As a Food and Beverage manufacturer, it’s your responsibility to ensure that the food product should remain stable for a specific time period and safe for human consumption. The stability of the product would depend on the quality of ingredients and the different processes until it is ready for distribution. According to the Food Safety and Standards (Packaging & Labelling) regulation, 2011, a pre-packaged food product shall have the information about Manufacturing date and Packaged date along with the date of expiry like Best before or Use by date etc.

Shelf life testing is mainly performed to define a time period by which a food product can sustain its quality from the time of its manufacture. As per the Food Safety Regulation norms, all packaged foods are required to possess a valid use-by-date or Best Before Date. It is the standard criteria that every food manufacturer/processor must follow.

What do you understand with term use by date?

This date implies that you should use the products within or before the specific date. The packaged food should not be consumed after expiry date as it may be unsafe for human consumption. According to FSSAI rules, it is prohibited to sell a food article after it has passed its expiration period. The information about use-by-date on the label ensures about the food safety as nowadays a large population goes for the pre-packaged food products especially ready-to-eat foods. To specify the exact expiry date, stability testing is crucial.

What do you understand by Shelf Life Testing?

To examine the shelf life of a food product, a series of tests on the regular intervals and on the different storage conditions are performed which is  known as shelf life testing. This testing includes a range of analysis physical, chemical, microbiological and organoleptic. However, storage trial is the most common method of determining shelf life of any food product. There is no exclusive test regarding shelf life but also includes food security, degeneration and quality parameters.

Shelf life of a food product could be altered due to the following:

• Corrosion of oils in a specific product causes rancidity and spoils the taste and create bad odors.
• Vitamins that are subtle to oxygen, can easily get exacerbate when experience slight changes in light or temperature.
• Foods can act together with packing stuff and both packing materials and seals can get worseafter a specific period of time.
• Unbalance level of moisture can also affect the quality of food product. Thus, selection of packaging is a significantly important especially regarding baked foods or bakery products.
• To extend the shelf life of food products various kinds of stabilizers or condiments can be used. But, FSSAI have specified the level of preservatives as well as category of prohibited additives. During shelf life testing, stability testing lab also check the levels of additives like Are they in the prescribed limits or ideal for consumption or not?

So, shelf life testing is important for Food and Beverage Industry and to obtain the best results one must choose a renowned and NABL Accredited/FSSAI notified food laboratory.