As long as its the sell by date, and NOT the expiration date, you should be ok..

the best indication of whether meat is any good is by taking a good close sniff. if it doesn't smell foul, cook it and enjoy.

i wouldn't. but im pretty sure it won't kill you :)

To me, a sell by date can be an expiration date. I would smell the meat and look at the color. If neither of these are off, it may be o.k., but I usually try to use meat I buy by the second day I buy it, or freeze it.

If it smells rancid or "off" in any way, I'd back off... but otherwise, you should be fine.

I could never figure out sell by dates...how long after the sell-by date does something truly expire? Do they assume people will grill stuff up as soon as they get it home, or that they'll put it in the fridge for a couple days?

I do it all the time, and I have good reason to be careful! I have NEVER been ill from THIS but I did eat out at restaruant in NYC, "Ruby Foos" in August of 2004 (mind you, I hadn't eaten the entire day) and within 20 minutes of leaving the resaurant, I was throwing up and actually blacked out in the cab after getting tunnel vision (so these are the signs :-)! After a couple hours, I could not get off the toilet and I won't tell you what was going on, let's just say, it was not pleasant. By the next morning, I could not stand the pain so I checked into the hospital. The blood work came back, and sure enough, it was salmoenila poisoning. Again, this did NOT happen from eating at home, or eating past the sell by date, I only say this because, I HAVE HAD THE WORST that can happen and let me tell you, a day of abdominal pain, internal bleeding and two bags of Cipro fed into your veins are REASON enough to keep me from taking ANY chances. SO, when I say this, I know what I'm in for, and I use to think, "hey, is it worth $12 to get that again?" and I would ALWAYS throw it out the morning of, or most certainly, after the sell by date. THEN, I made the mistake of eating steaks I had bought that were FIVE days past the sell by date! I didn't really notice it until I picked the packages up off the counter and looked at the date AFTER eating dinner. Needless to say, that was a wrestless night for me ... waiting for the hit, the pain, but ... it never came! SO, I decided, hey, I been worried about this too much, and started not freaking out every time a sell by date passed! I would say, if, after washing the food COMPLETELY, it still smells rank, then you're taking your chances, but even then, unless you eat it RARE or cooked for 2-3 minutes, you'll be fine. If it's gray for example, I'll just cook it medium even though I prefer medium rare. There is ALL kinds of information on the web about the bacteria and how fast it grows and what is a safe level, and how to minimize with preparation, so it can be confusing for sure. The "sell by" date is really a "pull by" date which means, that's the date they freeze it or ship it out for other processing, or so I was told by the butcher at the Publix where I shop. He says, "off the record" that it's a 5-7 day window past that date for freshness but after 7-10 days the bacteria grows so fast, almost exponetially, that you're sure to get ill. Today, for example, I had a steak that was six days past the date, BUT ... #1) When I buy meat, I open the package, wash it completely and stick it in a ZipLock. #2) It smelled fine after washing again before preparing to cook. #3) Had about 50% red to gray coloring in it, and #4) I cooked most of it medium rare (some of the tenderloin was closer to rare!). Alternatively, if it takes me down, I'll log back in and let you know, but so far, no worries ... LOL. You'll be fine, unless, as I said, it is particularly rank after washing it completely. Besides, some guy in Britian ate stuff a month or two past the date ... every day eating stuff that was progressively older, and he never had a problem. I would Google it first though, and do more research to be comfortable. Don't take a bunch of peoples word on the Internet as gospel truth for sure :-) Hope this helps, Good Luck!! :-)