February 2002

Toss Outdated Products

Many human products are dated—look at your aspirin bottle or cereal box. But horse products lag behind. How do you decide what’s too old?

No one wants to toss a useful product, but ûit’s easy to forget how old a product is.

You can find them in every barn. Somewhere in the bottom of a trunk or tucked away in a dark corner are bottles that have been around for quite a while, but no one knows how long. Is it still good? Can you still use it?

How long a product lasts depends on several factors. One is how chemically stable the substance is to begin with—that is, how “inert” it is. Simple, solid inorganic substances, like salt or a mineral supplement, will remain unchanged for a long time, while man-made or extracted chemicals and organic substances won’t. …