ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. (WOWO): The grocery industry has discovered there’s a lot of confusion about the dates we’re seeing on food labels and it’s not hard to understand why.

There can be more than ten different date labels on packages. For example: Sell By, Use By, Expires On, Best Before, Best if Used By, etc.

Turns out Sell by and Best if Used By are two radically different things in grocery speak so there’s a new industry-wide initiative to streamline date labels down to just two standard phrases. “Best If Used By” will describe product quality – still safe to eat, but just might not taste as fresh and “Use By” which will indicate food safety concerns about perishable products.

The industry is looking to get the changes in place by the end of next year.