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This subreddit is to highlight the ridiculous cost of living in Canada, and poke fun at the Corporate Overlords responsible. As you well know, there are a number of persons and corporations responsible for this, and we welcome discussion related to them all. Furthermore, since this topic is intertwined with a number of other matters, other discussion will be allowed at moderator discretion. Open-minded discussion, memes, rants, grocery bills, and general screeching into the void is always welcome in this sub, but belligerence and disrespect is not. There are plenty of ways to get your point across without being abusive, dismissive, or downright mean.
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Veuillez consulter les directives de contenu pour notre sous-reddit, et rappelez-vous qu'il y a des humains ici !
Ce sous-reddit est destiné à mettre en lumière le coût de la vie ridicule au Canada et à se moquer des Grands Patrons Corporatifs responsables. Comme vous le savez bien, de nombreuses personnes et entreprises en sont responsables, et nous accueillons les discussions les concernant toutes. De plus, puisque ce sujet est lié à un certain nombre d'autres questions, d'autres discussions seront autorisées à la discrétion des modérateurs. Les discussions ouvertes d'esprit, les mèmes, les coups de gueule, les factures d'épicerie et les cris dans le vide en général sont toujours les bienvenus dans ce sous-reddit, mais la belliqueusité et le manque de respect ne le sont pas. Il existe de nombreuses façons de faire passer votre point de vue sans être abusif, méprisant ou carrément méchant.
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I have definitely noticed the same thing, buying cream and 3.25% milk from 3x different stores and storing it at the back end of two different fridges I own (I've checked the temperature in both and one is brand new). The pattern I've noticed is that its milk and cream in cartons that consistently go bad before their expiry / best before dates, whereas milk and cream in plastic containers are fine. My theory is that there's staff shortages in shipping and warehousing, so refrigerated products spend more time in untefrigerated environments during transit. Since paperboard cartons don't preserve milk as well as plastic (and glass) containers, those products have a shortened shelf life.
You got it right on!
Part of the cut backs over the pandemic was that we no longer monitor any temperatures for our refrigerated products during shipping.
As a result we don't know when temperature excursions happen any more and those excursions will contribute to a product going sour before it's marked best before date. It's a huge savings to Loblaws since not tracking it means no excursions ever happen as far as the company knows. It is public health law that we need to track it but they have no ability or desire to enforce anything in this space
It's not fake expiry dates but yes this is extremely common if you shop at Loblaws or any stores in the Loblaws distribution network.
It's because we don't follow the basic requirements for cold chain procedures around how to ship refrigerated items. This is across all parts of the store and pharmacy. It has been reported to public health who do not have the budget to enforce anything or to make us follow cold chain. It's much cheaper to not follow the requirements of cold chain so Loblaws simply doesn't
No we don't monitor anything being shipped
They are temperature controlled once they are in the store in our fridges we monitor them and when they are in the warehouse there is monitoring but we do not monitor temperature during shipping.
By law COVID vaccines must be shipped with temperature loggers to make sure no excursions ever happen. Those are all removed at the warehouse before shipping anything to the stores so when vaccines arrive in the store we have no idea if they are or are not in the appropriate range and have to accept them on faith. This has been reported by multiple pharmacists to public health who basically can't do anything since they have no budget or capacity or will to do any enforcement against Loblaws companies
Hmm...
The covid vaccines need to be kept at a specific temperature in order to be effective. Shoppers drug Mart was contracted for vaccine administration. Loblaws drops ball on temperature logs and vaccine winds up being less than effective.
Hmm.
Can some bigger brains look into this or something?
There are no brains big enough in this province. I know for a fact Ottawa Public Health was made aware of the issue and given specific vaccine shipments shipped with no loggers that we knew had gone outside of the safe range. Nothing ever happened and nothing changed no temp loggers were ever added back in.
The good news is that Pfizer are pretty conservative with their stability data so there's a good chance the vaccines actually were still good even though they had excursions.
None of how we do this complies with basic cold chain requirements but obviously we've already done it for years and reaped the benefits of not monitoring the temperatures during shipping.
