Emily Broad Leib

I find the dates on food labels highly confusing. Why are there “sell by,” “display until,” “best before” and “use by” dates?...To understand this, Emily M. Broad Leib—Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, Director of Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, and Deputy Director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation—believes consumers should first understand that none of these labels are regulated by federal law...Given there’s no federal regulation, consumers should be wary that these labels don’t necessarily offer a safe-to-eat date. “The reason companies are including dates at all comes from a valid business purpose in wanting consumers to eat food while the flavor is best,” said the legal expert.

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib. "Eat your fruits and vegetables” is a simple-enough piece of nutritional advice most Americans have heard since they were young. When you look at America’s food policies, however, that straightforward missive gets incredibly complicated. Though our national nutrition guidance recommends that fruits and vegetables make up more than 50% of our dietary intake, the lion’s share of federal funding for farmers goes to soy, cotton, and corn. In fact, as a nation we produce 24% fewer servings of fruits and vegetables than would be necessary for us to meet that nutrition guidance.

Every day, American families throw out tons of spoiled food — or food they think is spoiled because they misunderstand “sell by” labels. Restaurants dispose of usable leftovers, and farmers toss imperfect produce. In the United States, about 30 to 40 percent of all food is not eaten. About 95 percent of that wasted food, 38 million tons in 2014, ends up in landfills or incinerators, where it produces methane, a gas that is one of the most potent contributors to climate change...The Food Waste Reduction Alliance, which represents the food industry and restaurant trade associations, recently worked with Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic to simplify and standardize “use by” and “sell by” labels, which befuddle many consumers. People toss a lot of edible food because they misunderstand the difference between the two terms. “There has been an enormous amount of change over the past two or three years,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the clinic.

An article by Emily Broad Leib. Ready your tractors and plows—the farm bill is upon us. This omnibus package of legislation, reauthorized every 5 to 7 years, shapes virtually every aspect of our food and agricultural system. Yet this wide-ranging, $500 billion piece of legislation, which aims to ensure a safe and sufficient food supply for our nation, fails to take steps to guarantee that the food we produce actually makes it to our plates. Congressional agriculture committees recently commenced hearings to begin preparation for the 2018 Farm Bill, which makes this the perfect time to discuss how the next farm bill can invest in solutions to reduce the nearly 40% of food that goes to waste in the U.S.

Over the last eight years, food policy has gone from being a topic for industry insiders and wonks, to a regular staple on mainstream America’s menu of interests. Case in point: A plurality of Americans now believe healthy food should be more affordable, farm subsidies should be used to grow that healthy food, farming should happen in harmony with the environment, and food system workers should be treated—and paid—fairly...Emily Broad Leib thinks it can be done...“This isn’t pie in the sky—we have the tools in the U.S. and have used them to create national strategies on lots of other things that are not as foundational as food,” Leib said.

It seems like a simple solution: Companies with excess food should just donate it to people in need. So why don’t they? Maybe they’re worried about liability. Perhaps they can’t afford to transport the food to where it will do the most good. Or, they’re unsure about the expiration-date labeling and would rather not chance giving away past-due goods. So what’s to be done? Plenty, according to a report released Thursday, March 9, by The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Natural Resources Defense Council...“If even a quarter of the recommendations in the report are embraced and implemented, millions of pounds of wholesome food will make it to those in need instead of clogging up our landfills,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and one of the report’s main authors.

The majority of Americans have no clear idea what “sell by” labels are trying to tell them. But after 40 years of letting us guess, the grocery industry has made moves to clear up the confusion. On Wednesday, the Food Marketing Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the two largest trade groups for the grocery industry, announced that they’ve adopted standardized, voluntary regulations to clear up what product date labels mean...“I think it’s huge. It’s just an enormous step,” said Emily Broad-Leib, the director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. “It’s still a first step — but it’s very significant.”...Of course, that is just a drop in the waste bucket: To make a real dent in America’s food waste problem, Broad-Leib said, more will have to be done. The Food Law and Policy Clinic is arguing for several federal interventions, including policy changes that make it easier for companies and farms to donate food and incentives to encourage them to do so.

There could soon be something new to check out at your grocery store. The food industry is working to simplify labels on perishable food. Date stamps like “best by,” “sell by,” “use by” and “best before” can be confusing for shoppers...“There’s always this habit of going to the back of the shelf and taking the milk with the date that’s furthest out,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. “I think this will really help consumers know when does that date matter and when does it not really matter for safety reasons.”

At the same time the government urges Americans to eat healthy foods, it heavily subsidizes farmers who produce corn and other crops used in junk foods, and invests little in those who grow fruits and vegetables. The result? A pound of fresh broccoli costs about $2 in any supermarket, while a calorie- and fat-filled cheeseburger is half that price in many fast-food restaurants. This system that makes healthy food expensive and junk food cheap should be fixed, said a panel of experts who gathered at Harvard Law School on Nov. 30...Bittman was joined by...Emily Broad Leib, assistant clinical professor of paw and director of the Food Law and Policy clinic...Leib expressed concern about a House bill that proposes cutting food stamp benefits by $40 billion. “This could be small compared to what we might see coming,” she said. “This program is a safety net for many people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to put food on the table.”

