Blocked

If there is a date on this, is it worded the way the law where I live requires?

ALS-COFFEE-1.0-DATEFORM-001

This question matters to a buyer and CANNOT be answered from a public product page today. What would be required is stated in full.

Why this cannot be run

Blocked by G-03.

Assertion

date_phrase_conformance equals_one_of eu_best_before, eu_best_before_end, ca_best_if_used_by, ca_use_by, prohibited_sell_by, non_conforming

  • eu_best_before
  • eu_best_before_end
  • ca_best_if_used_by
  • ca_use_by
  • prohibited_sell_by
  • non_conforming

Applicability

applies when
the page displays a quality or safety date phrase for the product
signal
presence of a date phrase in product text

Accepted evidence

  • product_description — a date phrase matching a jurisdiction's enumerated literal, captured verbatim with the matched jurisdiction named

Explicitly insufficient evidence

What does not count, and why. Published because the omission is where a check quietly becomes a claim.

  • informal variants such as "Best by", "Expires", "Enjoy by", "Freshest by"
    None matches the enumerated forms either regime requires, and their familiarity is what makes them look compliant.
  • "Best before" treated as globally acceptable
    It is the EU-required form and is not among the phrases the Californian regime enumerates, so the two regimes demand different literals and a single phrase cannot satisfy both — a check that treats it as universally compliant will pass a violation.
  • "Sell by" on a consumer-facing page
    That phrase is prohibited outright in the Californian regime for consumer-facing use, with a narrow exception for coded inventory dates not readily readable by consumers.
  • the absence of any date read as non-compliance
    Adding a date is not mandated by either regime for this product, and the Californian statute expressly disclaims that construction — so reporting absence as a defect would be a false positive with a legal citation attached, which is the worst kind.
  • a conformance verdict presented as a legal finding about the physical label
    The regime governs the labelling of a food item offered for sale; whether a page reproducing a non-conforming phrase is itself a violation could not be established, so the verdict is about the page string only.

Conflict rules

  • When a page serves both markets with one date phrase — then record that the phrase cannot satisfy both enumerated sets, which is a factual observation rather than a legal conclusion

Discrimination

Predicted fail rate: 30-70% (predicted, not yet measured)

Applies only to pages that display a date phrase at all, and within that population informal wording is common, so a genuine split is plausible. This is the most crisply machine-checkable assertion in the whole freshness class, because both regimes specify closed sets of literal phrases rather than concepts.

For a shopper

Date wording is regulated because shoppers cannot reliably tell a quality date from a safety date, and the required phrasing differs between regions. A page that says nothing about dates is not breaking any rule; a page that says "sell by" to a consumer may be.

For a merchant

Where you display a quality or safety date, use the exact phrase your market's rules enumerate, and avoid consumer-facing sell-by wording; if you serve two markets with different required literals, the page needs market-specific wording.

Grounding

  • California Assembly Bill 660, statutory text (legal_instrument)
    an enumerated set of permitted quality and safety date phrases for food items manufactured on or after 1 July 2026, a blanket prohibition on consumer-facing sell-by wording, and an express disclaimer that the section does not require a date label — coffee is in scope
  • EU Regulation 1169/2011, Annex X point 1(a) (legal_instrument)
    the conflicting EU wording requirement of Best before with a day, or Best before end otherwise, which is not among the Californian permitted phrases
  • National Agricultural Law Center, University of Arkansas (academic)
    independent confirmation that no federal requirement mandates date labels on most foods and that including a date remains voluntary unless another law requires it