It spoiled before its date

Start with the chain, not the recipe

Cold holding at your premises, the temperature at dispatch, the journey, and the retailer’s cabinet. Each one has a record or it does not, and the first gap in that sequence is where the investigation stops and the assumption starts.

Then contamination after the heat step

Everything downstream of pasteurization is about not reintroducing what was just removed. Filling equipment, containers, lids and hands are all in that path, and a product with no acid and no preservative has nothing to fall back on.

Then the date itself

If the cold chain held and the product still failed, the date was optimistic. Shelf life established at your coldest shelf and printed as though every cabinet matched it is the most common version of this, and the fix is to re-establish the date at a realistic temperature.

A single unit is a different story from a batch

One failed container among many is usually handling. A pattern across a batch is yours. The batch code is what distinguishes them, and without it every complaint is treated as the worse case by default.

Do not extend a date to reduce waste

It is the one response that converts a wastage problem into a safety one. If the date is causing too much loss, the answer is forecasting, smaller batches or a different distribution model, not a longer number.

Ask the retailer what their cabinet runs at

It is an awkward question and a reasonable one, and a serious stockist will know. A cabinet running several degrees warm will shorten every product in it, and the complaints come back to the maker rather than to the shop.

Keep a retained unit from every batch

Stored the way a customer would store it, opened at the date. It is the only way to know whether your own date holds under ordinary conditions, and when a complaint arrives it gives you a reference from the same batch rather than an argument.

References