# People feeding expired food?



## Sapphire-Light (Aug 8, 2010)

So yesterday I was at a pet boutique looking at their stock when a person called at the phone and it sounded like the person asked the employee if they had expired food or near to be expired.

Since the employee said they didn't had any expired kibble to sell and later said, "yes we know you asked before to buy all the expired food, but they generally have a least a one or two years shelf life before expire so is rare that we could have a bag for all that time, is generally sold before that date" 

So this makes me shudder :suspicious: it really looked like someone is so cheap that they are stalking shops to buy expired food for a lower price that the retail one to feed their dogs ... ugh!!

Is horrible and hearthless, if they have a low budget then why not just look for something else than risking to poison your dogs? or it may be that this is a BYB or a miller looking to reduce cost. :dizzy:

Unless it was someone from the health inspectors and they were trying to see if they could catch someone selling stuff against the law, but it looked like it was serious.


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## Losech (Jul 10, 2012)

I don't stalk petshops about it but I will buy food that is about to expire. Call me heartless and poisoning my dogs if you want, but honestly, if I can get a top-quality food for half off because it's going to expire in two weeks I'm going to do it. I will also buy opened and returned foods since again, if I can get them for cheaper I will. I do that with "people" food too, most of which (if it is meat) goes to the dogs anyways, and I have yet to experience a problem with doing this.
I'm not stupid, and if something looks or smells off, I'm gonna pitch it. But if I can save myself some money to sock away into my emergency savings, I will.


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## Sapphire-Light (Aug 8, 2010)

Losech said:


> I don't stalk petshops about it but I will buy food that is about to expire. Call me heartless and poisoning my dogs if you want, but honestly, if I can get a top-quality food for half off because it's going to expire in two weeks I'm going to do it. I will also buy opened and returned foods since again, if I can get them for cheaper I will. I do that with "people" food too, most of which (if it is meat) goes to the dogs anyways, and I have yet to experience a problem with doing this.
> I'm not stupid, and if something looks or smells off, I'm gonna pitch it. But if I can save myself some money to sock away into my emergency savings, I will.


I don't mind the idea if the food is just a couple of weeks or maybe one or two months (as long as it looks and fells ok) , but the person sounded very persistent to buy bags in bulk so it has many of dogs or he/she does not care to buy 10 bags and keep feeding even if they had expired many months ago.

Also is against the law to sell expired food, for humans or not, is ok to sell neat to be expired in discount.


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## riddick4811 (Nov 2, 2011)

While I don't go looking for it, I have bought food that was to be expired soon, but I asked to open the bag first. If it looked/smelled ok, I would buy it, if not they needed to discard it anyways. It was fine and I paid under $20 a bag for Holistic Select Anchovy that was going to expire in a month. At the time, I was feeding a lot of dogs and they ate the 3 bags in 2 weeks, so we had 2 weeks to "spare"! 

What I don't like is at one bent and dent store, they sell banana boxes full of dog/cat food. You have no clue what is in it, when it expired, etc. People buy them like crazy. They can rarely keep them in. They are in a plastic garbage bag in a banana box.


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## Sheltielover25 (Jan 18, 2011)

I tend to learn towards you should not be doing this. Like the pet store owner said it's usually on the shelves for two years, and like she also said it would rarely be there long enough to expire, so the fact you're expecting your animal to derive 100% of their nutrients from something that's been on the shelf of a store for 2+ years doesn't sound like a good idea. And buying opened bags sounds even worse as a lot of the good things in kibble will start go to rancid once opened so by the time it's been at the first buyer's house, returned to the store, and then sold to you there's no way to know much about it. Like how the original purchaser kept the food in terms of sealed so it will stay fresh. Just not a good idea. Expired is probably debatable but opened is definitely not a good idea.

I also think bags of no named kibble is downright dangerous considering the recalls. You need to be able to have some sort of tracking for the bag of food and how can you feed an animal food you know nothing about? That's wrong!


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## monster'sdad (Jul 29, 2012)

Depending on how the food was stored it should be fine for many months after the expiration date. Rancid fat is easy to spot, smells like drying paint.

If the bag was out of the sunlight and is sealed the food should be fine.


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## Georgiapeach (Jan 24, 2011)

Just a thought: the person could have be from a rescue, and was trying to buy the best food possible with a limited budget.


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## Sapphire-Light (Aug 8, 2010)

Georgiapeach said:


> Just a thought: the person could have be from a rescue, and was trying to buy the best food possible with a limited budget.


I wish it could be that way however as we don't have shelters there's only a couple of vets who did rescue in the past but they rarely do it now since people here don't want to adopt pets.

Mostly when the dogs were like 95% feral from the streets, what they do now is to reunite food and make a "feed walk" that is to give feral dogs donated food, and they stay being feral at the streets they don't bring them to a home, this is similar to go and feed ducks at the lake in a park.




riddick4811 said:


> While I don't go looking for it, I have bought food that was to be expired soon, but I asked to open the bag first. If it looked/smelled ok, I would buy it, if not they needed to discard it anyways. It was fine and I paid under $20 a bag for Holistic Select Anchovy that was going to expire in a month. At the time, I was feeding a lot of dogs and they ate the 3 bags in 2 weeks, so we had 2 weeks to "spare"!
> 
> What I don't like is at one bent and dent store, they sell banana boxes full of dog/cat food. You have no clue what is in it, when it expired, etc. People buy them like crazy. They can rarely keep them in. They are in a plastic garbage bag in a banana box.






