I just received my yerba mate and the consume by date has expired?

This is an interesting observation. We have come across this question before.

We take great care not to buy any products that have expired or have an expiration dates that is less than 6 months, preferably a year from the purchase date. We will not ship the product if in our estimation can not be consumed before the expiration date.

We need to point out that our yerba mate is imported from countries that use a different date convention or format than what we are accustomed to.

In South America like in Europe they use a different date convention or format. In North America particularly in the United States and Canada we use the month, day, year format or (mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy).

In South America, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay they use the day, month, year format or (dd/mm/yy or dd.mm.yyyyy).

So that in North America we would state July 27,2010 as 7/27/2010 where in South America it would be dated as 27/7/2010.

Ok that was an easy one, what about December 5, 2010, well in North America we would state it as 12/5/2010. In South America it would be stated as 5/12/2010. Without knowing the date format you would then think that it had expired on May 12th 2010.

Here are a couple of sample dates on boxes of tea bags:

The consume by date on this Rosamonte Tea Box is April 27th 2011.

The consume by date on this Cruz De Malta Tea Box is December 5th 2010.

Rosamonte and Cruz de Malta are two popular brands that are still using the the 3 date format. Most of the other companies have changed to a 2 date format where they only use the month and the year to state the expiration date.

Here is a link to wikipedias' page on date convention in the different continents.

Hope this will clarify any questions you may have about expiration dates on items that we sell that are imported from South America.

Return to FAQ's

Home