I guess we should treat film the same as salad dressing in the fridge. If it's past the expiration date, then just throw it in the garbage.
Not really.
It is more in the "best before" category, than it is in the "discard after" category.
It isn't really cost cutting, when it comes to brands like Ilford. It is a combination of factors like much, much, much lower volumes, much less robust supply chains, highly advanced materials that as a consequence of those advancements may be more susceptible to adverse conditions than older materials, unavailability of traditional, long tested materials due to huge changes in the manufacturing world, and lack of a huge feedback generating retail market.
I don't know if historically Ilford manufactured their own backing paper like Kodak did, but Harman doesn't have that capability just as Eastman Kodak no longer does. So if all the testing methods available to Harman don't reveal the problems - they only show up once the product has been out in the vast variety of international user environments for an extended period - than the proper measure of the manufacturer's efforts really can only be how they respond to such problems.
All film manufacturers have historically had to replace materials when unexpected problems show up. The quality manufacturers have a low level of incidence. Harman/Ilford are in that group.