You can of course thank your federal government for this, not the company that packages and sells the salt. They force food manufactures to put these silly expiration dates on their packages, even though they actually often don’t mean a thing. But some people act as if they were etched in stone by the hand of God Himself. At the most, they are a best guess by the food manufacturers themselves. Like a package of dried beans, if you don’t open it, and keep it in your cupboard, it could last for years. But they have to put a date on it, and so they do.