Food: Cost of Living
(asked on 25th October 2022) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of (a) using and (b) delivering surplus food to tackle the effect of rising food bills on households during the cost of living crisis.
The amount of surplus food redistributed in 2021 was over 106,000 tonnes, worth over £330 million and the equivalent of over 253 million meals. Since UK-level data was first reported in 2015, overall levels of redistribution have increased over three-fold. Cumulatively between 2015 and 2021, 426,000 tonnes of surplus food have been redistributed, worth in excess of £1.3 billion pounds and equivalent to more than a billion meals.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimate that there could be a further 500,000 tonnes of surplus pre and post farmgate suitable for redistribution but noting considerable uncertainty around the practical and commercial feasibility of realising over half of this.
The latest survey of the sector can be found here:
WRAP-Surplus-food-redistribution-in-the-UK-2015-to-2021_0.pdf
Between 2018 and March 2021 nearly £13 million was awarded to over 250 redistribution organisations across the country in order to bolster the capability and capacity of the redistribution sector to take advantage of surplus made available by businesses. This funding has provided important infrastructure such as additional warehousing, vehicles, fridges and freezers.
The safe and speedy redistribution of surplus food is a priority, be it from retail, manufacture or the hospitality and food service sector, which all may have their own issues and challenges in their supply chains. We continue to support WRAP and the Institute of Grocery distribution (IGD) in the development of guidance and the sharing of best practice to advise on practical ways of increasing redistribution at short notice, and to help facilitate new partnerships.