Marks and Spencer (M&S) has announced plans to ditch ‘best before’ dates on a range of fruit and vegetable products across its UK stores.

More than 300 items will be included in the move that will see labels replaced by a code that staff can use to check the freshness of the products.

This follows moves by other retailers to remove both ‘best before’ and ‘used by’ dates across a range of products.

According to guidelines by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the ‘best before’ date, sometimes shown as BBE (best before end), is about quality. The food will be safe to eat after this date but may not be at its best. On the other hand, the ‘use-by’ date on food is about safety. The FSA said that consumers can eat food until and on the use-by date but not after.

In 2018, Tesco scrapped best before dates on 190 products including apples, oranges, cabbages and asparagus.

In January of this year, Morrisons replaced ‘use by’ labels on 90% of its own-brand milk with ‘best before’ labels. The company also encouraged customers to use the sniff test to check the quality of its milk products.

Moreover, in April 2022, Co-op revealed plans to swap use-by dates with best-before labels on its range of own-brand yoghurts in order to cut food waste.