Subject: Canned food

From: [email-masked] (Brian Gray)
Date: 28 May 1995 04:09:12 GMT

How long can canned food be kept good for?  I've gotten answeres from 
2 years to forever.  What other long-term storage of food is the best?
 
   Hope this is the right newsgroup for this..
 
            Thankx

                 -Bri
                  [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Rob-L)
Date: 28 May 1995 19:47:55 GMT

Brian Gray ([email-masked]) wrote:

:    How long can canned food be kept good for?  I've gotten answeres from 
: 2 years to forever.  What other long-term storage of food is the best?
:  
 
The dog food I just bought has a "Best Before" date about 16 months from 
now stamped on top, FWIW.

---

From: [email-masked] (John W. Larkin)
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 22:59:56 GMT

>now stamped on top, FWIW.
With the understanding the the canned food product was produced in
such a way as to render it commercially sterial - as long as the food
product is stored at typical storage conditions for that product and
the hermitic seal has not been broken, the food product will never
become a possible public health hazard.  Now this doesn't mean that
the food product is any good, there will be a number of quality issues
that will need to be taken into consideration.  The two keys here are
that the product is stored under normal conditions and the can is not
damaged.  The normal storage conditions is necessary becasue a canned
food product is not processed in such a way as to destroy all
bacteria.  Many thermo-duric bacteria will survive the process and may
grow when the product is stored at elevated temp.  When the bacteria
grow it will ruin the food product, but there will not be a possible
public health hazard.  The can seal is critical, because if it is
broken the commercially sterial enviornment will no longer be there
and the food product can become contaminated and the possibility of
pathogenic bacteria growing exists.  

The is no real defined number of years that a food product can be
stored and still consummed because of the numerous different
conditions the can can be stored in, but two to three years would be
about the extent of what I would want to let a can sit before being
eated.

John W. Larkin           ([email-masked])
366 Meadow Green Dr.     (Home Ph. 708-305-9012)
Naperville, IL  60565    (Work Ph. 708-728-4131)