredients list with allergens emphasised, quantity, and business name and address.
If you sell prepacked for direct sale food, the date sits alongside the full ingredients list and emphasised allergens required by Natasha's Law. Our complete guide to Natasha's Law sets out the full label content.
See the FoodCore label maker →How FoodCore handles dates — and what it does not do
On Essentials (£25/month inc. VAT, £250/year) and above, you set a shelf life in days on each recipe. Pick that recipe in the label designer and FoodCore fills the use-by or best-before date automatically: production date plus shelf life. Across a production run that removes a lot of mental arithmetic and one of the commoner sources of mislabelled stock.
Read this before you rely on the automatic date. FoodCore performs arithmetic on a figure you supply. It performs no validation of that figure: it cannot tell you whether your shelf life is safe, appropriate for the product, or supported by testing. The generated date remains editable before printing, and you must satisfy yourself that the date on the label is correct before the product is sold. Shelf life in FoodCore is modelled as ambient only — chilled and frozen storage are not modelled, so the figure must not be relied on for differently stored products. Determining and verifying shelf life is the food business operator's responsibility. A use-by date is a safety instruction under food law, and that responsibility does not transfer to software.
Used properly it is a consistency tool, not a decision-making one: you make the determination once, with evidence, and the software stops it being re-typed differently on every print run. Labels, recipes, ingredients, allergens and automatic date filling are all on Essentials; costing, stock and production runs sit on Growth (£40/month inc. VAT, £400/year), and food safety records, menus and multi-site on Core (£65/month inc. VAT, £650/year).
Start a 7-day free trial — no card required →Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a use-by and a best-before date?
A use-by date is about safety. It appears on foods that spoil quickly in a way that can make people ill, and food should not be eaten, cooked or frozen after it. A best-before date is about quality: after it, food may lose flavour, colour or texture but is generally still safe if stored correctly. The practical consequence is that use-by is enforceable in a way best-before is not.
Is it illegal to sell food after its use-by date?
Yes. Under UK food safety law, food that has passed its use-by date is deemed unsafe and must not be sold, offered for sale or used as an ingredient. That applies to retail, market stalls, wholesale and catering alike. Enforcement officers routinely check date coding and stock rotation during inspections, and selling past-date food is one of the more straightforward offences for them to evidence.
Can I sell or donate food after its best-before date?
Selling food after its best-before date is not in itself an offence, provided it is still fit for human consumption and not misleadingly described. Retailers and redistribution charities do this. You remain responsible for the food being safe and of the expected quality, and should make the position clear. Eggs are an exception, with their own rules on sale before the best-before date.
Which foods need a use-by date and which need a best-before?
Use-by is for foods that are microbiologically highly perishable and therefore likely to present an immediate danger to health after a short period: chilled ready meals, cooked meats, fresh fish, soft cheeses, prepared salads, chilled desserts, sandwiches. Best-before is for everything else: dried, canned, frozen, ambient and long-life goods, biscuits, preserves, flour and sugar. If you are unsure, the deciding question is whether the food could support the growth of harmful bacteria before it becomes obviously spoiled.
How do I work out the shelf life of my product?
There is no single formula. Small producers typically combine three sources: supplier data and specifications for bought-in components, published guidance from the Food Standards Agency and industry bodies for the product category, and shelf-life trials on the actual product, which may include microbiological testing by a laboratory and sensory assessment at intervals. For anything carrying a use-by date, testing is the only sound basis. Determining shelf life is the food business operator's responsibility, and it must be documented and reviewed when the recipe, process or packaging changes.
Do I have to show storage instructions next to the date?
Yes, where they matter. A date is meaningless without the conditions it assumes, so the label must carry any storage conditions needed for the food to keep until that date, and instructions for use after opening where relevant. In practice that means wording such as 'Keep refrigerated below 5°C' or 'Once opened, consume within 3 days' alongside the date. If your product needs chilling, saying so is part of the declaration.
Does FoodCore work out my shelf life for me?
No, and this matters. You set a shelf life in days on the recipe, and FoodCore's label designer fills in the use-by or best-before date by adding that figure to the production date. It is arithmetic on a number you supply. FoodCore performs no validation of that figure, cannot tell you whether it is safe, and models shelf life as ambient only, so it must not be relied on for chilled or frozen products. The date stays editable before printing, and you must satisfy yourself it is correct before the product is sold.
Further resources
FoodCore is kitchen management software built for small UK food businesses. We handle recipe costing, Natasha's Law labels, allergen matrices and order tracking.
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