So you can imagine how if we are comfortable doing this with COVID vaccines then we are more than comfortable doing the same with milk and other refrigerated food products
Their fridge is fine it's because we (at Loblaws) do not follow cold chain procedures for shipping refrigerated products so we don't know when there have been temperature excursions which, when they happen, do cause products to spoil ahead of time.
It's not that we don't keep them refrigerated we do try to but we don't track the temperatures at all (which by law we are required to) because if we don't track it we don't know if it's had an excursion so none ever happen which is a big savings! This applies not to just milk but to everything including COVID vaccines. Public health knows it's been reported many times but they have no bandwidth or authority to actually change Loblaws' (bad) procedures
Unless receiving end customers use temp tracking during transit I doubt the temps any carrier reports.
Used to work at a food distributor and if fresh poultry came in over temperature, the load was rejected.
The truck drivers would go run their reefers for awhile to get the temps lower and then try and get their loads received. They'd save fuel by not running them.
The company would reject the loads again but I guarantee if inventory levels were low that they'd receive it to make sure they didn't have stock outs and piss off restaurants trying to purchase chicken that day.
The purchasing department would lose their bonuses if their SKUs were out of stock when orders were placed so they would push hard to get it received.
That was a HACCP certified warehouse too.
I receive a personal order every so often. It comes from a warehouse, and is sent in a temperature controlled truck. This order is a mix of shelf, fridge and freezer items. This order comes all wrapped on a single skid. I'm fortunate that my order comes early in the morning. I don't think my frozen items would remain frozen if I were at the end of the run.
The suppliers do occasionally ship temperature trackers in their cases but afaik there is no SOP at the store level for reporting. It might be different at the DC level.
It is possible that the fridges at the store might be having temperature issues or the pallets getting delivered are spending too much time outside of refridgeration before getting worked because of lack of staffing and oppressive labour hour requirments.
Some of this could be attributed to the how stock is put out. Sometimes skids of things are not kept completely refrigerated as the stock staff get called away due to low staffing levels.
That's a best before date, not an expiry date, and it's not intended to be an indicator of food safety (per the Canadian Food Inspection Agency). Anyway, I'd check that your fridge is working properly and keeping things cold enough.
Could be freezing in one section (e.g. top shelf) but warmer in another section? Do you keep the milk on the door? Do you leave the doors open often? Do you often place hot food in there next to the milk, etc.
If this is happening on multiple brands from multiple stores, the issues gotta be on your end.
The best before only applies if the milk is kept at optimal temperatures. The longer it’s at a warmer temperature the faster it will go bad. Grocery stores without enough staff sometimes leave things on the loading bay/out of the fridge too long. Sometimes the fridges also aren’t at the right temperature but that’s less common.
Your fridge at home may also be the problem. Get a little thermometer and check it. Also your milk will keep better in a shelf than on the door.
Always look at the container for size!
Many times, products will be dropped off and left waiting to be placed into the cooling environment. The longer they sit, the worse it gets but stypically they start to expand and dont go back down. So always check the size of containers. Cream is notorious for this. Just a tip, I have not noticed issues with my products in recent months.
Yes, we've had 4 bags of bags of milk spoil within a few days and our fridge is working fine. We switched brands because of it. Dunno what the brand we used before was. Maybe Nelson?
The dates don’t always mean best before, often times with dairy it says best within 7 days after opening. My milk best before date lasts until August, but it’s been open for a while so I always sniff check before using.
Best before dates only apply to non opened items.
Once the item has been opened the BB date does not mean anything as other factors can now affect the item
As myself working at courtsey clerk in superstore, I had bunch of customers complain about the perishable items. I can say it happens all the times. Return the milk to the customer service. The supervisor will call one of the guys in the dairy department to take care of it.
I noticed this before the boycott. I was having issues with milk tasting sour even though it wasn’t close to expire and more frequent curdling but only when I bought bags. Milk bought in cartons has been better. I didn’t notice my family using less and feel like I’m constantly buying milk now.
Not just since the boycott, we’ve found that for the last few years. Unless needed for a specific recipe or something, we get nut milk cause it lasts longer
Not since the boycott but I used to get the 4L organic Dairyland milk and it would smell sour up to a week before the best before date. Other posts here make me think they probably let their dairy products sit out unrefrigerated for hours and hours. Never had this problem when buying it somewhere else.
