Food campaigners today urged supermarkets to stop promoting unneccesary food purchases, following Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s statement [1] that consumers should waste less food [2], to keep the cost of living down.

“Gordon Brown is right to say that wasting good food also wastes money,” said Kath Dalmeny, Policy Director of Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming. “But he appears to point the finger of blame only at individuals, rather than telling supermarkets that they need to sharpen up their practices. There is huge waste throughout the food supply chain, caused by ‘buy one get one free’ promotions, and cosmetic standards for fresh produce.”

“Supermarkets bombard shoppers with messages to buy more and eat more, with highly persuasive price promotions,” continued Kath Dalmeny. “The promotions are carefully designed to prompt impulse purchases. Shoppers end up buying products that they did not plan to, and a lot of that food goes to waste.”

“We also know of farmers who have had to throw away up to a fifth of their crop just because supermarkets say the fruit or veg is the wrong colour, size or shape,[3]” she continued. “There is huge waste even before the food gets to the supermarket shelf. Gordon should use his influence with the supermarkets to prevent this.”

Between one fifth and one third of all greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the food we eat. Throwing away perfectly edible food effectively wastes all the energy, fuel and farm inputs that have been used to create that food in the first place.

Sustain, an alliance of organisations working to promote better food and farming, welcomed the Cabinet Office report, saying that government leadership is needed to make the food chain more fair and less environmentally damaging. Sustain agrees with the report’s analysis that “Despite the progress made, we are still a long way from having an environmentally sustainable food chain.[4]”

Contact

Kath Dalmeny, 020 7837 1228; 07989 557982; kath@sustainweb.org

Notes

[1] Gordon Brown’s statement marked the launch of the Cabinet Office’s review of food policy, see: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ He said: “If we are to get food prices down, we must also do more to deal with unnecessary demand – such as all of us doing more to cut food waste which is costing the average household in Britain around £8 per week.”

[2] The government’s Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP) calculates that one third of the food we buy ends up being thrown away, see: http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

[3] Waste caused by supermarket cosmetic standards was highlighted in the Friends of the Earth report ‘Supermarkets and Great British Fruit, see: http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/supermarket_british_fruit.pdf

[4] See page vi of the Executive Summary of the Cabinet Office report ‘Food Matters’.