Manufacture Date Instead of Expiration Date

As we indicated in earlier communications, Kan has ended our practice of printing an expiration date on our products. Effective in June 2022, we began printing the manufacture date instead of the expiration date on every new bottle of Kan tablets, capsules and concentrated liquid extracts. As you order Kan products, you'll continue to see our existing stock with expiration date on many labels, with manufacture date-printed bottled coming into stock and eventually all products will show manufacture date. It will take some time for us to use up our existing inventory of bottles with Exp Date on the label. We offer this article as an explanation of our rationale for this change, as sharing this background is consistent with our commitment to transparency and clear communication with you, our practitioner partners. More than anything, this change is made to serve you, so you don't have to discard perfectly viable Chinese medicine.

One main question that comes up is around legality or regulations. While many believe that the FDA or some other agency requires expiration dates to be listed on dietary supplements, that is not the case. Our own review of FDA regulations and discussions with industry experts and legal counsel all confirm that the printing of expiration dates is elective, and not required by any law.

If it’s not required, why do it? Good question. A review of the history of this practice shows that this became an industry practice, perhaps driven by manufacturers doing what they believed consumers wanted. One possible explanation is a cynical one: manufacturers can sell more products when their already sold units expire. Kan is not served by having practitioners or their patients discarding usable product, and we will not be misled by that pursuit of revenue. Our commitment to environmental sustainability and very simply, doing business with the holistic good in mind, guides us towards offering products that can be used for their full useful life. Hence this change.

Many manufacturers had switched years ago to using manufacture date instead of expiration date, so Kan’s change matches a trend in the industry that has been under way for some time. We’re not out on a limb here but rather following our partners and competitors. In some ways, we lead; in others, we follow.

When a company does use the practice of expiration dates, it should be based on scientific data. Kan’s analysis of our own products’ safety shows no yeast, mold, or other microbial contamination for many years after our prior three-year expiration date. We have already-opened bottled of tablets and extracts that are ten years old, and even older, showing no harmful microbial growth when we tested them. Therefore, we have no valid data on which to justify a three-year expiration date. We considered setting a longer expiration date, but for a variety of reasons (including a lack of data on which to base any arbitrary expiration date), it makes more sense to print the date of manufacture on our products.

OK, so safety is not a concern for Kan products for numerous years, but what about efficacy? This is a difficult question to address fully and accurately, and the bottom line is that we don’t have a lot of data around this issue. Dietary supplements are regulated similarly to food. As opposed to pharmaceutical drugs, which require clinical trial data, there is no requirement for efficacy studies for many of the herbs used in TCM formulas. We simply lack the scientific data to demonstrate how efficacy changes over time. Each active compound is unique, with some having legendarily long lives and some degrading more quickly.

One thing is clear and consistent, for all Kan products and dietary supplements in general: temperature, light and humidity all affect the shelf life of a product. Storing in original Kan packaging, in appropriately cool, dry, ideally dark settings, is the best way to extend the life of the products.

How long you continue to use Kan products is ultimately up to your professional judgment. I can share that Kan staff, guided by our licensed staff acupuncturists, who are experts in herbal medicine, have no issue with taking formulas made five years ago, and even longer. Rough guidance you might consider is using tablets or capsules for five years and liquid extracts for seven years. One thing to note is that we have seen some bottles of extracts, after many years, show a bit of clogging in the dropper. This is not a concern and is a logical and harmless product of herb particles settling out of solution to clog the dropper. It's also easily remedied by unclogging the dropper with a toothpick, acupuncture needle, etc. And note that while we have no data of any products going bad, we anticipate that extracts will last the longest, based on the liquid matrix of these extracts: the alcohol and glycerin-alcohol mixtures serve as additional preventives against microbial growth.

We welcome ongoing dialogue about how this change affects you, your practice, and your patients - including whether it hurts or helps your efforts to use herbs to improve your patients' health, longevity and quality of life. Kan is your committed partner in that goal, and we thank you for your ongoing partnership.