California bans 'sell by' labels, hoping to cut food waste

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/us/california-food-labels-sell-by.html

38 56 18 days ago

I'm curious why food producers didn't do this on their own, since no one likes "sell by" anyway? Or was there an existing regulation that got changed?

In any case I think the new way is better.

sega_sai2• 18 days ago

Presumably food producers benefit if people throw things out earlier, as they will buy more ?

m4ck_2• 18 days ago

I'm pretty sure food producers are the ones putting the "sell by" labels on stuff, with the hope that people will needlessly throw away food and buy more because of that label.

skybrian2• 18 days ago

They don't want grocery stores to carry product that's too old because customers will try it and decide they don't like it, not realizing that it's old. And a grocery store worker won't know when to get rid of it unless someone tells them.

And from a grocery store's point of view, product that's on the shelf too long isn't selling. It's taking up space that could be used for something else.

Cider99864• 18 days ago

With 395,608 regulatory restrictions, California is the most heavily regulated state in the nation, according to the report. On average, states have 135,000 regulatory restrictions in administrative rules, with California's regulations more than doubling the national average.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-11-03/...

I wonder how many they've added in 5 years. Do all these laws improve peoples lives?

tikhonj• 18 days ago

Regulations aren't fungible, so this is not a particularly meaningful perspective.

mc32• 18 days ago

I hope they refactor and harmonize them at some point to reduce duplication, contradiction as well as proliferation.

vrganj• 18 days ago

All of them? No. Some of them? Yes.

Some examples:

* ARL / Automatic Renewal Law: If a company allows you to sign up for a subscription online, they also must provide an immediate, straightforward way to cancel it online.

* SB 478: No bullshit junk fees tacked on to prices. Any price displayed, be it for concerts, hotels, or whatever else, must be the full, out-the-door price.

* SB 244: Right to Repair: Electronics and appliance manufacturers must make diagnostic tools, manuals etc available for at least 7 years after manufacture.

WaxProlix• 18 days ago

Does SB478 apply to car dealerships? That would be a huge boon to consumers on its own.

m4ck_2• 18 days ago

Well despite all that regulation, they're an economic powerhouse, they must be doing something right. CA is far from perfect but at least they occasionally aspire to do something for the benefit of their citizens - not something I can say for my 'least regulated' state that mostly just saps money from the federal government.

lostmsu• 18 days ago

they're an economic powerhouse

Could be inertia.

Whoppertime• 18 days ago

Despite all their problems, Detroit was an economic powerhouse. Motor city was a world class city, and they bid to host the Olympics eight times between 1944 and 1972. Detroit was far from perfect, but it seems like eventually their bad choices caught up with them. Detroit is no longer the world class city or economic powerhouse it once was.

solenoid09374• 18 days ago

N=1 but I make a good amount of money and left California for a zero tax state.

I feel like the quality of life is similar between the two. I don't feel like I was getting anything for the 13%+ extra taxes I was paying in California.

Nearly every California program has a huge amount of wastage. Take:

- High speed rail - 10x the cost of comparable European programs, still haven't built anything. Deadlocked by regulation, lawsuits, and poor planning.

- Or all the fraud in the hospice program, unchecked for years until some YouTuber just... went up to one and made a video.

- Or spending over $1M/homeless on housing the homeless and not being able to do so.

California is a lot of talk (regulations, state programs, taxes) coupled with extremely poor execution.

roenxi• 18 days ago

They're sitting at the centre of a web of software services that coordinate some unreasonable amount of the internet. They've definitely done something right, California might be hosting one of the most impressive economic clusters outside of China.

But that doesn't tell us much about the relationship between that thing and their regulations. The regulations might be supporting the thing, or the thing might be so successful that the damage being done by the regulations becomes tolerable. It's entirely plausible that if other states attempted that level of regulation they'd crumple like tissue paper because they don't have the economic power of California's IT sector to balance out the excess demands being placed on businesses.

matwood2• 18 days ago

Because of the power CA has, many of the regulations they pass around health and safety end up benefiting other states because it's cheaper to simply implement it nationwide.

rconti• 18 days ago

Is there a reason to think these should or should not scale with size of population?

tzs2• 18 days ago

At first you might think "How the heck can a state have so many regulations!?". Even the ~40000 regulations of the states with the least regulations might seem like a lot. How the heck are people supposed to be able to keep track of all those regulations so they can avoid violating them?

But if you look closer there is a hint to what is going on. According to the US News article these are the 10 most regulated states: California, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Massachusetts, Louisiana.

These are the 10 least regulated: South Carolina, Michigan, Wyoming, Kansas, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho.

Note: the US News article says they had to omit some states due to limited availability of data. Also that list is from 6 years ago. I found a later list without those omissions.

It is mostly the same, with the addition of some of the states the US News list had to skip, and the order is quite a different in the two bottom 10 lists.

Combining the lists these are the most regulated states (in alphabetical order): California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.

These are the least regulated: Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming.

One thing that stands out about the first list is that most of them are major players in a variety of major industries. The second list doesn't seem to be nearly as diversified.

