Phase 4 of the Courtauld Commitment should have more ambitious targets and government should set regulation to help reduce food waste, the Labour MP for Bristol East told FoodManufacture.co.uk.
“Not enough attention has been given to the amount of waste generated by manufacturers and retailers,” she said at food waste charity Hubbub’s Food Hub launch at the House of Commons yesterday (February 12). “The industry has set itself a very low voluntary target with the Courtauld Commitment.”
The Courtauld Commitment phase 3 aimed to reduce traditional grocery ingredient, product and packaging waste in the supply chain by 3% by 2015.
Ambitious departure
“Details of Courtauld phase 4 are being worked out,” said McCarthy. “I hope that it will see a genuine and ambitious departure from what has preceded it so that – in conjunction with the voluntary action that’s been taken – we see real progress towards achieving our targets.”
McCarthy called for government to make the proposed legislation outlined in her food waste bill official regulation.
It would involve forcing major retailers and small businesses to donate food that was fit for human consumption and introducing a Good Samaritan law.
“This would free companies that wanted to make food donations from civil and criminal liability,” McCarthy claimed.
But the government ruled against the need for regulation and a Good Samaritan law, she added.
“It took the view that regulation wasn’t needed and you could leave things to voluntary action,” she said. “Voluntary action is all well and good but it won’t get us where we want to be as quickly as regulation would.”
McCarthy also called for more food waste audits and a change in how data was gathered.
“Food waste has been bound up with packaging waste,” she said. “So you can’t tell if packaging was getting smaller or food waste was going down.
“All supermarkets are lumped together so we know how the sector is doing but not how individual supermarkets are … There are good guys and bad guys.”
She praised Tesco for releasing its food waste figures and Sainsbury for its relationship with food redistribution charity Fareshare.
Food waste facts
30 – 50% of all food is wasted
Half of this is by the food industry
An average UK family throws away around £700 worth of food per year
Source: McCarthy/ Tesco
Disproportionate emphasis
Founder of food waste charity Feedback Tristram Stuart said although there should be a focus on reducing household waste, he criticised the food industry for unfairly shifting the focus onto it instead of waste in production.
“What I see is a disproportionate emphasis – led by and large by the supermarkets and backed up by government-funded studies – that shifted the focus principally to household food waste.”
Stuart also criticised the British Retail Consortium (BRC) for releasing “factually incorrect” figures that claimed retailers were only responsible for 1.3% of food waste.
“Whilst this is based on the fact that their stores and depots are producing a relatively small amount of waste, they are nevertheless responsible for a large amount of food waste in the supply chain,” he said.
The BRC included non-edible foodstuffs such as tea bags, bananas and chicken bones in its household waste statistics, claimed Stuart. It omitted edible food industry waste from farms, slaughterhouses and fish at sea – as well as food waste from UK retailers’ overseas supply chains, he added.