In today's newspaper there is a B.S. story about canned foods. Please let me clarify it. My family owned a food processing company for 50 years in the U.S. I was the youngest certified food processing engineer in the U.S. at age 18. The expiration date is not that it is a BEST IF USED BEFORE BY DATE. All low acid foods such as corn, beans, canned meat etc. are thermally processed to render botulism inert. Once you have a hermetically sealed container and it is processed properly unless that seal is broken it is good for life. In other words 20 to 30 years. Now if the ends are pouched don't buy it, if you look at the seams and they have lost the integrity don't buy it. When in doubt bring the product to a boil for two minutes and this will render 99.9 percent of the bacterial inert.