Sheltielover25 said:


> I tend to learn towards you should not be doing this. Like the pet store owner said it's usually on the shelves for two years, and like she also said it would rarely be there long enough to expire, so the fact you're expecting your animal to derive 100% of their nutrients from something that's been on the shelf of a store for 2+ years doesn't sound like a good idea. And buying opened bags sounds even worse as a lot of the good things in kibble will start go to rancid once opened so by the time it's been at the first buyer's house, returned to the store, and then sold to you there's no way to know much about it. Like how the original purchaser kept the food in terms of sealed so it will stay fresh. Just not a good idea. Expired is probably debatable but opened is definitely not a good idea.
> 
> I also think bags of no named kibble is downright dangerous considering the recalls. You need to be able to have some sort of tracking for the bag of food and how can you feed an animal food you know nothing about? That's wrong!


Yeah that's the thing, the person wasn't asking for X brand of kibble in offer, but wanting to buy all what was expired  that was the thing that bothered me.

In the stores from here they don't accept return, but sometimes they have small or medium transparent plastic bags filled wit kibble and a label wit the type and brand that it is, they are supposed to be from original bags that were ripped during transport or at least that's what they say.

In other stores that are similar to the costo ones from the US, they have large dog food bags in transparent plastic and many times they don't have exp date , name, ingredient list, etc.. but people go all crazy and but it like it was the last glass of water in the desert  




monster'sdad said:


> Depending on how the food was stored it should be fine for many months after the expiration date. Rancid fat is easy to spot, smells like drying paint.
> 
> If the bag was out of the sunlight and is sealed the food should be fine.


That's true, that reminds me when sometime I see cockroaches at some supermarkets eww.


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## doggiedad (Jan 23, 2011)

there's nothing wrong with food that has an expired sell by date. it's not bad.
there's a specialty store that i go to and they sell the expired food at a tremendously
reduced price. they place the food in one area of the store with big signs saying
"expired food". i have lots of treats that's well past the sell by date because i
buy to much and it sits on top of the refrigerator.


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## doggiedad (Jan 23, 2011)

what difference would it have made if the person did ask for X brand? they wanted X brand expired because it's cheaper?



Sapphire-Light said:


> Yeah that's the thing, the person wasn't asking for X brand of kibble in offer, but wanting to buy all what was expired  that was the thing that bothered me.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Sapphire-Light (Aug 8, 2010)

doggiedad said:


> what difference would it have made if the person did ask for X brand? they wanted X brand expired because it's cheaper?


That is because the person asked for "all what you have" in other words "anything you have that is expired" so it would be the same to feed beneful or pedigree, or some of the better brands that they carry as long as in sale.


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## Sapphire-Light (Aug 8, 2010)

I forgot to add that like it was said above if it was a person for a shelter or a rescue it will not be the same, but the diet of the dog is based in whatever kibble can get as cheap as is possible.


When I was a child we had Oso, a GSD/ husky mix and we fed him pedigree/ dog chow / alpo depending in wish one was in offer or sell, years later Oso payed the price wit his health he went compleatly blind at 8 years old, and his teeth feel or broke off, and had several skin issues, we feel guilty now for him.


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## Unosmom (May 3, 2009)

there's a difference between expiration and best by date. Most pet foods have a best by date and it's probably still fine to feed 3-4 months past it since most manufacturers label it that way to safeguard themselves against any lawsuits. I've gotten a lot of free food and treats which I've fed to my own dogs and donated to rescues and never had any issues. Especially with things like hard treats, those are probably fine to feed a 6-8 months past best by date. I'm more careful with moist foods.


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## danea (Oct 25, 2008)

for example acana suggests storing their kibble at 50-68 °F, shelf life 15 month, I have never seen a store that has exact temperature all year round. 
IMHO benefits of such kibble is doubtful.


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## InkedMarie (Sep 9, 2011)

If the food had already expired, I would feed it but only if i could use it up in a couple weeks. I'd lso better be one heckuva price.


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## Sheltielover25 (Jan 18, 2011)

danea said:


> for example acana suggests storing their kibble at 50-68 °F, shelf life 15 month, I have never seen a store that has exact temperature all year round.
> IMHO benefits of such kibble is doubtful.


That is pretty interesting! I didn't know that. I would doubt they'd be the only one suggesting such standards, too.


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## doggiedad (Jan 23, 2011)

just checked the treats i have on top of the refrigerator. some of them are well over 6 to 8 months old. maybe i shouldn't
be lol. lol.



Unosmom said:


> there's a difference between expiration and best by date. Most pet foods have a best by date and it's probably still fine to feed 3-4 months past it since most manufacturers label it that way to safeguard themselves against any lawsuits. I've gotten a lot of free food and treats which I've fed to my own dogs and donated to rescues and never had any issues.
> 
> >>>>> Especially with things like hard treats, those are probably fine to feed a 6-8 months past best by date. <<<<
> 
> I'm more careful with moist foods.


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## Elisabeth (Jul 18, 2011)

doggiedad said:


> there's nothing wrong with food that has an expired sell by date. it's not bad.
> there's a specialty store that i go to and they sell the expired food at a tremendously
> reduced price. they place the food in one area of the store with big signs saying
> "expired food". i have lots of treats that's well past the sell by date because i
> buy to much and it sits on top of the refrigerator.


i would not store food on top of the refrigerator since it gets warm - at least ours does.


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