Import & compliance
How Do Best-Before and Expiry Dates Differ in Canada?
In Canada, a best-before date is a quality marker — it estimates how long a food is expected to keep its full flavour, texture and nutritional value if stored properly and unopened. An expiry date is a safety marker required only on a short list of foods, such as infant formula and meal-replacement products, where nutrient content or safety genuinely changes after that date — most pantry goods, including spices, olives, preserves and sweets, carry only a best-before date and no expiry date at all. Selling or serving food past its best-before date is legal in Canada, provided it's still safe and its condition is accurately represented; expiry dates, by contrast, mark a real cutoff for the narrow category of products that carry them.
This is general guidance, not legal advice — CFIA's own labelling requirements are the authoritative source for what a specific date means on a specific product.
Best-before: about quality, not a safety cliff
A best-before date estimates how long an unopened product, stored the way its label recommends, will hold its expected quality — taste, texture, aroma, nutrient levels. It isn't a countdown to spoilage on a fixed day, and a product past its best-before date isn't automatically unsafe; it may simply have started to lose some of its peak flavour or texture. CFIA requires best-before dates on foods with a durable shelf life of 90 days or less measured from packaging — sometimes called the '90-day rule' — while foods that keep longer than 90 days aren't required to carry one at all (CFIA — date labelling).
Expiry dates apply to a short, specific list of products
Expiry dates are legally required only on foods where CFIA has determined that nutrient content or safety can genuinely change by a specific date — infant formula, meal-replacement and nutritional-supplement products, and a handful of other regulated categories. None of the products in a typical Levantine pantry — spices, olives, preserves, sweets — fall into that expiry-date category; they carry a best-before date only, which is a quality estimate rather than a safety cutoff.
Can a store legally sell food past its best-before date?
Yes, provided the product remains safe to eat and its condition isn't misrepresented — Canadian rules don't require pulling a product from sale the day its best-before date passes, unlike an expiry date on a regulated product, which does mark a real limit. Retailers make their own judgment calls about when a past-best-before item no longer meets their quality bar, but that's a business decision layered on top of the legal minimum, not a food-safety requirement in itself.
Do spices expire, and is "expired" unsafe? goes further into what actually happens to one specific pantry category — spices — once that date passes, which is a useful companion read to this more general labelling explainer.
Related questions
Does every packaged food need a best-before date?
No — only products with a durable life of 90 days or less from the day they're packaged are required to carry one; longer-life shelf-stable goods aren't required to show a best-before date at all.
Is an expired product automatically unsafe to eat?
Not necessarily for best-before dates, which are quality markers. Expiry dates, on the narrow list of products that carry them, are a different, safety-relevant cutoff — treat those two labels differently.
Where can I check the exact rules for a specific product?
CFIA's date-labelling guidance is the authoritative source, and it's worth confirming directly for any product where the distinction matters to your business — this page is general guidance, not legal advice.