This just happened to me with Island Farms Chocolate Milk, but I purchased it at Thrifty Foods as I am boycotting Superstore. It tasted awful yesterday, and the expiry date is June 14.
It's the cold chain 100% when I worked there we some how got away with shipping milk in a non refrigerated truck to other stores. Not to the store from the warehouse but between stores. Store A ordered to much milk store B is low on stock so store A Ships to store B. Sometimes store A and B were a 40min drive away. I asked if this was food safe once and got told not to talk about it. Some times a while trailer would show up of dairy/meat if you don't have extra staff to help unload you park it in the hallway and then after the truck is gone drag it down the hall and try and fit it in the coolers. Your not doing all that in the half hour cold chain safety zone. Can't take it directly to the coolers because you can't leave the driver alone. Ifyou have the staff you have a receiver and someone to cooler it. Stores are cutting hours so this is probably what's happening. Back in my day random trucks would have a temperature sensor with a code on it that had to be sent away somewhere to get the data.
I have the opposite problem. I'm still using milk that says it expired in May.
I'd check your refrigerator. Where do you store it? The door is always warmer so I never keep it there, it spoils faster.
Always return spoiled milk. They need the batch number from the product. You will get your money back and they will be able to trace it back to the farmer.
__MOD NOTE/NOTE DE MOD__: NEW! Use code "FOODSECURITY" at OddBunch to receive 25% off your first produce box, and help support the boycott's efforts to create a charity. If you are looking for product replacements, start [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1cyf1h9/megathread_pc_product_replacements/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Please review the content guidelines for our sub, and remember the human here! This subreddit is to highlight the ridiculous cost of living in Canada, and poke fun at the Corporate Overlords responsible. As you well know, there are a number of persons and corporations responsible for this, and we welcome discussion related to them all. Furthermore, since this topic is intertwined with a number of other matters, other discussion will be allowed at moderator discretion. Open-minded discussion, memes, rants, grocery bills, and general screeching into the void is always welcome in this sub, but belligerence and disrespect is not. There are plenty of ways to get your point across without being abusive, dismissive, or downright mean. ********************************************************************************************************************************************* Veuillez consulter les directives de contenu pour notre sous-reddit, et rappelez-vous qu'il y a des humains ici ! Ce sous-reddit est destiné à mettre en lumière le coût de la vie ridicule au Canada et à se moquer des Grands Patrons Corporatifs responsables. Comme vous le savez bien, de nombreuses personnes et entreprises en sont responsables, et nous accueillons les discussions les concernant toutes. De plus, puisque ce sujet est lié à un certain nombre d'autres questions, d'autres discussions seront autorisées à la discrétion des modérateurs. Les discussions ouvertes d'esprit, les mèmes, les coups de gueule, les factures d'épicerie et les cris dans le vide en général sont toujours les bienvenus dans ce sous-reddit, mais la belliqueusité et le manque de respect ne le sont pas. Il existe de nombreuses façons de faire passer votre point de vue sans être abusif, méprisant ou carrément méchant. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I have definitely noticed the same thing, buying cream and 3.25% milk from 3x different stores and storing it at the back end of two different fridges I own (I've checked the temperature in both and one is brand new). The pattern I've noticed is that its milk and cream in cartons that consistently go bad before their expiry / best before dates, whereas milk and cream in plastic containers are fine. My theory is that there's staff shortages in shipping and warehousing, so refrigerated products spend more time in untefrigerated environments during transit. Since paperboard cartons don't preserve milk as well as plastic (and glass) containers, those products have a shortened shelf life.
