Does the date on a baby food pouch mean the food has to come off the shelf? It depends which of the two dates is printed there, and nothing on the front tells you which kind you’re holding. That distinction, and the condition attached to both, sits in Standard 1.2.5 — Information requirements: date marking of food for sale, a short instrument that runs to six sections.
What each date promises
Standard 1.2.5 defines a best-before date as “the date up to which the food for sale will remain fully marketable and will retain any specific qualities for which express or implied claims have been made,” conditional on the package staying intact during storage and being stored the way Standard 1.2.6 requires (1.2.5, clause 2). A use-by date is worded almost the same way, except for what happens at the far end of it: “the date after which it is estimated that the food for sale should not be consumed because of health or safety reasons,” under the identical two conditions (1.2.5, clause 2). Read side by side, the whole difference sits in one clause — a best-before date describes quality holding up, and a use-by date describes whether the food should still go anywhere near your baby’s mouth.
The Code enforces the use-by half directly, in the plainest sentence in the whole instrument: “A food must not be sold after its use-by date” is the entire text of clause 4. There’s no equivalent line anywhere in the Standard for a best-before date. A shop can keep selling it past that date, FSANZ’s guidance confirms, “provided the food is fit for human consumption”.
Which date a pack carries is not the Code’s call
Standard 1.2.5 prescribes the exact words that go next to each date, to the letter: Best Before beside one, Use By beside the other (1.2.5, clause 5(2)(a)). Anything else printed there isn’t compliant. What it never sets is which of the two a given food has to carry. Clause 3(1) requires a use-by date “if there is a use-by date for the food,” and that “if” is where the Standard stops helping you: nowhere in its six sections does it name a category of food and say this one needs a use-by. A use-by date is, by the Code’s own definition, an estimate (1.2.5, clause 2). The Standard does not say who makes that estimate, and it does not set a test or a method for arriving at it. What it does is require the label to carry the result, which leaves the number with whoever prints the label. Two lines end up printed on the same pack in the same typeface, under completely different regimes, and they are worth grading against each other. The wording is the stronger of the two by a distance: black-letter law, prescribed down to the character (1.2.5, clause 5(2)(a)). The number beside it is the weaker: an estimate the Code accepts without setting a method for it, and it answers to nobody but the company that made it (1.2.5, clause 2). You are reading both in the same typeface.
Why a pack can show only a month and a year
A date more than 3 months out only has to show month and year: the Standard’s own examples are Dec 2015 or 12 2015 (1.2.5, clause 5(4)(b)). Inside 3 months, the day has to be there too (1.2.5, clause 5(4)(a)). A pack showing only a month and a year is printing exactly what clause 5(4)(b) allows.
Two ways a pack can carry no date at all
A best-before date more than 2 years away doesn’t have to be printed at all (1.2.5, clause 3(2)) — FSANZ’s example is “foods that have a shelf life of two years or longer, e.g. some canned foods”. But that clause opens with “Unless the food is an infant formula product,” so a tin of formula never gets the carve-out, however long it genuinely keeps. The second carve-out is about the pack’s size: a “small package,” one with a surface area under 100 cm² (Standard 1.1.2), about the size of a drink coaster, only has to carry a use-by date if it has one at all (1.2.5, clause 3(3)). A pouch that size can lawfully print no best-before date whatsoever.
Whether the pouch in your hand clears that threshold is the one thing this post does not know. The Code draws the line at 100 cm² and stops there, and nothing published settles which everyday packs fall under it; you would have to put a ruler against the pack in front of you (1.2.5, clause 3(3)).
The other numbers stamped on the pack
A date mark is rarely the only thing printed in that corner, and the Standard says so itself. Clause 6 exists “to avoid doubt”: the prescribed date wording “does not prevent the addition of a packed-on date or a manufacturer’s or a packer’s code on the label on a package of food” (1.2.5, clause 6). So a run of digits beside Best Before may be a packing date or a batch code, and the Code gives it no prescribed form at all — only the date carrying Best Before or Use By in front of it has to follow clause 5.
The date describes an unopened pack
Both definitions carry the same two-part condition: the pack has to stay intact, and it has to be stored the way Standard 1.2.6 requires (1.2.5, clause 2). Standard 1.2.6 spells out what that requirement looks like in practice: if specific conditions are needed to keep the food going until its use-by or best-before date, the label has to carry a statement of those conditions (1.2.6, clause 2(a)). The date is the promise; the storage line is what has to be done to collect on it.
What a formula tin must say about the period after opening
Infant formula gets a rule of its own here. Standard 2.9.1 requires that the storage instructions on formula and follow-on formula labels “must cover the period after the package is opened,” and that’s the entire text of clause 18. The Code doesn’t set how many days or weeks that period runs. It only requires the tin to say, which is why the number you are looking for is on the tin rather than in the regulation. Preparation instructions are covered separately, in the same words-and-pictures form the Code requires elsewhere on the label: if a made-up bottle is going to be stored before use, the instructions must say it’s refrigerated and used within 24 hours, and that formula left in the bottle after a feed is discarded within 2 hours (2.9.1, clause 21(5)). Those two figures are what the Code requires the tin to print, rather than anything recommended here: check the tin in front of you for the number that applies to it.
So does the date still apply once the pouch is open?
No. The date on the front was answering a different question. Opening the pack ends the condition it was resting on (1.2.5, clause 2), and what covers the pouch in the fridge now is the pack’s own storage line (1.2.6, clause 2(a)), or on a formula tin, whatever it says about the period after opening (2.9.1, clause 18).
Worth knowing that the storage line is conditional too. Clause 2(a) requires it only where specific conditions are needed to get the food as far as its date, so a pack that needs none has to carry none, and the absence of a storage line is not an oversight.
General information, not medical advice. Chat with your GP or child health nurse.