Hunt for waste. Thrown food away? Go straight to jail.
In France, wasting food has become a crime. Supermarkets and distributors will no longer be able to destroy their expired or soon-to-expire stock. They will be required to donate it. New laws echo the recent words of Pope Francis: "The culture of food waste is like stealing from the poor."
By Luis Pellegrini
It's now official: the French National Assembly unanimously approved legal measures against food waste on May 21st. Initially, the laws will target supermarkets, warehouses, and depots that have been accustomed to destroying and throwing away tons of food whose expiration date has passed or is about to expire. As in other countries, in France large food wholesalers and retailers prefer to pile everything up and, before throwing it into garbage trucks, pour liters of bleach over it, making any kind of consumption or recycling impossible.
But from now on, food distributors are prohibited from disposing of unsold products. The penalties are severe – high fines and prison sentences of up to two years for rebellious managers and directors – and can even lead to the loss of the establishment's license in case of repeated offenses. “Seeing gallons of bleach being thrown into supermarket garbage bins, almost always full of products that can still be consumed safely, or that can at least be recycled and become compost or animal feed, is an intolerable scandal,” said Guillaume Garot, former Minister of Agri-food, and one of the important voices that led to the enactment of the new laws. The decision is exemplary and should set a precedent in the countries of the European Community. Before spreading – it is hoped – to the rest of the world.
Animal feed, fertilizers, energy
The entire French food production and marketing chain is obligated to strive to prevent and avoid all waste. Unsold stocks should be donated to charities or used for social welfare. Surpluses may also be used for animal feed, or for the production of fertilizers and compost for agriculture, or to enhance the national energy sector (production of ethanol, biodiesel, etc.).
The new laws also require all supermarkets with an area larger than 400 square meters to sign an agreement with one or more charitable associations in order to facilitate food donations to impoverished or needy communities. At the same time, products that would normally be returned to producers or suppliers and destroyed will now be destined for donation.
These measures also aim to create, on a national scale in France, a general culture of economy and non-waste of food, starting in large production and commercial areas and ending in the kitchens and on the tables of consuming citizens. The new package of laws enacted also stipulates the creation of educational programs in schools and companies regarding food waste. With such initiatives, the country hopes to have overcome the problem of waste by the year 2015.
Such measures deserve all support and applause, especially when one considers that the 870 million malnourished and hungry individuals currently living in the world could be decently fed if the wasted food scraps from the developed world were simply collected and distributed.
Due dates confuse the consumer.
Wouldn't it be excellent if similar laws and educational programs were approved in the United States, Brazil, and all countries? A recent report shows that in the United States, 21% of all food is thrown away and wasted at the consumer level. At the distributor level, the waste is around 10%.
The Waste & Resources Action Programme, a leading UK-based NGO, reports that the "sell by," "use by," and "best before" warnings visible on fresh food packages often confuse consumers and contribute to unnecessary food waste. People tend to think these are peremptory expiration dates, or that after these dates the product becomes dangerous and unfit for consumption. They don't realize that, in the vast majority of cases, these dates are arbitrary. Food can remain good to eat for many days after the printed date, and canned or packaged foods can remain excellent for several months or even years after the date.
The statistics are impressive: extending the expiry date of packaged food by just one more day would eliminate 250 tons of food waste annually in the UK alone!
Alarming statistics
Aside from the humanitarian merits of implementing a general policy of zero food waste, there is another frightening factor at play worldwide: this waste is now the third largest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, one of the main greenhouse gases that cause global warming, surpassed only by the polluting emissions of the United States and China!
With a global population of approximately 7,2 billion souls incarnated on Earth, feeding every mouth in the world adequately certainly means a huge toll in terms of the planet's sustainability. But people need to eat... And a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) adds a disturbing factor to the picture: Every year, about one-third of all food produced for human consumption – about 1,3 billion tons – is wasted, along with the land, energy, water, and chemicals needed to produce and process it.
We must put an end to this selfish and immoral irresponsibility. In France, food waste is already a crime. We hope the rest of the world will follow the French example. And for those who are still not convinced, we advise listening to the Pope's words. Francis recently stated that "the culture of food waste is like stealing from the poor."