(a) Except as otherwise provided in Food and Agricultural Code Section 36004(c), the licensed milk products plant which bottles or packages the following products shall be responsible for affixing the quality assurance date to all containers which are offered for sale to the consumer by a retail store: market milk, market cream, skim or non-fat milk, half and half, sour cream, sour cream dressing, low-fat milk, flavored milk, flavored dairy drink, yogurt, concentrated milk, concentrated skim milk, acidophilus milk, buttermilk and cultured buttermilk, cottage cheese, creamed cottage cheese, homogenized creamed cottage cheese spread, and partially creamed or low-fat cottage cheese.

(b) The quality assurance date shall be readily identifiable by the consumer. If a numerical sequence of months and days is used, it may not be located on the container with other numbers such as factory license number or lot numbers unless such other numbers are clearly identified. If the quality assurance date is used with unidentified code numbers, the date shall be at least the first three letters of the month followed by the day of the month.

The date shall be not less than 3/16″ in height, except that it may be reduced to not less than 1/8″ in height when applied to the cap area of a container. The date shall contrast with the background by color or clearly legible imprint.

Any means of conveying the quality assurance date shall be so affixed as to insure legibility of any other required information.

(c) The date shall be placed on the various types of containers in accordance with one of the following options:

(d) Nothing in this Section shall preclude the removal by the Director of any or all of the involved products from sale prior to the expiration of the quality assurance date if analysis indicates that the product fails to meet applicable bacterial standards.

(e) Deviations from the location of the date of the quality assurance date or the manner of declaring the date, as noted above, may be made only with written permission of the Director.