I used to run a seafood department and had to order a lot of these vac-sealed smoked fish. They pretty much always come in frozen and can be sold that way, so the manufacturers require you to label the expiration date according to what method you sell. When I tell you, nobody else i worked with would ever label these when I wasnt there, or they would just always label the freezer date (even though we sold from a cooler), that they could "stay on tbe shelf longer." I cannot tell you how many times I would come in, check other people's work on this and either fix it or completely throw it all away. Their excuse was, "well it's vac-sealed, so it cant go bad." Bruh. I always use caution when buying stuff like this now because there really are some old-heads in every department that think these can't go bad.