Shelf life: what SFDA expects behind a date

Expiry dating for food products in Saudi Arabia is addressed through the technical regulations SFDA.FD 150-1, covering mandatory expiration dates, and SFDA.FD/GSO 150-2, covering voluntary expiration dates. Between them they establish which products must carry a date and how dates are expressed.

Those regulations tell you that a date is required. They do not tell you what your particular product’s date should be. That comes from a study.

Shelf-life validation is treated as part of product registration rather than an optional quality exercise. A product stability study based on the shelf life the manufacturer proposes is expected, and the stability data has to support the shelf life printed on the label.

The practical consequence: the date is not something to decide at artwork stage and evidence later. The study is what produces the number that goes on the artwork.

The study produces the date. The date does not produce the study.

A shelf-life study runs a product under the storage conditions it will genuinely meet, and tests it at defined checkpoints across the claimed life. Three things are tracked, and a study missing any of them has a hole in it.

Microbiological stability establishes that the product remains safe. Chemical stability — pH, water activity, peroxide value, total volatile basic nitrogen, depending on the product — establishes that it is not degrading. Sensory acceptability establishes that it is still something a person would eat, which for most products fails well before safety does.

Real-time study

The product run for its full intended life. The definitive answer.

Accelerated study

Elevated temperature for an earlier indication. An estimate, later confirmed.

Challenge test

Deliberate inoculation to establish whether a named pathogen can grow.

For ready-to-eat products with no kill step after packing, whether a pathogen could grow during the stated life cannot safely be inferred from composition alone. Challenge testing answers it directly by inoculating the product and following the organism across the study.

It is the more expensive route, and for the products that need it there is no cheaper route that produces the same evidence.

A date carried over from a previous formulation is evidenced by a study of a product you no longer sell. Changing preservative level, water activity, pH, a process step or the packaging can all move how long a product holds.

The date may still turn out to be correct. What it is not, after a material change, is supported — and support is what a reviewer asks for.