How long doesLuncheon meat or poultrylast in the fridge once opened?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — store-sliced and pre-packaged — and they do not keep for the same time: Luncheon meat or poultry, store-sliced holds 3 days to 5 days outside the freezer, Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged holds 2 weeks.

Freezing changes the unit, not just the number

Freezing does not just add time to this item, it changes the unit the answer is written in: 2 weeks in the sealed fridge against 2 months in the freezer, 4.3 times longer, months in place of weeks.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The USDA rates this item cold or frozen and never at room temperature: no pantry figure exists for it, as for 222 of the 466 foods in the data that get no pantry time at all. The source also indexes it as store sliced, store, sliced and packaged.

Luncheon meat or poultry, store-sliced

• In the freezer1 month to 2 months
• Unopened · in the fridge3 days to 5 days

Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged

• In the freezer1 month to 2 months
• Unopened · in the fridge2 weeks
• Once opened · in the fridge3 days to 5 days

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 5 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Luncheon meat or poultry, store-sliced

• In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you stored it
• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 5 days after the day you bought it

Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged

• In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you bought it
• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by2 weeks after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 5 days after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 3 days to 5 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged is an animal food, or made with one. Past it, throw it out rather than taste it: a perishable food can carry enough bacteria to make you ill while it still looks and smells fine.

The figures in the freezer and in the freezer here are a quality window. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged past its 3 days to 5 days in the fridge once opened window, or the container sat out on the counter overnight. Throw the container out without tasting it, and count any hours it already spent out of the refrigerator as part of that window rather than on top of it.

The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. Freezing stops the clock but does not turn it back: food already past its window is not rescued by putting it in the freezer. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.

Is that a long time?

3 items in the Deli & Prepared Foods list keep exactly as long as Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged, 2 weeks, so they all share place 4 of 25 rather than being put in an order the data does not support.

Items that behave the same way

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 4 days to 2 weeks against the 2 weeks of Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners, with USDA sealkeeps exactly as long
• Salami, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meatkeeps exactly as long
• Cooked ricekeeps 4 days in the fridge
• Coleslaw, homemade, preparedkeeps 3 days in the fridge
• Leftoverskeeps 3 days in the fridgewith meat, fish, poultry, or egg
• Fruit, cutkeeps 4 days in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

No other product in the file is rated in exactly this set of places: freezer, freezer from the day of purchase, refrigerator from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening, and nothing else. That makes the shape of this record unique among the 466 products here, so the closest comparisons available are the entries that share most of it — Salami, Main dishes or meals and Pate. Their windows are printed beside them below, and none of them is rated in quite the same way.

Nothing carries this exact set of places, so these share most of it.

• Salami3 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Main dishes or meals3 days sealed in the fridge
• Pate1 day sealed in the fridge
• Canadian bacon10 days in the fridgesliced · up to 80 days sealed in the fridge
• Hummus7 days in the fridge once openedcommercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) · up to 3 months sealed in the fridge
• Olives2 weeks in the fridge once openedblack and green · up to 18 months sealed in the pantry
• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Cooked rice4 days in the fridge

The rest of the Deli & Prepared Foods shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Deli & Prepared Foods shelf together with 24 others, and 3 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Olives at 18 months down to Pate at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners, Salami and Cooked rice, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Deli & Prepared Foods the same product ranks 4 of 25. The middle of the shelf is Fruit, cut, at 4 days.

• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Salami2 weeks3 days in the fridge once opened
• Cooked rice6 days4 days in the fridge
• Cooked pasta5 days3 days in the fridge
• Potato salad5 days3 days in the fridge
• Pasta salad5 days3 days in the fridge
• Coleslaw5 days3 days in the fridge
• Poultry pieces4 days3 days in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 2 weeks, Deli & Prepared Foods offers 3 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Canadian bacon at 80 days against this one's 2 weeks, and the rest are Hummus and Olives. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 19 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Cooked rice and Cooked pasta among them.

• Canadian bacon80 days10 days in the fridge
• Hummus3 months7 days in the fridge once opened
• Olives18 months2 weeks in the fridge once opened

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 184 and 192 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 4 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Luncheon meat or poultry, pre-packaged, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. The same record answers to store sliced, store, sliced and packaged in the source's own index.

Where these numbers come from

Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.

Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.

Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.

Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.

USDA index terms: luncheon, Luncheon meat, meat, packaged, poultry, pre packaged, sliced, store, store sliced

KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.