It’s hard to know how to interpret food date labels. If it smells fine but it’s past the best-by mark, should you pitch it? And what does “sell by” really mean anyway? Professor Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, is on a mission to help decode the mixed messages sent by those puzzling stamps on our food. The professor was recently honored by Food & Wine and Forbes as one of the 20 most innovative women in Food and Drink for her work surrounding food waste.

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib. Multiple policies could be implemented to address food waste and its impacts on the environment, food security, and our climate. In particular, we should eliminate laws that cause healthy food to go to waste, incentivize food donation and, when needed, enact penalties for senseless food waste. Let's start with consumer confusion, and the misguided laws regarding food date labels. Eighty four percent of consumers report they frequently throw food away after the sell-by date has passed, despite date labels being indicators of freshness, not safety. What's more, in the absence of federal law on date labels, no two states have the same date label rules. Several states even restrict or ban the sale or donation of past-date foods. Federal legislation is needed to eliminate state laws that require past-date — but still safe — foods to be wasted, and to standardize date labels so they are clearer to consumers.

The future of food is here, and it’s decidedly female. The editors of Food & Wine and Fortune magazines teamed up to spotlight women entrepreneurs, activists and leaders in the food world who’ve worked in the past year to transform the way people dine. Twenty earned a spot on their Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink 2016 list...Emily Broad Leib At the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, Leib is tackling the enormous problem of wasted food, which crowds landfills and leaves many hungry, by trying to change legislation around the way food is labeled. “We want to make labeling laws clearer, so when people pick up a yogurt, they know when it’s OK to eat it and when to throw it out,” she tells Food & Wine and Fortune. It may also make perfectly fine food easier to donate.

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib, Sally Greenberg, and Roni Neff. The July 4 weekend marks our nation’s birthday and the time when Americans celebrate — not only with fireworks, but with picnics, backyard BBQs, pool parties. Sadly, one byproduct of these celebrations are the many tons of food that we will inevitably waste after these family gatherings. Today, 40 percent of food produced in the United States is thrown away each year (over two-thirds of that by consumers). Ketchup with a date label that says it has expired.” Salad dressings that are past their “use by” dates, chips and cheese with passed expiration dates. As a result of confusing date labeling policies, consumers regularly toss out foods that are perfectly safe, wholesome, and still taste good.

Ninety-one percent of Americans toss their food after the date on the labels have passed, but in many cases, they may actually be wasting perfectly safe food. There are three types of dates used on food labels: "sell by," "best if used by," and "use by." But all three have nothing to do with food safety. Rather, they signal how long the manufacturer thinks the food will taste best. "So the manufacturer will do taste tests with consumers and say, 'this is when everyone still thought my product tasted good,' and they're not about safety, but many people throw food away," said Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic..."Food safety means it was contaminated, you could get E.coli or salmonella, something like that.... We want to eat food that tastes good, that's good quality, but it's much more subjective," Leib said. "You're not going to get sick if you eat something. It's just about what you think tastes good."

The date labels printed on the food we buy — often accompanied by a “best by,” “use by” or even “expires on” stamp — are meant to provide useful advice about when a product is at its best. But some experts are saying these labels not only fail to communicate meaningful information to consumers — they may actually be contributing to a huge environmental problem by inadvertently encouraging people to throw out perfectly good food. A new survey, released last week by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, found that more than a third of respondents usually or always throw away food that’s past its date label. And 84 percent of respondents reported doing so occasionally...This is a source of confusion for the American public, it turns out. The Harvard survey found that more than a third of respondents believed date labels are federally regulated, and another quarter of them weren’t sure. That’s a big deal, because people may be more likely to take these labels seriously if they believe they’re mandated by the federal government, said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and an assistant professor of law. “If people think that they’re reading something that has standards regulated, then they think that it’s meaningful and communicating something to them,” she said.

When do you toss food from the fridge or cabinet to the garbage? When it’s past the “use by” or “sell by” date marked on the packaging? When starts to look clammy, wilted, or moldy? When it tastes off or fails the sniff test? Turns out, a lot of people rely on those labels, even when they’re not quite sure what they mean, according to a new survey released today at a food waste summit in Washington, D.C. The survey, conducted by a team from the National Consumers League, Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, and Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, probed how customers make sense of food labels, which are notoriously variable and unstandardized... “Many people throw away food once the date on the package has passed because they think the date is an indicator of safety, but in fact for most foods the date is a manufacturer’s best guess as to how long the product will be at its peak quality,” Emily Broad Leib, the director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and a survey co-author, said in a statement.

It is different this time for best-selling author Michael Pollan, and not just because his subject has changed. The people are different too. They’re not farming or fermenting or cooking. This time they’re dying. Pollan’s books about food, diet, and industrial agriculture — he is perhaps best known for 2006’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” — have made him an influential voice in America’s food fight over obesity, nutrition, and diabetes, and have made him revered by those who believe that something is fundamentally wrong with how we mass produce and prepare our meals...Assistant Clinical Professor of Law Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, hosted Pollan in a private meeting with clinic students and in one of her classes afterward. Pollan answered questions and asked students about their own food-related projects. Broad Leib credited Pollan with helping awaken the country to problems with the food system by explaining potentially dry topics like the intricacies of the U.S. farm bill in an easy-to-understand, engaging way. It’s telling, she said, that roughly three-fourths of student applicants to a Harvard food law summit last fall cited Pollan’s writing as influential.