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The food court at the Beckes Student Union offers students a variety of food to choose from, including “fresh made salads,” and other refrigerated items. On the label of many of them however, there is a colored sticker covering the expiration date. Many of the expiration dates being covered by the stickers are long past.
A salad and a container of cole slaw were purchased on Wednesday, Oct. 7, from the refrigerated “Simply To Go” section of the food court. A colored sticker was covering the expiration date on the salad, however it was clear enough to see the date through the sticker. The date read “Sell by Sept 27 2009.” The cole slaw, while it had a colored sticker, had no expiration date inside or outside of the container.
Dan Winkler, the general manager for Sodexo expressed disbelief about the missing expiration dates.
Before commenting on the many items that were apparently out of date, Winkler said an article on food expiration dates would not be a story about food safety. He also questioned whether or not this story was “made up” or “just over one salad,” and said, “We move too much food to be throwing stuff away.”
Winkler suggested a hypothetical explanation for the out of date food items in the “Simply To Go” section.
“I would say offhand to that, if that is in fact the deal, they probably printed up alot of stickers on the 27th, or the 25th or whatever, so instead of throwing stickers away, they were using the stickers to show what the sandwich was and the ingredients used. And if they covered that expiration date, it probably should have been written in,” Winkler said.
On Monday morning, Oct. 12, there were 27 items with stickers on the label, compared to 12 items without stickers. The items with stickers all had expiration dates that had passed, or that expired that day. The items that did not have stickers still had a few days to go before the dates expired.
Both Winkler and Tara McKnight, the retail manager at the food court and Sodexo Marketing Specialist, explained the stickers as part of a “dot system.” They use a packaging program that prints the labels, including dates on the labels. McKnight also said the labels with past expiration dates were from the Sodexo print shop, and they received too many.
According to McKnight, “the labels were accidentally printed with an expiration date, which started the dot system.” This dot system refers to a color coded sticker system, that lets workers know when to throw the food out, but still leaves consumers clueless as to when the product can go bad.
Both Winkler and McKnight said that the items are made fresh daily, and are not in need of expiration dates. McKnight also said that while the program was approved by the health department, the “dot is an expiration date, internally known and doesn’t have to be viewed by consumers.”
“It does not have to say on the salad for the consumer as to when it expires,” said McKnight.
Later Monday afternoon, all products with a colored sticker also had the expiration dates scribbled over in black marker, and no other dates could be found on the containers.
According to the Indiana Retail Food Establishment Sanitation Requirements, when a consumer buys a product, the label should include an expiration date, especially when the product is milk, dairy or vegetable based.
Considering the food choices in the refrigerated section include cole slaw and potato salad, there are potential dangers in not providing consumers with proper expiration dates on the items.
“When it comes to food safety, as long as things are held at a proper temperature they are safe to eat,” Winkler said.
Despite temperature requirements, many foods that require refrigeration can only be refrigerated for so long. If a student were to buy the product but not eat it right away, he would have no way of knowing how long it can be stored and still be safe to eat.
Both Sodexo and student affairs rely on students and staff to report potential problems in Tecumseh Dining Center and the food court.
“We receive reports regarding violations and we’ve corrected those. We had one problem but it was corrected,” Lynn White, assistant provost for student affairs, said.
White declined to elaborate on details regarding what the problem was, but gave hypotheticals and stated “it’s a one in every 10 year thing, and could be a number of things.”
Different sources from the Indiana Department of Health offered conflicting opinions as to how sanitation requirements should be interpreted.
“If it’s a potentially hazardous food, things have to be date marked, but it;s not something consumers have to see,” said Scott Gilliam, the supervisor of the State Health Department.
Jim Howell, the Indiana Deputy Health Commisioner disagrees, and said consumers need to be well informed of sanitation requirements. “They need to know as much about that code as they can,” he said.
Sodexo is the food service provider for many schools in Indiana, including VU.
The company recently signed an additional 10 year contract early last summer with VU, and provide food service on campus.
“It’s (refrigerated food) supposed to be dated. If someone consumed a product after so many days, they can get really ill,” a food service expert at Good Samaritan Hospital who wished to remain anonymous said.
The source also explained that even though the hospital cafeteria makes salads and other items fresh every day, they still have to mark it, and keep it under 40 degrees.
Whether or not Sodexo is violating any health or safety regulations has yet to be determined, but if students are purchasing products without a clear expiration date, they are still at risk for contracting a food-borne illness.
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