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SACRAMENTO, CA — Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill (AB) 2779, authored by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), to make targeted clarifications to California’s uniform food date labeling law and provide greater certainty to businesses implementing the new requirements.
“California took an important step toward reducing consumer confusion and food waste when we established our first-in-the-nation food date labeling requirements,” said Assemblymember Irwin. “AB 2779 makes targeted technical corrections so businesses can implement the law consistently while preserving the simple, standardized system consumers were promised.”
In 2024, California enacted AB 660 (Irwin, Chapter 911, Statutes of 2024), creating a uniform food date labeling framework. Under that law, manufacturers, processors, and retailers that choose, or are otherwise required, to place a date label on food for human consumption generally must use “Best if Used by” for quality dates and “Use by” for safety dates.
As businesses prepared to implement AB 660, technical questions emerged regarding how the standardized terms could be capitalized and whether dietary supplements were intended to fall within the law. AB 2779 addresses those implementation issues while maintaining the underlying consumer-protection and food-waste-reduction goals of AB 660.