Buying Chometz after Pesach

There are two different issues here that tend to get confused.

1) Any Chometz that was owned by a Jew over Pesach (your local supermarket that might be owned by a non-religious Jew). It is forbidden to derive any benefit from it even after Pesach. This is an issur m’derabonon. Regarding how to define ownership (the manager is Jewish, some of the shareholders are Jewish, etc.), speak to your local halachically competent rabbi.

2)Any chometz that was correctly sold by a Jew to a gentile over Pesach is %100 permissible to be eaten. Many people are of the custom not to sell actual chometz of their own unless a large monetary loss will be incurred through its disposal (a store owner or an expensive stash of whiskey). It is common, especially in Eretz Yisroel, to find those who will be stringent on themselves not to use chometz, even though it was properly sold, whose grain was ground before pesach (besides for flour that was especially prepared in a chometz free way – like that which is used for matzoh). You will find these people specifically looking for the label that says, “nitchan achar hapesach”. This is not an halachic requirement but rather a stringency mentioned by the Chazon Ish which many people have come to adopt.

Yes, many people are indeed careful with that.

In many places on many products you will see stickers on many products: ???? ???? ???

You can buy what you need from wherever you want.

You are correct more than you think. There are chametz ingredients that have a shelf life of years and are not included in processed products until they are near the end of this period.

I’m not sure why it’s taken that it was just a person chumra of his. I know many people who wait to buy “new” chometz. I personally look at every production date of chometzdig things, even now, to see when they were made. Some people are only machmir to check until Shavuos. Maybe that’s because of DY’s comment about rov being from after Pesach, but it is well known here that many companies might supply “new” chometz in the initial days/weeks after Pesach but then go back into their storage of products that are older but still within the permissible time frame and start selling them 3 or 4 months after Pesach. As far as the comment about ???? ???? ???? there is an even more stringent level which says ???? ???? ????? ???? ???? meaning that even the flour was freshly ground after Pesach. Many bakeries have a supply of flour to last for several days and the Badatz Eidah HaChareidis, which has many bakeries under its supervision, provides a number to call to hear when each bakery will start to provide products, even regular sliced bread, that is, at the very least, from dry flour and not from regular bleached flour, which by some opinions is considered chometz because it was wet at one time.