@BaronessRos in the Lords: the scandal of food waste

Yesterday saw the publication of a House of Lords report on food waste, an event which might not usually be the cause of great excitement. However, this report was the result of six months of work by the Lords EU Sub-Committee D, chaired by Ros, and given the importance of the subject, there was some media interest.

So, late last week, Ros had done some pre-recorded interviews for the BBC and Sky News, and been interviewed for a lengthy piece in the Independent on Sunday - all good stuff.

And what are the findings?

• At least 90 million tonnes of food is wasted across the EU each year, representing a financial and environmental loss of resources. The 15 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK each year equates to a financial loss to business of at least £5 billion per year. Environmentally, the carbon footprint of worldwide food waste is equivalent to twice the global greenhouse gas emission of all road transportation in the United States.

• Efforts across the EU to reduce food waste are ‘fragmented and untargeted’ and the new European Commission, to be established in November, should publish a five-year strategy on food waste prevention within six months of taking office.

• Retailers, and in particular the big supermarkets who dominate food sales in the UK, should act more responsibly in limiting food waste by both farmers and consumers. In particular, supermarkets should move away from incentives such as ‘buy one get one free’ for certain types of produce, which may result in more food waste at home. They should also work harder to avoid cancelling orders of food that has already been grown by producers a practice which leads to unsold, but perfectly edible, food being ploughed back into the fields or left unharvested. It is estimated that millions of tonnes of food is wasted annually in this way.

• There should be Government action to encourage retailers to redistribute unsold food, where safe, for human and animal consumption rather than to be recycled via anaerobic digestion. VAT rates could be amended and tax breaks offered to encourage supermarkets to donate edible unsold food to food banks rather sending it to be composted. This would form part of a refocussing of EU policy in this area away from a ‘waste hierarchy’ toward a ‘food use hierarchy’ that stresses the use by humans of food initially intended for human consumption.

• The review on legislation regarding the feeding of food waste to animals is welcomed. The transfer of human food waste to animals should, however, only take place if scientific evidence establishes that it is safe to do so.

The full text of the report can be viewed here (PDF) or here (HTML).