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SUPERMARKETS’ OBSESSION WITH perfect looking produce and the use of arbitrary “best before” labels are causing massive food waste that if reversed could feed the world’s hungry, a UN panel said earlier this week.
Nearly 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted every year, more than enough to sustain the one billion people suffering from hunger globally, the United Nations food and agriculture organisation (FAO) said.
The energy used growing food that ultimately gets thrown out is the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the world, behind the US and China, FAO said, citing a report on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
At an event on Thursday on food waste, UN and civil society experts said combatting the problem requires key changes in how food is sold.
In many Western supermarkets, only organic sections contain imperfect looking produce, be it curved cucumbers or oranges with bruises on their peel.
Sarah Oppenheimer of the Britain-based campaign group Feedback Global said supermarket chains worldwide reject edible products over “superficial cosmetic imperfections”.
She criticised widespread practices like trimming the ends of green beans, which shops do to make them fit evenly into neat packages — wasting roughly 20% of the vegetable.
Oppenheimer also called for a standardised labelling system, noting the “sell by”, “consume by” and “best before” tags used by stores were confusing and often bore no relation to the actual expiration date of a product.
Food waste in Ireland
In May of last year, France’s parliament voted unanimously to ban food waste in big supermarkets.
Under the new law, supermarkets will be forced to donate unsold but edible food to charity, or use it as animal feed or compost.
Here in Ireland, over a million tonnes of food is wasted in the country every year. One not-for-profit organisation called Foodcloud is trying to tackle this waste, by redistributing food to charities.
In Ireland, households spend around €700 on wasted food every year, according to Safefood figures.
Here are some tips for cutting back on wasting food once you do bring it from supermarket to your home.
- Additional reporting Aoife Barry
Can we please stop propagating the lies of the English media? Brexit did the damage, not the protocol.
You can’t hold a poll asking people if they think the Protocol is good for Northern Ireland without clarifying what the alternative is.
That’s like asking a child if they think the settlement that their parents agreed to after divorce is good.
Let’s be clear… article 16 does not end the protocol. It can suspend a part of it for a short period of time. When the UK says it will trigger A16, call it out for what they want to do….they want to scrap it and force a border on the island of Ireland or a border between Ireland and EU. That’s their plan and I believe it’s been the plan all along. This mess has been made by the UK and the protocol is a plaster. The GB companies that send those goods that will never end up back in the EU (including ROI) need to be better catered for. The issue is that there is no trust between the UK and EU as, so far, the UK hasn’t implemented main parts of the protocol so all at risk goods must be considered guilty until proven innocent.
Ok theJournal…. Time to correct your headlines… “Is Brexit bad or good for firms in Northern Ireland?”
The protocol is a workaround to the main issue, Brexit..
While I’ve no doubt it has caused some legitimate disruption for businesses heavily linked to GB, how did the study take into account costs (for consultancy etc) that would’ve been incurred without the procotol because they also trade with the EU?
Or how did it take into account all the paperwork NI businesses save because they can trade with the Republic and the rest of the EU freely?
All these analyses seem to assume that trade with Ireland was either insignificant, or its continuity was a a given (neither of these are true) and that any disruption with GB is a cost without any quantifiable benefit (again not true).
It’s not the protocol that’s not working. It’s brexit that’s not working.
How dare the EU break away from the United Kingdom. They’ve made things very difficult for everyone, especially the Brits!
By leaving the CU and SM and going for a Sharia Brexit GB turned itself into a legal and regulatory Kaliningrad. Their call-their choice…If they hadn’t CHOSEN that there would be no protocol. They want a hard border in IRL or IRL out the the EU-they will get neither but what they will get is humiliation.
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