12 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
WEDNESDAY,JULY 23,2003
CONSUMER ISSUES
Supermarket can legally sell expired products
By Caleb Loong
editor@kansan.com
Special to the Kansan
During his two and a half years in Lawrence, Arthur Au Yeung, Hong Kong senior, has seldom shopped at the Oriental Supermarket, 711 W.23rd St., despite the fact the it is the only grocery store in Lawrence that targets Asians.
Au Yeung prefers to run his Asian errands in Kansas City instead of Lawrence because Asian food stores in Kansas City provide greater selection. But an even bigger reason keeps Au Yeung shopping in Kansas City.
"Most of the food products being sold in the Oriental Market are expired," Au Yeung said.
For this simple reason, he is willing to drive an additional 45 minutes to get his Asian foods and spices.
A considerable number of KU students from Asia don't shop in Lawrence because of the Oriental Supermarket's reputation of selling expired products.
Ananh Manixai, the owner of Oriental Supermarket, said his store had no problem selling goods before they expired, because the food products were imported weekly from Asia.
Although the Kansas Department of Health and Environment dispatches surveyors to inspect the store annually, the
There is no such violation in the state of Kansas. Grocery stores don't violate any existing laws, rules or regulations if it sells expired products.
surveyors have never filed any problems regarding selling expired food.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment is responsible for protecting the health of Kansas consumers by inspecting food servers and retailers. Every year, the department dispatches "food, drug and lodging surveyors throughout the state to different food service establishments, retail food stores, food manufacturing facilities and lodging facilities to conduct unannounced inspections involving food or drugs.
According to the Health Department, the duties of the surveyors include collecting evidence and evaluating food safety factors in regulated facilities for compliance with established laws, rules and regulations. If it discovers violations, the surveyors establish time periods for the correction of the violations and provide educational guidance to operators regarding food safety. Typically, the store must correct any violations within ten days, unless otherwise stated. Failure to correct such violations may result in license suspension, license revocation or civil penalty.
"Customers don't like to buy expired stuff unless you let them know that its short dated or out-of-date. Then it is okay to sell it."
"The duties performed by surveyors are
Jim Lewis
Owner of Checkers Foods supermarket
specific to protecting the health of consumers in Kansas," said Sharon Watson Public Information Director for Kansas Department of Health and Environment. "The goal of the inspection is to determine compliance with the food safety standards of Kansas."
"The expiration dates on foods, with the exception of baby food and eggs, is done voluntarily by industry and for the purpose of quality and batch control," she said.
In other words, neither federal or state laws require food products to be dated.
The surveyors can only report a violation when the product has apparently gone rotten, but otherwise, the surveyors cannot charge anyone by simply reading the expiration date printed on food packages, Watson said. The surveyors only check for items with inspections required by the state. Selling expired food is not a
violation of Kansas health codes.
Although there are no standards regarding expired food for grocery stores to follow, most stores perform its own inspections on food items, and expired food is disposed of when spotted.
Jim Lewis, the owner of Checkers Foods, 2300 Louisiana St., said when food products arrived at his store, it went out in a short period of time, and nothing stayed in the supermarket for long.
Checkers also has its own system for checking for expired products. Employees who stock the food check the expiration dates, and remove any expired product.
"Customers don't like to buy expired stuff unless you let them know that its short dated or out-of-date," Lewis said. "Then it is okay to sell it."
Expired food products could be easily spotted on the shelves. When asked why his store had expired products, Manixai said, "We will exchange our expired products."
— Edited by Annie Bernethy
Customers can check the expiration date printed on the package before deciding whether to buy the product. But that is the only protection customers have, because it's perfectly legal for stores to sell expired products.
FEDERAL COURT
Judge rules Army Corps Engineers in contempt
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A federal judge held the Army Corps of Engineers in contempt yesterday for refusing to lower Missouri River water levels to protect endangered birds and fish.
U. S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the corps and the secretary of the Army to comply by Friday or pay half a million dollars for each day the corps refuses to comply.
She said she may consider "more draconian contempt remedies" if flow is not cut by July 31.
The corps has refused to follow her order to cut the flow, beginning last week, on the lower Missouri River through Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
The agency said the order conflicts with an earlier Nebraska federal court ruling requiring enough water for barge shipping and power generation.
Kessler ordered the corps to reduce water levels when she granted an injunction July 12 to conservation groups suing the corps to alter the Missouri's flow. Kessler conceded that "a conflict may exist" between the rulings, although she said her analysis provides enough discretion for water to drop below the depth needed for navigation.
The groups want the Missouri to ebb and flow as it did before it was dammed and channeled decades ago to provide constant depths for barge shipping and other uses.
The goal is to encourage spawning and
nesting to help sturgeon and shorebird species on the government's threatened and endangered lists.
Barge and farming interests say the corps has an obligation to provide enough water for barge shipments.
The reductions in Kessler's order would halt navigation on the Missouri, dropping depths at Kansas City, Mo., from about 14 feet to eight feet too shallow for barges carrying grain and other cargo to the Mississippi River at St. Louis.
Justice Department lawyers representing the corps sought emergency stays last week that were rejected by Kessler and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
"Moving to stay an order does not represent a good faith effort to comply with
that order," Kessler wrote. "Rather, it represents an effort to postpone compliance with that order in the hope that it will be overturned on appeal."
The next option would be to request an emergency stay from Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
The corps has not revised the master manual since 1979, before the least tern, piping plover and pallid sturgeon were listed as threatened and endangered under the Endangered Species Act, one of the nation's most potent environmental laws.
When the agency announced last week it would refuse to comply with Kessler's order, it also announced plans to complete master manual revisions by next year.