HB2651 – Addresses food waste by standardizing labels for food’s freshness or expiration.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Thurston County)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Rural Development, Agriculture, & Natural Resources January 24th.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
If labels on food for sale in intrastate commerce after January 1, 2022 to use a quality date or a safety date, the bill requires using the phrases “best if used by” or “best if used or frozen by”  to indicate the quality date; and the  phrases “use by” or “use by or freeze by” to indicate the safety date. (Labels could also say that the food was best used or consumed within a specified number of days of being opened; or indicate the date on which it was packed or packaged.) The bill prohibits using a sell by date or the phrases “pull by” or “pull date”, but perishable packed food with a shelf life of less than thirty days would still be required to indicate a pull date with a month and day.

The enforcement of the rules must be based primarily on complaints filed with the Department of Health or a local health jurisdiction with delegated enforcement authority. (The Department could create a webpage or a hotline for handling complaints, but would not have to investigate each one or handle them in a specified length of time.  The penalty for a violation is limited to $500, but each day on which a non-compliant item is sold counts as a violation.

The bill requires retail spaces over 10,000 sq. ft. that sell food to display at least three signs with specified text to educate consumers about the labeling system.