As food banks across Canada continue to face record demand, billions of dollars worth of perfectly edible food is being thrown away over confusion tied to “best before” labels, a new report says.

The report from Toronto-based food rescue organization Second Harvest found that nearly 23 per cent of avoidable food waste in Canada, worth over $12 billion, can be linked to outdated practices around date coding.

“We are way behind on food waste strategy…. People are throwing away perfectly good food because they believe food is unsafe after a certain day,” said Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest.