Trade Talk

In May 2005 Tony Blair, at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said: "We are in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to the risks we should expect to run as a normal part of life. This is putting pressure on policy-making, not just in government but in regulatory bodies, on local government, public services, in Europe and across parts of the private sector - to act to eliminate risk in a way that is out of all proportion to the potential damage. The result is a plethora of rules, guidelines, responses to 'scandals' of one nature or another that ends up having utterly perverse consequences."

At the time, he would not have conceived that unacceptable food waste could be one of these "perverse consequences". Nor, apparently, have the European policy makers who are responsible for most food legislation today.

The European Commission (EC) legislators are supposed to have regard for sustainability and proportionality of legislation for its purpose. This process ought to include the potential for regulation to add to food waste.

But the EC is not wholly to blame. There are still areas where 'UK Ltd', comprising government and enforcement officials, retailers and food industry combined, tend to err on the side of risk aversion. At a time of increasing prices and growing shortages, perhaps the balance of risk should move closer towards what consumers need to have rather than what is nice for 'UK Ltd' to have to protect itself.

New standards add to costs, and thus retail prices, in terms of the extra monitoring and enforcement needed. These lead to food wastage when breaches of regulation are detected. These may constitute small omissions of statutory information on the label, such as the presence of an allergen. Or certain batches of the food may have been found to contain a low level of a chemical contaminant, which does not present an immediate risk to health because it needs to be consumed in much larger quantities to cause ill-effects.

In such cases, we should question whether the destruction of significant quantities of affected food would be proportionate provided that the situation is put right for future production. Indeed, is it morally acceptable to throw away wholesome food?

This is not to suggest that food standards should not be high, but that there may be room for flexibility to reduce wastage. This ought to minimise retail prices for we still have to pay for the food no one has been allowed to eat.

Clare Cheney​​ is director general of the Provision Trade Federation​