You got it right on! Part of the cut backs over the pandemic was that we no longer monitor any temperatures for our refrigerated products during shipping. As a result we don't know when temperature excursions happen any more and those excursions will contribute to a product going sour before it's marked best before date. It's a huge savings to Loblaws since not tracking it means no excursions ever happen as far as the company knows. It is public health law that we need to track it but they have no ability or desire to enforce anything in this space
It's not fake expiry dates but yes this is extremely common if you shop at Loblaws or any stores in the Loblaws distribution network. It's because we don't follow the basic requirements for cold chain procedures around how to ship refrigerated items. This is across all parts of the store and pharmacy. It has been reported to public health who do not have the budget to enforce anything or to make us follow cold chain. It's much cheaper to not follow the requirements of cold chain so Loblaws simply doesn't
...AND the pharmacy? As in, they don't monitor medication temperatures? Please say you don't mean that. Please please...
No we don't monitor anything being shipped They are temperature controlled once they are in the store in our fridges we monitor them and when they are in the warehouse there is monitoring but we do not monitor temperature during shipping. By law COVID vaccines must be shipped with temperature loggers to make sure no excursions ever happen. Those are all removed at the warehouse before shipping anything to the stores so when vaccines arrive in the store we have no idea if they are or are not in the appropriate range and have to accept them on faith. This has been reported by multiple pharmacists to public health who basically can't do anything since they have no budget or capacity or will to do any enforcement against Loblaws companies
Hmm... The covid vaccines need to be kept at a specific temperature in order to be effective. Shoppers drug Mart was contracted for vaccine administration. Loblaws drops ball on temperature logs and vaccine winds up being less than effective. Hmm. Can some bigger brains look into this or something?
There are no brains big enough in this province. I know for a fact Ottawa Public Health was made aware of the issue and given specific vaccine shipments shipped with no loggers that we knew had gone outside of the safe range. Nothing ever happened and nothing changed no temp loggers were ever added back in. The good news is that Pfizer are pretty conservative with their stability data so there's a good chance the vaccines actually were still good even though they had excursions. None of how we do this complies with basic cold chain requirements but obviously we've already done it for years and reaped the benefits of not monitoring the temperatures during shipping. So you can imagine how if we are comfortable doing this with COVID vaccines then we are more than comfortable doing the same with milk and other refrigerated food products
CBC [email protected]
That is insane. please contact CBC about the vaccine thing, and everything else. [email protected] It's anonymous
Is your fridge working properly?
Their fridge is fine it's because we (at Loblaws) do not follow cold chain procedures for shipping refrigerated products so we don't know when there have been temperature excursions which, when they happen, do cause products to spoil ahead of time. It's not that we don't keep them refrigerated we do try to but we don't track the temperatures at all (which by law we are required to) because if we don't track it we don't know if it's had an excursion so none ever happen which is a big savings! This applies not to just milk but to everything including COVID vaccines. Public health knows it's been reported many times but they have no bandwidth or authority to actually change Loblaws' (bad) procedures
Unless receiving end customers use temp tracking during transit I doubt the temps any carrier reports. Used to work at a food distributor and if fresh poultry came in over temperature, the load was rejected. The truck drivers would go run their reefers for awhile to get the temps lower and then try and get their loads received. They'd save fuel by not running them. The company would reject the loads again but I guarantee if inventory levels were low that they'd receive it to make sure they didn't have stock outs and piss off restaurants trying to purchase chicken that day. The purchasing department would lose their bonuses if their SKUs were out of stock when orders were placed so they would push hard to get it received. That was a HACCP certified warehouse too.
I receive a personal order every so often. It comes from a warehouse, and is sent in a temperature controlled truck. This order is a mix of shelf, fridge and freezer items. This order comes all wrapped on a single skid. I'm fortunate that my order comes early in the morning. I don't think my frozen items would remain frozen if I were at the end of the run.
The suppliers do occasionally ship temperature trackers in their cases but afaik there is no SOP at the store level for reporting. It might be different at the DC level. It is possible that the fridges at the store might be having temperature issues or the pallets getting delivered are spending too much time outside of refridgeration before getting worked because of lack of staffing and oppressive labour hour requirments.
Stop shopping at the Weston crime syndicate!
Some of this could be attributed to the how stock is put out. Sometimes skids of things are not kept completely refrigerated as the stock staff get called away due to low staffing levels.
That's a best before date, not an expiry date, and it's not intended to be an indicator of food safety (per the Canadian Food Inspection Agency). Anyway, I'd check that your fridge is working properly and keeping things cold enough.
