California AB 660 Takes Effect July 1: What Your Labels Need to Change

Every packaged food product you sell in California needs to follow new date labeling rules by July 1, 2026. If your labels still say "Sell By," "Expires On," "Freshest By," or any of the 50-plus date phrases floating around the U.S. market, they won't be legal in the state.

California Assembly Bill 660 is the first mandatory date labeling standardization law in the country. It's not complicated, but it does require label changes, and three months is not a lot of runway if you haven't started.

What AB 660 Actually Requires

The law boils down to two approved label formats:

• Quality dates: "BEST if Used by" or "BEST if Used or Frozen by"

• Safety dates: "USE by" or "USE by or Freeze by"

That's it. If your product carries a date label, it has to use one of those four phrases. No other wording is allowed.

The law also bans consumer-facing "Sell By" dates entirely. You can still use coded sell-by dates for internal stock rotation, but nothing customer-facing.

One thing manufacturers miss: AB 660 doesn't require you to add a date label if you don't already have one. But if you do display a date, the phrasing has to match exactly.

Who's Affected

Anyone manufacturing, processing, or selling packaged food in California. The law applies to products manufactured on or after July 1, 2026, so anything produced before that date can sell through existing inventory.

Five categories are exempt:

• Infant formula (already regulated by the FDA)

• Eggs and pasteurized in-shell eggs (covered by separate California and USDA rules)

• Beer and malt beverages

• Wine, distilled spirits, and wine- or spirit-based products (can still display production or bottling dates)

• Shellfish governed by the National Shellfish Sanitation Program

Market milk and milk products have a separate requirement: processors must display a quality date, but the California Department of Food and Agriculture sets the specific language.

If you ship product into California from another state, you're still on the hook. This isn't a California-manufacturer-only rule. It's a California-shelf rule.

Why This Matters Beyond California

California is the largest food market in the U.S. If you sell nationally, you're almost certainly selling there. And AB 660 isn't happening in a vacuum.

At the federal level, the bipartisan Food Date Labeling Act of 2025 (S.2541) proposes the same two-phrase system nationally. Over 30 major food companies, including Walmart, Amazon, and Unilever, signed an open letter supporting it. The USDA and FDA issued a joint Request for Information in late 2024 asking for public comment on standardized date labeling.

The direction is clear. California is first, but federal standardization is coming. If you update your labels now for AB 660, you're likely already compliant with whatever the federal version looks like.

The Real Problem AB 660 Solves

Right now, there are over 50 different date label phrases used across the U.S. food supply. "Best By." "Use Before." "Enjoy By." "Freshest Before." None of them are federally regulated (except infant formula), and none of them mean the same thing to consumers.

The result: Californians alone throw away 2.5 billion meals worth of unspoiled food every year, much of it because of date label confusion. The state sends six million tons of food waste to landfills annually, and research estimates that 20% of avoidable consumer food waste comes from misreading date labels.

AB 660 draws a hard line between quality and safety. "BEST if Used by" tells consumers the product might not taste as fresh after that date, but it's still safe. "USE by" tells them the product may not be safe after that date. Two phrases. Two meanings. No ambiguity.

For food manufacturers, this distinction also matters internally. If your product carries a "USE by" date, that's a safety claim, and your food safety plan and shelf-life validation need to back it up. If it's a "BEST if Used by" date, that's a quality claim, and the documentation requirements are different.

What You Need to Do Before July 1

If you sell food in California, here's the checklist:

1. Audit your current labels.Pull every SKU that ships to California. Identify which ones carry date labels and what phrasing they use. Flag anything that doesn't match the four approved phrases.

2. Decide: quality date or safety date.For each product, determine whether your date label communicates quality ("BEST if Used by") or safety ("USE by"). This isn't a formatting decision. It's a food safety decision. If you're labeling something as "USE by," you need shelf-life studies and validation data to support it.

3. Update label artwork.Work with your packaging supplier or in-house design team to update the date label language on all affected SKUs. If you're running through existing packaging stock, plan the cutover so products manufactured on or after July 1 carry the new labels.

4. Update coding equipment.If your date codes are printed on-line (inkjet, thermal transfer, laser), update the templates in your coding system. This is the easiest fix, but it's also the one that gets forgotten until the week before the deadline.

5. Remove consumer-facing "Sell By" dates.If your packaging includes a "Sell By" date, it has to go. You can keep a coded version for retailer stock rotation, but the consumer-visible label can't say "Sell By."

6. Train your team.Make sure your QA staff, production supervisors, and anyone involved in label review understands the new requirements. A mislabeled product manufactured after July 1 is a compliance violation.

7. Document everything.Keep records of your label changes, the rationale for quality vs. safety date decisions, and any shelf-life validation supporting "USE by" dates. If you're SQF-certified, this ties directly into your document control system and change management process.

Enforcement and Penalties

AB 660 is enforced by local health agencies in California. A violation of the California Retail Food Code is a misdemeanor. Specific penalty amounts haven't been published yet, but the risk isn't just fines. A mislabeled product can trigger retailer chargebacks, shelf pulls, and the kind of supply chain disruption that costs more than any fine.

California retailers are going to be checking. If you're a supplier, expect your buyers to ask for confirmation that your labels are AB 660 compliant before July.

Don't Wait for the Deadline

Three months sounds like enough time until you factor in artwork approvals and packaging lead times. If the date phrase is baked into your pre-printed packaging, that's a new print run from your supplier. If your coder handles it on-line, it's a template change, but you still need to validate it across every SKU.

If you haven't started your label audit, start this week. The actual changes are straightforward. The logistics of rolling them out take longer than you think.

And if you're treating this as a California-only problem, you're going to repeat this exercise when the federal law passes. The FSMA 204 traceability deadline already showed us what happens when manufacturers wait until the last minute on regulatory compliance. Don't make the same mistake twice.

See how Beacon tracks labeling compliance and document changes across your facility.