Standby for incoming
So:
Date Produced = Date shot
Date Packaged = Date butchered and vac-packed
Date Best Before Fresh = Date packaged + 7 days (frozen then if not sold)
Date Best Frozen = Date packed + 9 months
Use by Date = Date packed + 15 months
When I first set up as a Food Business I did a lot of digging into the life of venison products on the web and FSA sites. There is a FSA paper (2017 - Chris Roswell) that supports up to 10 days storage once vac-packed and stored at less than 8 deg C. I went with a conservative 7 days as that's what I (and importantly my customers) are used to seeing on commercial Tescos/Sainsburys/supermarket meat of your choice and I also store at 2 deg C, so safer overall IMHO. FSA require that "
food labels must be marked with either a Best Before or Use by date so that it is clear how long foods can be kept and how to store them". There's a whole host of regulations but all are focussed on beef, pork, lamb and poultry.
In my digging I discovered that New Zealand had done a lot of research in flavour deterioration of frozen venison and a paper I cannot now find supported a maximum life of 4 years! If you Google frozen venison life you will come up with many recommendations, most of which support a freezer life of 9-12 months. These are typical examples:
If you've just bagged yourself a deer, the next step is to figure out how to store it. Deer meat can last in the freezer for quite some time if it's stored properly, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind. In this blog post, we'll discuss safe deer meat storage practices and give...
hunterswholesale.net
Venison is an excellent source of protein.
www.mda.state.mn.us
A research paper I quite life is "
The Effect of Long-Term Frozen Storage on the Quality of Meat (Longissimus thoracis et Lumborum) from Female Roe Deer (Capreolus capreolus L.) by Tomasz Daszkiewicz , Dorota Kubiak, and Agata Panfil and published in Journal of Food Quality Volume 2018, Article ID 4691542 supports 9-12 months and is highly relevant to me as the vast majority of animals I take are roe. The paper can be found here:
The objective of this study was to determine the quality of meat (<i>Longissimus thoracis et lumborum</i>) from 10 female roe deer (<i>Capreolus capreolus</i> L.), which was vacuum-packaged, frozen-stored (−26°C) for 6, 10, and 12 months, and compared with fresh, nonfrozen meat. Roe deer (aged 3...
doi.org
Given all freezer lives are
recommendations, I went with a Best Before Date of 9 months based on flavour retention and a Use by Date of 15 months based on my perception of where the meat remains edible and has not lost too much of its unique taste characteristics. I could have gone longer, but I want my customers to keep coming back so I have erred on the side of caution by going with a max of 15 months. I could have gone with 12 months but my personal feeling is that is being too wasteful of a quality food and even the FSA is heavily promoting measures to reduce food wastage. Having run this logic through my local EHO he was entirely happy and I received a 5* assessment.