I guess every european country has had one – a meat scandal. My guess would be that one investigating tv show came up with the idea to check the quality of the meat in the supermarkets and then it spread to all other countries after that.
In Sweden it was the public service show “uppdrag granskning” who investigated a couple of supermarkets and found proof that a number of the supermarkets repacked meat. When the expire date was over they just repacked the meat. When it comes to minced meat they just grind (?) it again and repack it. In Germany I just saw a piece in the show extra in the channel rtl where they rapported about the fact that they discovered the meat scandal a couple of years ago by putting pieces of spaghetti in meat that would expire the next day and then they went to the supermarket the day after and checked the new packages of meat – with new expire dates – and found the spaghetti pieces in the meat again!
ergo: the meat has just been repacked or relabled.
No good. No good.
And everyone is very appalled and it’s called a scandal and yadayada.
Still – from what I’ve heard – no one has gotten sick from eating this meat.
So isn’t it all a tiny, tiny bit stupid?
I, for one feel a bit patronized when there are rules either set from the supermarket or from the eu or the health department, that they can’t even put the meat or milk or cheese with an expired date on the shelf – in Sweden it’s not called expired – it’s called best before. The meat is best before this date. But it’s not non edible. Why can’t they just lower the price, say, if we get rid of it then we’ll be happy, then at home you can decide on your own if it’s edible or not. The milk is not bad before it smells bad. Usually that is about four days after the date shown on the package – especially if it’s not opened yet. Meat you can still eat if the color is ok and it still smells fine. Still you don’t find any food in the supermarket where the best before date has passed.
So where do all these food go?
I think it’s just thrown away. I think it’s just adding to the food mountains in the west world. We throw away huge amounts of edible food every day.
So isn’t it all a tiny, tiny bit stupid?
When I was a kid it was still ok to sell food that was expired. My father came home every second day with old milk, old salami, old bread and told us, eat, it was cheap but it will only stay good as long as it haven’t turned bad. So I got an expert on determining what was good and what was bad. Newsflash! if you buy minced meat that has expired by a day but still looks and smells ok and you don’t want to eat it like the same day or the next day – freeze it and you can use it next week.
Now I’m a grown up and I think the regulations should treat me like one too. It’s important to say, perhaps the baking soda will loose some of it’s power after this date or perhaps the milk won’t taste just as fresh as the new new one after it’s “expiration date” but it isn’t bad yet, for a discount you can buy it, you just won’t be able to keep it at home as many days as otherwise and then when it smells bad you have to throw it away.
I don’t support the fact that the supermarkets fooled us buyers. I don’t think that anyone should trick anyone ever. But I can see flaws in the system and the regulations and see why it came to the tricking.
Tags: expired, expired date, food, garbage mountains, meat, meat scandals, milk