I bet if you dove into the details of regulations this would be a big factor. The top list has more regulations simply because they have more to regulate. In any given field they don't necessarily have more regulations than other states, but they have more fields that are big enough to need regulation. More diversity also means more conflict between different industries which will tend to increase the need for regulation.

A key aspect of this, and why we aren't overwhelmed with just keeping up with regulations, is it is the breadth of the regulatory systems that leads to the high counts. not the depth. You only have to deal with a few branches in this wide tree.

For example the US News article says that the most regulated industry is administrative and support services, such as unemployment services, collection agencies, and call centers. All of us not involved in such services can pretty much ignore that big chunk of regulation.

There is a similar thing with the federal tax code. The Internal Revenue Code is around 7000 pages, and the Federal Tax Regulations are another ~70000 pages. But a lot of that is because of the breadth of the US economy, and another contributor to the size is that the government uses per industry tax incentives and penalties as a way to encourage or discourage things that they want to influence. The net result is the tax code and regulations are full of things that 99% of taxpayers (individual and business) can completely ignore.

randycupertino• 18 days ago

Do all these laws improve peoples lives?

The salary requirement for job postings has been AWESOME. Saves so much time and you can see if your company is paying market rates, realize if you are underpaid etc. Definitely made my life better. Other states are following suit! Employers hate it, haha. California, Colorado, NY, Illinois, Washington, Maryland, Minnesota and Hawaii all have this law now.

Cider99864• 17 days ago

Glad to hear it.

Another common-sense law I want is a holiday for elections so that more people can vote.

irishcoffee• 18 days ago

It’s be pretty cool if they figured out their water problem instead of passing all these nebulous laws that don’t push the needle any.

lokar2• 18 days ago

The only water problems are for farmers growing in a semi-arid valley. California has droughts, not water shortages.

EgregiousCube• 18 days ago

Not the /only/ water problems... https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/conservation/regs/water_effic...

yieldcrv• 18 days ago

can’t wait for a new Regulatory Liability fee to be added to checks here

sega_sai2• 18 days ago

In the end, standardization of this type of things can only be good even if the effect on waste is small. There is no need to create additional ways to confuse people.

skybrian2• 18 days ago

Experts say the term “sell by” is generally for retailers to know when to rotate inventory, compared with labels like “best if used by” and “use by,” which indicate quality.

...

Under the state’s bill, “sell by” dates can still be included on products as long as they are “coded” — information that is aimed at retailers rather than consumers.

This is about obfuscating "sell by" dates so customers don't get confused. They might not necessarily add another date you can read easily. Then if the grocery store forgets to replace old stock, you will never know.

But maybe someone can write an app to read the codes?

blululu2• 18 days ago

This is a pretty nothing law when you look into it.

All it does is standardize "sell by" labels to be more transparent. The extent of the ban is the explicit phrasing "Sell By" which is itself confusing since the manufacturer has some estimated consumption interval that is tacked onto their actual expiration date. Sell By gives the customer has no idea how much padding they are adding to their estimate and when the thing actually goes bad.

All this law really does is it standardizes the labels manufacturers can use to "BEST if Used by" for quality concerns or "USE by" for safety concerns. A lot of manufacturers already do this, so it is a pretty minimal law There are probably more pressing issues in Sacramento, but a small improvement is always welcome.

TulliusCicero• 18 days ago

To be fair, if we waited until there "no more pressing issues", then we'd never get any "quality of life" regulations passed like this.

blululu2• 18 days ago

Yeah. I'd agree. This is a pretty quick and easy law with very few downsides. There is also a "good house keeping" aspect to this. The habit of keeping a house clean and tidy makes it easier to do the bigger and more substantive improvements. I'm a bit surprised that New York Times is reporting on such a small law passed so far away or that there are such negative comments about such laws here, but such is life.

darth_avocado• 18 days ago

I don’t think it’s a nothing law. Not only does it help with reducing waste, but also a food safety thing. “Best by” or “best is used by” or “expiry dates” are pretty clear: use the product before the date.

In my own case, we have a brand of bread that does “sell by”. There is not uniform standard on how many days after the date, the bread is safe to consume. Internet wisdom gives you a wide range.

ChrisArchitect• 18 days ago

Previous discussion when the bill was passed in 2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41765006

egberts1• 18 days ago

Can't rip the plastic wrap off to smell for rottenness.

Absorbent pad adds to the price also hides the "purge".

Harder to find meat without thousand poked holes (tenderizing)

Can't tell if meat are colorized to hide browness.

Time for me to visit my local butcher for a quarter cow, butchered.

Also a bigger freezer chest too!

"Packed On" or "Processed On" is the most accurate way to label meat, IMHO.

malfist• 18 days ago

You're not charged for the absorbent pad anymore than you're charged for the packaging. You can weigh the meat when you get home to verify yourself

unsnap_biceps• 18 days ago

The pad, no, but you do pay for the liquid that the pad soaks up from the overly hydrated meat. The cheaper chicken in my area is pumped full of salt water and is weighed as it's getting packed, but the pad absorbs a bunch of that water to keep the chicken from looking like it's sitting in a puddle.

California bans 'sell by' labels, hoping to cut food waste

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