Walk into any California grocery store today and you'll find a mess of date labels: "sell by," "use by," "best by," "best before," "expires on," and half a dozen other phrasings, each meaning something slightly different depending on which company printed it. Nationally, food manufacturers use more than 50 different date-label formats. The result: 91% of consumers say they've thrown out food just because it passed a "sell by" date, and a quarter of shoppers say they do it every time — even though a "sell by" date was never meant to signal spoilage. It was a note to the stockroom, not a warning to the kitchen.
That confusion has a price tag. Californians toss out roughly 2.5 billion meals' worth of perfectly good food every year based on labels nobody consciously chose to standardize, and organic waste — food scraps included — now makes up 48% of everything the state sends to landfills. Starting July 1, 2026, California is doing something no other state has done: legally banning the ambiguity. Assembly Bill 660 rewrites the rules for how packaged food can be dated, and if your business manufactures, packages, distributes, or sells food in California, the compliance clock is already running.
What AB 660 Actually Requires
AB 660 throws out the grab-bag of date phrasings and replaces it with exactly two standardized labels, each tied to a specific meaning:
- Quality dates — for food that's still safe to eat past the date but may not taste or look its best. Must be labeled "BEST if Used by" or "BEST if Used or Frozen by" (shorthand: BB).
- Safety dates — for perishable items where the date is a genuine food-safety cutoff. Must be labeled "USE by" or "USE or Freeze by" (shorthand: UB).
Every other quality-related phrasing — "best before," "best by," "enjoy by," and the like — is out. If a product's date is about taste and freshness rather than safety, it has to say "BEST if Used by." If it's about safety, it has to say "USE by."
The bigger change for most retailers: "sell by" dates disappear from anything a shopper can read. These dates were always intended as internal stock-rotation signals for store employees, not consumer-facing safety information — but because they looked identical to a safety date, they trained millions of people to throw away good food. AB 660 doesn't ban stock-rotation dates outright; it requires them to be coded (a format not legible to the average customer) rather than printed as a plain, readable date on the front or back of the package.
What's Exempt
The law does not apply to:
- Infant formula
- Eggs and pasteurized in-shell eggs
- Beer and other malt beverages
- Wine and spirits
- Shellfish, to the extent federal National Shellfish Sanitation Program rules require different labeling
It also doesn't touch prepared foods meant for immediate consumption — think restaurant meals or a deli sandwich made to order. This is squarely a packaged food law: anything with a shelf life and a printed date on the package is in scope.
Who Has to Comply
AB 660 puts the compliance burden on "a food manufacturer, processor, or retailer responsible for the labeling of food items" — which is deliberately broad. In practice, that includes:
- Food manufacturers and processors printing their own labels, from national CPG brands down to a two-person jam company selling at farmers markets and small grocers.
- Retailers with private-label or store-brand products, who are just as liable for a noncompliant label as the manufacturer that filled the jar.
- Co-packers and co-manufacturers producing goods on behalf of smaller brands — if you outsource production, your packaging still has to meet the standard, so this belongs in your co-packing and distribution agreements now, not after a violation notice.
- Distributors moving products into California from out of state. There's no exemption for companies based elsewhere; if the product is sold in California, the label rules apply.
If your business sells any packaged, dated food product into California — whether you're a national brand or a single-location bakery shipping mail-order cookies — this law reaches you.
Penalties and the Transition Window
Violations are misdemeanors, carrying fines of up to $1,000 per violation, plus potential licensing consequences and exposure to consumer litigation under California's consumer protection statutes. Because both manufacturers and retailers can be held liable, a retailer selling a supplier's noncompliant product doesn't automatically get a pass just because someone else printed the label.
There's a practical transition rule worth knowing: products manufactured and labeled before July 1, 2026 can continue to be sold under existing labels — retailers aren't required to pull compliant-at-the-time inventory off shelves. But any packaging printed or products manufactured on or after July 1, 2026 must use the new standardized terms. That means the real deadline for most businesses is earlier than July 1 — you need updated label artwork approved, printed, and in your supply chain well before that date if you want a clean cutover instead of a mid-run scramble.
Why This Matters Beyond California
California is the first state to mandate standardized date labeling this way, but it's rarely the last. The state has a well-worn pattern — Proposition 65 warnings, CCPA privacy rules, and various packaging and labeling mandates all started in California and then either spread to other states or effectively became a national default because companies didn't want to print two different label runs. If AB 660 follows that pattern, "BEST if Used by" and "USE by" may become the de facto national standard well before other legislatures act, simply because manufacturers won't maintain California-only packaging alongside everywhere-else packaging.
There's also a federal angle worth watching: date labeling in the U.S. has historically been almost entirely unregulated at the federal level (outside of infant formula), which is exactly how the country ended up with 50+ competing phrasings in the first place. A state-level standard that actually reduces consumer confusion and food waste is the kind of thing that tends to attract federal attention eventually.
What to Do Before July 1, 2026
- Audit every SKU sold into California. Pull current label artwork for every packaged product and flag which use "sell by," "best before," "expires," or any other non-compliant phrasing.
- Classify each product as quality-dated or safety-dated. This determines whether it needs "BEST if Used by" or "USE by" language — get this wrong and you've just swapped one compliance problem for another.
- Review co-packing, co-manufacturing, and distribution contracts. Confirm who owns the responsibility (and cost) of updating label artwork and printing plates, and get it in writing before July 1.
- Build in lead time for label reprints. Between artwork approval, proofing, and print runs, most companies need months of runway — start now if you haven't already.
- Decide whether to run California-specific labels or switch nationally. Many mid-size brands find it cheaper to standardize label language across every state than to maintain a separate California-only print run.
Track the Real Cost of Compliance
Relabeling isn't free — new artwork, proofing rounds, print-plate changes, and potentially discounted sell-through of old-label inventory all show up as real costs that need to land in the right expense or COGS accounts, not get buried as a miscellaneous line item. If you're running co-packing or private-label arrangements, you'll also want a clean paper trail of who paid for what, since compliance costs are frequently a negotiating point in supplier contracts.
This is exactly the kind of one-time regulatory cost that's easy to lose track of in spreadsheets but simple to isolate in plain-text accounting. Beancount.io keeps every transaction — including a labeling-compliance project or a co-packer cost allocation — in version-controlled, auditable text files, so you can tag, categorize, and report on a one-time compliance push without disturbing your regular books. Get started for free and keep your financial records as clear as your new food labels.