Food Waste

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for initiating the debate and for her excellent overview of where we are at the moment. I start by proudly declaring my interest as a new member of the board of WRAP—for the uninitiated, that is the Waste and Resources Action Programme—taking over from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I look forward to learning much more from that organisation and supporting its excellent work over the coming months and years. I am so glad that I decided not to focus on the Feedback report from Kenya, which is a very important part of all this. The noble Baroness mentioned the brand, Love Food Hate Waste, which will be well known to all in this Room and increasingly better known even to those who take less of an interest in these matters, as well as consumers.

I was asked on BBC Essex this morning what the problem is, why it matters and what we can do about it. I am not sure that I can answer all those questions in five minutes, but I shall give it a go. The problem, as the noble Baroness said, is that each year one-third of all food produced for human consumption across the globe is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain from production to consumption. The costs are enormous. Enough food is grown to feed the world today as well as the coming billions. We must support farmers in developing and sharing knowledge around cultivation methods, seed varieties and rearing techniques to reduce pre-farm gate losses. Improving food storage and investing in transport, which is badly needed to move food from producers to consumers, could help to reduce the amount of food lost across the globe.

Why does it matter? In a nutshell, we have a duty of care to the next and future generations to conserve and preserve the earth’s finite resources. Cutting down rain forests to grow soy, not for human consumption locally but to import for our pigs, seems absolutely crazy. What can we do about it? The noble Baroness has put a lot of questions to the Minister, whose answers I look forward to hearing. Here in this country, there are many more things that we can do, as government, supermarkets and consumers. I too pay tribute to the campaigners in this field who have done excellent work to highlight the issue—to Tristram Stuart at Feedback and to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, whose two brilliant television programmes last autumn motivated a new audience. What a great communicator he is. Who can forget him taking one-third of the food out of a shopper’s trolley and just chucking it away to illustrate graphically the amount of food consumers buy and then bin, as well as all the additional collection costs? How can we not be ashamed that the average family throws out the equivalent of £700-worth of food every year? That is £60 a month, and more than half of that food is edible. Between 20% and 40% of UK fruit and vegetables are rejected before they even reach the shops because of strict cosmetic standards set by supermarkets. This too was graphically highlighted by Hugh in his film about the parsnip farmers in Norfolk and their treatment by Morrisons. They tragically subsequently went out of business, but I would be surprised if the adverse publicity did not also damage Morrisons’ bottom line, as well as its reputation.

The point is that all of this could be a win-win. Greater support could be offered to FareShare, for example, which saves food destined for waste and sends it to charities and community groups who then transform it into nutritious meals for vulnerable people. The food it redistributes is fresh, quality and in-date surplus from the food industry. Last year, it redistributed the equivalent of 16.6 million meals. But despite a 30% growth last year, Fareshare was only donated 2% of what is available, unlike in France, for example, which redistributes closer to 25%, potentially saving charities £250 million. That is a heck of a lot of money. I hope that all large food retailers will commit to the principles of Courtauld 2025 and take immediate voluntary action to embed practices to cut food waste and improve implementation of the waste hierarchy in their disposal of food.

Confusion about food labelling persists. As far as I am concerned, the “sniff, smell and taste” test works, but if you are anxious or squeamish the use-by date is the only one that really matters. There are lots of encouraging figures in terms of reduction but there is so much more to do. As consumers, we can all do more to waste less. We can plan better, shop better, cook better, and be aware that by doing so we are saving ourselves money and saving our planet for future generations.