🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <705547509141994.1364844@his.com>, joe.chelena@his.com writes:
>I know that this is somewhat out of scope in "Dining" but it is food 
>related and there is no DC Consumer Conference.
>
>My wife shops once a week, on Wednesday, at Shoppers Food Warehouse in 
>the Burke, Va store.  She buys a weeks worth of groceries, which 
>includes 2 gallons of 1% milk.  More times then we would like to count, 
>the second gallon turns before the next Wednesday.  When it turns the 
>milk is still several days away (short off) the "Sell By Date".  We have 
>talked to a few friends and they have had the same problem.  Shoppers is 
>more than happy to take the milk back when this happens.  Even so I am 
>beginning to wonder if someone, either Shoppers or the dairy, is up to 
>marking the wrong sell date???   
>
>Has anyone had this happen to them, or have any ideas?  Before Shoppers 
>we shopped mostly at Giant, plus a few times at Safeway and *never* had 
>such a problem.
>
>Thanks!
>---
> � CMPQwk 1.4 #1357 � Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!
>
It's been my experience that this is a result of poor handling practices
all down the distribution chain coupled with what I think (no hard data)
is probably a higher bacteria count to start with in lower fat percentage
milks. If the time required to transfer the milk from warehouse to truck,
truck to store cooler, and store cooler to display cooler is excessive,
the milk will warm up and bacterial growth will accelerate. Add to this
frequent traffic in and out of store coolers when stock turnover is
high which causes the holding temperature to rise above that required
for maximum shelf life; now you've got a situation in which the product
won't make it to the 'nominal' shelf life.

In a nutshell, the store manager is the one who has to enforce proper
food handling practices; your complaints to him/her can't hurt, but
may not be effective. I'm not sure how complaints to the health
department are handled - it may be that if you haven't suffered any
"loss" (i.e. illness, etc.), they may not do anything, as I'm sure they
are overworked [and probably underpaid as well :-].
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Ol' Harv                          No fixed address (still broken)

" Living high on the <insert favorite species here> in Rockville"