A relative of mine used to work in the field of frozen food. They conducted a "crash test": If you defrost and re-freeze food several times, this mimics "decay" in a quicker way. From those results, they could figure out shelf life (without actually having to wait e.g. 27 months).
ro6in t1_j6k9t7c wrote
Reply to ELI5 How do food producers work out the best before date? by Overseer090
A relative of mine used to work in the field of frozen food. They conducted a "crash test": If you defrost and re-freeze food several times, this mimics "decay" in a quicker way. From those results, they could figure out shelf life (without actually having to wait e.g. 27 months).