Emily Broad Leib

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.

A new short film produced in partnership by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC) and Racing Horse Productions spotlights how the confusion around expiration date labels contributes to food waste in America. "EXPIRED? Food Waste in America" looks at the specific example of milk in Montana, where the state law requires the sell-by date on all milk to be no later than twelve days after pasteurization. "After the sell-by date passes, the milk may not be sold or donated. As a result of the law, thousands of gallons of milk have been thrown away, and milk prices in the state have risen," writes Harvard Law Today...According to FLPC Director Emily Broad Leib, "date label confusion harms consumers and food companies, and it wastes massive amounts of food, which harms the planet.

The more scientists study the issue of food waste — and its worrying implications for both the environment and global food security — the clearer it becomes how much of a problem it is. Now, new research is giving us a few more reasons to clean our plates. A study just out in the journal Environmental Science and Technology concludes that we’re already producing way more food than the world actually needs — but a lot of the excess is being wasted, instead of used to feed people who need it...“So much of poverty and famine aren’t about a lack of resources overall — they’re just distributional [problems],” said Emily Broad Leib, an assistant clinical professor of law and director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. “It’s not surprising to see that, and both across countries and within countries this challenge of the food markets really being attainable for certain segments of the population and not for others.”

Emily Broad Leib is the co-founder and director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. The clinic pairs Harvard law students with nonprofits and government agencies working to increase access to healthy food and assist farmers engaged in sustainable agriculture.Emily’s work began in Mississippi, which has one of the highest rates of poverty and obesity in the country. While a fellow in the Mississippi Delta, Emily worked on simplifying and clarifying laws that prevented small-scale farmers from selling their produce in farmers’ markets and helped start the Mississippi Food Policy Council. I spoke with her about food-policy councils, small farmers, food waste, and using food as a lens for understanding a community’s wider health problems.

Discussions about how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions frequently center on clean energy, more efficient transportation and sustainable agriculture. But research suggests that if we really want to pay attention to our carbon footprints, we should also be focusing on another, less-talked-about issue: the amount of food we waste each day...“The first step is really figuring out what is the right amount that we need to produce,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and an assistant clinical professor of law. Much of the food that goes to waste could be used by people who aren’t getting enough to eat. But it’s also likely that we could stand to reduce our overall production as well, cutting some of those emissions entirely. “I do think there’s a sweet spot, and we’re not hitting it right now,” Broad Leib said.

... According to Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, 90 percent of us throw food away—either always, most of the time or occasionally—when that sell-by date arrives. But what many consumers don’t realize is that those dates aren’t intended to be hard-and-fast deadlines. “They’re a guess by the manufacturer when they think the food will not taste as good or not be at its top quality,” says Emily Broad Leib, the director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. “They’re not intended to communicate safety.”

One of the U.K.’s — and the world’s — biggest grocery store chains announced big news on the food waste front this month. In the coming months, Tesco, which boasts some 6,800 stores worldwide but is headquartered in England, will expand its 14-store trial run of an initiative that saved the equivalent of 50,000 meals worth of food from heading to a landfill, donating that food, instead, to charity groups...Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, says that is because the U.S. has arrived at the issue later than countries like France and the U.K., where efforts to address the issue have gotten a significant head start on the U.S. and are, just now, coming to fruition. Still, Leib noted, Americans are making significant progress. “I do think it’s on the radar of more and more stores,” Leib told The Huffington Post.

How do you decide if your milk is fresh enough to drink? You might be one of the many Americans who relies on sell-by dates to determine when to throw it out. But it turns out we could be dumping perfectly good milk...“Basically, around 90% of people throw food away when that date arrives, either always, or most of the time, or occasionally,” says Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. Leib says what most people don’t know is those sell-by dates have no standard meaning. They vary by state and even by company.

Earlier this month, an excellent, short new documentary debuted. It focuses on one type of state laws that senselessly promote food waste. The documentary, Expired? Food Waste in America, is produced by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and Racing Horse Productions. It uses the clear shortcomings of a mandatory Montana milk-expiration-date law as a hook to illustrate broader problems with state food expiration-date mandates..."Out of state dairies often can't get milk to the store quickly enough for it to be put on the shelf in time to be sold (since consumers want milk with at least a few days on it), so many out-of-state dairies are no longer selling in Montana," says Harvard Law School Prof. Emily Broad Leib, one of the film's producers, in an email to me this week. "According to local advocates, milk in Montana also costs a lot more than milk in surrounding states."

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib. Glug, glug, glug… That’s the sound of milk being poured down the drain in Montana. Montana wastes untold amounts of milk every day due to an outdated law that requires a “sell by” date of 12 days after pasteurization and prohibits sale or donation after that date. This date is completely arbitrary, especially when compared to the industry standard for date labeling on milk—generally 21-24 days after pasteurization. Even more shocking, the date label on milk, like on most foods, is generally meant to indicate quality rather than its safety. Because pasteurization kills any harmful pathogens, milk is safe and generally still good well past the date. Montana’s is just one of many US state laws that cause confusion and massive amounts of waste. Even if food makes it to a home, more than 90% of Americans report that they mistake those quality dates labels for safety indicators, and subsequently throw away food that is still completely safe to eat. Confusion over date labels is a major contributor to the 160 billion pounds of food wasted each year in the US.

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib. My father used to keep food in the refrigerator for days, even weeks after the “best by” date, so long as it looked and smelled OK. My mom, by contrast, went out to buy a new carton of milk as soon as the date passed. Often there would be two containers of milk in our refrigerator: the half-empty one my dad was committed to finishing, and the new one my mom had purchased, out of fear that she might get sick if she drank my dad's past-date milk.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D., Me.) introduced a bill in Congress aimed at reducing the amount of food that is wasted each year in the United States. The Food Recovery Act includes nearly two dozen provisions to reduce food waste across the economy....Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, said Pingree's bill tackles an important problem with the nation's food supply. “Food waste is one of the most pressing environmental and economic issues facing our food system, yet so much of the food we waste could go to better use in our households or shared with people in need. This groundbreaking legislation offers assistance to farmers and retailers, supports food recovery organizations, and helps consumers by clarifying the senseless date labels that appear on foods. It thus achieves many of the goals our clinic has advocated over the past few years and we are thrilled to work in support of its passage," Broad Leib said.

Harvard is fertilizing a new crop of ideas to combat climate change. The Climate Change Solutions Fund will award grants of up to $150,000 each to stoke ideas for creative climate-related work in business, design, policy, public health, and the sciences. It was launched last year with $1 million from the office of President Drew Faust, who challenged alumni and friends to assist in raising $20 million for the fund as one pillar of a broader campaign to support the energy and environment...“This funding was a total game-changer for us,” said Emily Broad Leib, assistant clinical professor of law and deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, who was awarded a grant to reduce food waste. Leib has been able to make time for efforts to raise awareness of the issue through media appearances and by working with her students to make a short documentary about state expiration-date policies and the need for change at the federal level.

...The organization that Adam and Don work for, Food for Free, is one of a few in Boston seeking to solve two of America’s major problems at once: We have a lot of unwanted food that goes to waste, and a lot of people who go hungry...This law seems like it should be a fantastic opportunity for food rescue operations like Food for Free. But it might not work out that way. “I think the one weakness is the laws don’t really incentivize you donating the food as opposed to, say, composting it or sending it to the anaerobic digester,” says Emily Broad Leib, an assistant professor of law at Harvard who directs the university’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. While composting food is a better option than throwing it out, it too has a significant carbon footprint.