Rowan, you made some excellent points about oils, especially the point about what a difference it can make whether the container has been opened or not and whether the bottle is glass or plastic.
(You know what's really odd? The same 2 or 3 caregivers who are so eager to throw out leftover thanksgiving turkey because it's been in the fridge 2 or 3 days or to discard a unopened canned cranberry sauce because the date on the can is 3 years past -- those same caregivers keep the canola oil in the cupboard, unrefrigerated, after it's been opened. I always keep opened oils in the fridge unless they're likely to be used up within a month or so.)
As for Melaleuca Oil, the reason it has virtually no expiration time is that it contains compounds that are antiseptic and antifungal. "Tea tree oil" is not comparable to, say, olive oil or canola oil or other vegetable oils. For one thing, it's not very 'greasy,' because it's also a solvent, which will penetrate all the layers of the skin, leaving no oily residue. (Like other extracts derived from plants, not all "tea tree oils" are the same in composition, because of the particular plants used, the manufacturing processes, etc. The Australian government has quality standards for labelling the oil "melaleuca oil," and not all "tea tree" oils meet those standards -- e.g., some are cut with other oils --, so my comments are limited to the brand of "Melaleuca Oil" that I know the most about. But the main reason I mentioned that oil is that the story makes me wonder how many other products have unnecessary "expiration dates" on them - or dates that are a lot earlier than is necessary for nutritional, medicinal, or safety reasons. (Does honey come with "use by" dates?)
I also appreciate your butcher stories. One way of "tenderizing" meat is to hang it, open, in the fridge for several days. Also, doesn't "meat tenderizer" work, essentially, by speeding up the decomposition of meat?
I thought that if you cook meat to the recommended internal temperature, even things like salmonella are killed. And if the food contains a toxic substance that won't be killed by cooking, would that food be a lot safer at 3 days old than at 3 weeks?
Thanks, especially, for these reports: [[[The butchers] maintained that the best steaks came from carcases that had been chilled (but not frozen) and hung for at least six months; Aberdeen Angus was (at the time) their preferred breed and the hanging was to allow the enzymes in the muscle fibres to have enough time for autolysis to properly tenderise the meat. A carcase that has been so treated will gradually go black on the outside and this has to be cut off and discarded, which takes time, higher skill levels, and diverts some tissue from the steak part of the food chain. These requirements, plus the overheads required for such longterm storage, mean that such steaks are rather more expensive than the cuts you buy in the supermarket (which may have been prepared with less attention to the detail required for "longterm" storage.]]
And the comment above yours, about the storage of eggs, reminded me that when I was duty cook in September of that year I asked the real cook how many eggs we had to last until the Nella Dan returned. 1200 dozen was his answer, so I cooked omelettes for the 28 of us that Sunday. I have no idea how many we'd taken down but I asked him how many had gone off since they'd arrived (we'd left Oz in December; "Six!" was his reply. And they'd been kept in the "warm store", effectively at the same temperature as the main compartment of an ordinary domestic fridge. The main risk for eggs in fridges is they dry out due to the low humidity; the warm store had controlled humidity which kept them (and other things) from drying out.]]
I do believe we in the US have become a bit paranoid about a lot of things, food safety being just one area. People in Europe and most other places in the world eat food that's less packaged, less refrigerated, and not so readily discarded and some of those other countries have greater longevity and generally better health than we Yanks do. On the other hand, there do seem to be some foods and meds-- e.g., chicken and aspirin, even bread -- that have precautions about age, storage, and/or preparation that it's important to heed. But a lot of the time, the danger comes from things like food handlers not washing their hands properly or the common-sense handling precautions not having been followed. E.g., grocery stores have been known to drop meat on the floor, pick it up and pakage it for sale; take eggs from an outdated carton and put them into a carton with fresher eggs and a new date; leave milk sitting outside of the refrigerated area for hours at a time; etc.
That's why the product-specific info is important, as well as the info that looks at the whole picture.