Starting July 1, California will strip "sell by" dates from the packaging of most grocery store foods, making the state the first in the nation to outlaw the familiar label and replace it with a rigid, two-phrase system that food makers, retailers, and shoppers will have no choice but to follow.
The change comes courtesy of Assembly Bill 660, which bans consumer-facing "sell by" dates and replaces the patchwork of label language with just two approved phrases: "BEST if Used by" and "USE by." Smaller packages and certain beverages may use the abbreviations "BB" and "UB." Everything else, "freshest by," "expires on," and the rest of the more than 50 date-related terms that industry experts say currently circulate nationwide, is gone, at least in California.
The mandate applies to foods manufactured on or after July 1, 2026. Companies that keep printing consumer-facing "sell by" dates on products made after that cutoff will not be allowed to sell them in the state, as the New York Post reported. Failure to comply could expose businesses to penalties or block their products from California's massive consumer market entirely.
The law creates a statewide standard for food date labels. Under the old system, if you could call it a system, there was no comprehensive federal standard governing most food date labels. Manufacturers chose their own wording, their own formatting, and their own logic. The result was a mess of competing phrases that meant different things to different people, and often meant nothing at all in terms of food safety.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture has argued that "sell by" labels were originally intended to help retailers manage stock rotation, not to tell shoppers when food becomes unsafe to eat. The agency's position is that removing the phrase will reduce confusion and prevent usable food from ending up in landfills.
Coded dates used internally for inventory tracking remain permitted under the law. The ban targets only consumer-facing language, what you see on the shelf, not what a warehouse manager scans on a loading dock.
Consumer advocates and food waste groups have welcomed the change. Their argument is straightforward: shoppers routinely mistake quality dates for expiration dates, toss perfectly edible food, and drive up both household costs and landfill volume in the process.
There is something to that. Anyone who has watched a family member throw out a sealed jar of salsa because the "sell by" date passed two days ago understands the impulse. And the lack of a federal standard has made the problem worse, not better.
But the question California never seems to ask is whether a top-down state mandate is the right tool for a problem that consumer education and voluntary industry standards could address. The grocery industry is already navigating major headwinds, from shifting shopper habits squeezing profits at chains like Albertsons to rising input costs across the supply chain. Layering another compliance burden on manufacturers and retailers is the Sacramento reflex, not a measured solution.
Food makers, processors, and retailers have spent months updating packaging ahead of the deadline to ensure products shipped into California comply with state requirements. That means redesigning labels, running new print runs, and in many cases maintaining separate packaging for California and the rest of the country. None of that is free.
The cost question is one AB 660's backers prefer to skip past. When a national brand has to create California-specific packaging, or reformulate its labeling nationwide to avoid the hassle, someone absorbs the expense. Usually it is the consumer, through incrementally higher prices, or the small producer, who lacks the scale to split packaging runs efficiently.
California's grocery landscape is already under pressure. Major chains are closing locations and shedding workers in other states, and the regulatory environment in California has long been cited by industry groups as a reason companies think twice before expanding there.
The state's track record of passing mandates and letting businesses figure out the logistics is well established. Whether it is cities pushing retail mandates on self-checkout operations or the state legislature rewriting labeling rules, the pattern is the same: Sacramento decides, and the private sector scrambles.
One detail worth noting: there is currently no comprehensive federal standard governing most food date labels. That vacuum is part of what allowed the proliferation of more than 50 different terms in the first place. Congress has not acted, and the FDA has offered guidance but not binding rules for most products.
California is filling that gap on its own terms. Whether other states follow remains an open question. But because California's consumer market is so large, national manufacturers may simply adopt the state's two-phrase system everywhere rather than maintain dual labeling. That would make AB 660 a de facto national standard, imposed not by Congress, but by one state's legislature.
This is the California effect in action. The state's sheer market size gives its regulations outsized influence. It happened with auto emissions. It happened with privacy law. Now it may happen with the date on your yogurt.
Meanwhile, grocery chains that are actually growing, like Trader Joe's, which recently confirmed 25 new stores across 14 states, will have to navigate this new layer of compliance alongside every other operational challenge the industry faces.
Several important questions about AB 660 remain unresolved. The specific penalty amounts for non-compliant businesses have not been publicly detailed. The enforcement agency has not been clearly identified. The bill's author and the date it was signed into law are not widely reported. And it is unclear whether the law covers every food category or carves out specific exemptions beyond the abbreviated labeling allowed for smaller packages and certain beverages.
Perhaps most notably, no organized industry opposition has surfaced in public reporting, which may say less about the law's merits than about the political climate in Sacramento, where opposing a measure framed as "reducing food waste" carries obvious risks.
None of this means the underlying goal is wrong. Clearer labels are a reasonable aim. But California has a habit of pursuing reasonable aims through heavy-handed mandates, then acting surprised when the costs land on the people the law was supposed to help.
Grocers in states like Texas, where chains like H-E-B keep expanding without Sacramento-style interference, might have a different view of how to serve customers well.
AB 660 is not an isolated event. It fits neatly into California's broader approach to governance: identify a real problem, skip the voluntary and educational options, and go straight to a statewide mandate with compliance deadlines and enforcement teeth. The result is a regulatory environment that grows denser every year, raising the cost of doing business in a state that already leads the nation in regulatory burden.
The "sell by" date on your milk carton was never a safety warning. It was a stock-management tool that consumers misread for decades. Fixing that confusion is sensible. Fixing it by banning language and threatening penalties is the California way.
Whether the rest of the country follows Sacramento's lead or finds a lighter path to the same goal will tell you a lot about which model of governance Americans actually prefer.