Discussion Forum

RE: Product Expiry US Market

Contribution from Nick written on 4/20/2012 at 07:05

Original contribution: Product Expiry US Market written by Lorraine Ryan on 4/19/2012 at 16:23)

Dear Lorraine,
I wonder as I have never come across any scientific reference depicting the formula as you mentioned (DOM+Shelflife-1=Expiry of the product).
What I presume is this is just to make a person understand with ease in assigning the correct expiration period.
As you mentioned in your example if a product is produced in Jan with shelf life of 12 months. If some rookie just adds them up to define expiry of the product Jan 2013 (Without taking into account the months of manufacture). So it will account to 13 months (Not 12 months).
In nutshell, conceptually the expiration period of a product starts immediately from the day of its manufacture (Not from the succeeding month). Hence, accordingly must be calculated in assigning the expiration dating.
As in your example your product was manufactured in Jan 2012. And this has 12 months self life in total. So you can calculate when it completes 12 months from the month/day of it's manufacture (i.e. Calculate from January to the 12th month when it completes. That would result in December).
Let me try to put it in more simpler & lucid way. As we all know, A year comprises of 12 months starting up from January and ending up in December. So you can see it only ends in 12 months in Dec once the January has been taken into account in calculating 12 months of a year.
I hope it helps.
Regards,
Nick

Answering this Contribution: