Who's Up For A Date?

This morning I came across an article titled 'Why I Fear Sell Dates', which dealt with the sell by dates on food packaging. How many times have we all looked for a sell by date and found what seemed to be a Department of Defense code word that would only kill us if we knew what it was referring to? I have to admit that until I was working in a grocery store, I never paid too much mind to these dates, assuming that people who were responsible for putting the products on the shelf were watching them carefully and took them off when they expired. It turns out that many shoppers live and die by this date system, and sometimes finding the date alone becomes a real chore in itself. Dates appear in various ways such as 6 JUN 09, 06-06-09, 09-o6-06, well you get the idea. Yesterday it was announced that the originating country of certain products will now have to be put on all packaging. So, as I've been saying all along, why can't the expiration date be stamped on all things in a uniform way, such as Jun 06, 2009? The rule of thumb in our country should be that if it's going to be sold here, the sell by date should be displayed clearly and uniformly, period!