Former Northern Foods chairman and government advisor Lord Haskins has called for radical action to cut the 50% of food wasted in the UK supply chain and prevent worldwide food shortages.
Giving the 2008 City Food Lecture at London’s Guildhall last week, Haskins warned of a crisis unless major change occurred in rich consumer behaviour across the developed world.
“Put simply we waste far too much food, energy and goods and we eat too much,” said Haskins, who referred to the 30% of food wasted in people’s homes.
Part of the problem, he said, was caused by waste within food manufacturing plants. This often resulted from supermarkets giving far too little advance notice of their orders to their suppliers, while reserving the right to cancel at the last moment, he claimed.
“Go into any modern sandwich factory and you will see vast amounts of perfectly good food being dumped, either because of all round incompetence or a sudden change in the weather,” said Haskins.
“My guess is that throughout the food chain, 50% of the food produced on farms is wasted,” he added. “If we could save even half we would make a huge contribution to the environment by reducing the huge tonnage of greenhouse gases created in the production and disposal of unnecessary waste.”
He laid much of the blame for generating waste at the feet of supermarkets and low food prices, which he claimed encouraged consumers to buy more than they could eat.
“Buy one get one free promotions, especially in perishable food, have become a social evil. And the amount of packaging, particularly perishable food, seems to be growing out of control,” he said.
“Our obsession with sell-by and use-by codes result in our dumping food which is perfectly safe and acceptable.”
Haskins attacked “unduly short” shelf-lives on some products, designed to accommodate subsequent temperature abuse by supermarket customers. And he slammed the portion sizes promoted by supermarkets as “far too big”. He had similar criticisms for waste generated from restaurants and public institutions, such as schools and hospitals.
Haskins went on to criticise excess waste in supermarkets which “for presentational reasons overstock their shelves”, and which refuse to accept fruit and vegetables with slight blemishes.
In a wide-ranging speech, he said various measures should be adopted to help save the world from impending catastrophe brought about by population growth and climate change, causing worldwide food shortages.