While new laws enforcing labelling standards for locally made food will be welcomed by most consumers the new act won't address imported food.

Imported food products display ingredients and sell-by dates only if it is required in their country of origin.

Chief Environmental Health Officer Estlyn Harvey admitted the legislative gap creates a grey area which makes it difficult to monitor local shops.

"Even meat products - all you see is a name of the product and the weight," she said.

Although some products come with codes often they are undecipherable to local people.

"We want to liase with importers to explain their codes," Ms. Harvey told The Royal Gazette.

During a cursory check of products in three Hamilton grocery stores last week, The Royal Gazette found many goods failed to display expiry dates and others were out of date. Unfortunately, the new legislation will not stamp out these problems.

But Supermart general manager Tredick Gorham said the US Food and Drug Administration has an effective quality control system which indirectly benefits Bermuda.

He said foreign food manufacturers are unlikely to try to dump old tinned food in Bermuda because it wouldn't be worth the effort. "You have to recognise that Bermuda is 60,000 people," Mr. Gorham said. "They can't dump anything here. It's like one small town in Kansas. We don't have the volume to do a dump.

"I call wholesalers in the US, they have millions of cases and we want a few. No one wants to pull three boxes out of a trillion dollar operation."

And he explained food is often still good for a day after the displayed expiry date as stores could not sell stuff that was expiring within the hour.

But while labels are often incomprehensible to consumer, local grocers reject the idea of relabelling localling.

"We all want clearer labels, it would be a lot easier," a Marketplace spokesman said.

But putting clearer use-by labels on foreign products once they arrive in Bermuda would add substantially to the store's costs, he added. He said a team of people work to ensure items are up to date at Marketplace but admitted: "With 22,000 items in the store, it's a terrific challenge."