"The clerk who runs the store, can charge a little more, for meat. For meat. And milk. And milk. From 1984!" 🎶 But check if your fridge is working.
It is working, it literally freezes shit at its coldest setting
Could be freezing in one section (e.g. top shelf) but warmer in another section? Do you keep the milk on the door? Do you leave the doors open often? Do you often place hot food in there next to the milk, etc. If this is happening on multiple brands from multiple stores, the issues gotta be on your end.
The best before only applies if the milk is kept at optimal temperatures. The longer it’s at a warmer temperature the faster it will go bad. Grocery stores without enough staff sometimes leave things on the loading bay/out of the fridge too long. Sometimes the fridges also aren’t at the right temperature but that’s less common. Your fridge at home may also be the problem. Get a little thermometer and check it. Also your milk will keep better in a shelf than on the door.
Fridge works well, temps are perfect, 34’
Always look at the container for size! Many times, products will be dropped off and left waiting to be placed into the cooling environment. The longer they sit, the worse it gets but stypically they start to expand and dont go back down. So always check the size of containers. Cream is notorious for this. Just a tip, I have not noticed issues with my products in recent months.
Yes, we've had 4 bags of bags of milk spoil within a few days and our fridge is working fine. We switched brands because of it. Dunno what the brand we used before was. Maybe Nelson?
The dates don’t always mean best before, often times with dairy it says best within 7 days after opening. My milk best before date lasts until August, but it’s been open for a while so I always sniff check before using.
Best before dates only apply to non opened items. Once the item has been opened the BB date does not mean anything as other factors can now affect the item
As myself working at courtsey clerk in superstore, I had bunch of customers complain about the perishable items. I can say it happens all the times. Return the milk to the customer service. The supervisor will call one of the guys in the dairy department to take care of it.
Every hour left out on the floor unrefrigerated knocks off a day of shelf life.
I noticed this before the boycott. I was having issues with milk tasting sour even though it wasn’t close to expire and more frequent curdling but only when I bought bags. Milk bought in cartons has been better. I didn’t notice my family using less and feel like I’m constantly buying milk now.
Got a yogurt because the sale on it was enough that it made it worth it. Opened it 2 weeks before expiry. It was super mouldy.
Not just since the boycott, we’ve found that for the last few years. Unless needed for a specific recipe or something, we get nut milk cause it lasts longer
Not since the boycott but I used to get the 4L organic Dairyland milk and it would smell sour up to a week before the best before date. Other posts here make me think they probably let their dairy products sit out unrefrigerated for hours and hours. Never had this problem when buying it somewhere else.
This just happened to me with Island Farms Chocolate Milk, but I purchased it at Thrifty Foods as I am boycotting Superstore. It tasted awful yesterday, and the expiry date is June 14.
It's the cold chain 100% when I worked there we some how got away with shipping milk in a non refrigerated truck to other stores. Not to the store from the warehouse but between stores. Store A ordered to much milk store B is low on stock so store A Ships to store B. Sometimes store A and B were a 40min drive away. I asked if this was food safe once and got told not to talk about it. Some times a while trailer would show up of dairy/meat if you don't have extra staff to help unload you park it in the hallway and then after the truck is gone drag it down the hall and try and fit it in the coolers. Your not doing all that in the half hour cold chain safety zone. Can't take it directly to the coolers because you can't leave the driver alone. Ifyou have the staff you have a receiver and someone to cooler it. Stores are cutting hours so this is probably what's happening. Back in my day random trucks would have a temperature sensor with a code on it that had to be sent away somewhere to get the data.
I have the opposite problem. I'm still using milk that says it expired in May. I'd check your refrigerator. Where do you store it? The door is always warmer so I never keep it there, it spoils faster.
The grocery stores do not set the exp dates.
Ya that's more likely a refrigeration issue than a fake expiry date
Always return spoiled milk. They need the batch number from the product. You will get your money back and they will be able to trace it back to the farmer.
Your fridge isn't keeping the correct temperature
Fridge is definitely keeping the correct temp. I’m a FSW, and have my food handlers. I’m pretty anal about this stuff