The benefit of drastically increasing/decreasing food shelf life has not been considered from a value chain perspective. When considering packaging alternatives, standard practice restricts viable alternatives to those within a narrow barrier range. The relevance of research is that the food packaging industry is now exploring an array of lower and higher barriers than ever before. This is primarily due to recent supply chain disruptions impacting the availability of packaging and the shifting (now both lower) costs of extremely poor barriers and excellent barriers. This work is also designed to assist in understanding impact and opportunity associated with switching to drastically poor and excellent barriers. A case study – using a breakfast cereal - will be used to frame the situation and define value chain factors involved to assess the impacts of drastically altering a cereal's shelf life. This case study involves substituting an improved barrier of metalized film for BOPP, which allowed the product shelf life to increase over 3000%-fold and considering a poor barrier of a paper-based structure that decreased product shelf life by 200%. Results show the impact of barriers at the extremes in the value chain for a cereal. The shelf life changed and its value at each stage and the use of altered stages in the value chain provide a clear image of a return on investment of switching to either very poor or excellent barriers.  Analysis of the implication of switching to drastically poor and excellent barriers provides a window into the role of packaging in preventing food waste and its role in addressing food security and resiliency. Further exploration addresses value chain issues/opportunities arising from this altered shelf life, precisely what entities benefit from added shelf life, and what opportunities for package innovation are opened with drastically altered barriers. Speaker: Claire Sand, PhD