A government advisory council drafted proposals Tuesday urging the government to oblige food producers and packers to unify the terms they use for products' expiration dates, panel sources said.

Under the present system, food producers and packers are allowed to use a range of expressions, including a "use-by date" and "quality preservation period."

The panel may also seek to require that food producers and packers print the date of packing or date of manufacture on the labels, the sources said.

Many food products currently do not bear these dates.

The advisory panel, chaired by Seiichi Honma, a professor at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, held its fifth meeting Tuesday.

It was established by the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry and the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry after public trust in food labeling was betrayed by a series of false-labeling scams, some related to the discovery of mad cow disease in domestic cattle in September.

The panel may also recommend that national and prefectural government agencies unify their systems for consumers to contact them about suspected food mislabeling cases, the sources said.

Consumers at present have a difficult time determining which entity out of a wide range of national and local government agencies to contact about such problems, they said.

But the panel is not expected to recommend cutting the red tape related to the food labeling system at either the national or local government level, the sources said.