A survey conducted by the Consumer Council revealed that expired frozen and chilled food items were sold in some of the supermarkets and other retail outlets including frozen food stores and grocery shops. A total of 56 prepackaged frozen and chilled food items were found to have various problems relating to labelling of expiry date.
The survey was conducted in January this year. The Council's staff posed as prospective customers visited 57 retail outlets in 6 districts (North Point, Wan Chai, Jordon, Sham Shui Po, Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan) throughout the territory.
Among the 6 districts covered, 42 frozen and chilled food items were found expired and sold in 19 shops while 14 items were found with other labelling problems in 8 shops. Those problems included suspected removal of the expiry date labels, incomplete labelling of the expiry date or no indication of the expiry date at all.
Of the 42 expired frozen and chilled food items, 23 items were sold beyond the "use by" date, 15 items were sold beyond the "best before" date and 4 items were sold beyond 12-month durability period.
Irregularities with the labelling were spotted in another 14 frozen and chilled food items, which included:
- Signs of removal or erasure of the expiry date labelling being found on 3 food items;
- Incomplete indication of the expiry date being found on 3 food items;
- No indication or labelling of expiry date being found on 8 food items , with one food item being suspected to have its original packing removed and repackaged for sale.
According to Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) Regulations (Cap. 132W), prepackaged food including frozen and chilled food shall be marked and labelled with "use by" or "best before" date. It is an offence for selling or displaying food products after the "use by" date.
The Council has forwarded the findings and the list of retail outlets concerned to the Centre for Food Safety (CFS) to follow up.
According to the CFS, they had conducted 55,180 label checking last year and there was one prosecution regarding to the selling of expired food while there were 24 prosecutions regarding to the no durability indication.
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