France Moves to Prevent Food Wastage

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WELL DONE, FRANCE !

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Type: Question • Score: 6 • Views: 6,778 • Replies: 60

[+5] - saab - 05/24/2015We are supposed to buy locally produced items - milk from cows in our area etc etc. That is in my opinion a good thing. EU countries now export for example frozen chickens to some African states....
[+3] - ehBeth - 05/23/2015We can. I didn't realize it was that unusual an idea. I do recall from my time as a volunteer with one agency that it was sometimes difficult to arrange donations of food that was already...
[+3] - saab - 05/23/2015That question I have asked long ago and here are some of the reasons. 1.If a person gets ill s/he can sue the supermarket if they take waste. 2. If food is leftover from a catering you cannot...
[+3] - ehBeth - 05/23/2015I used to help co-ordinate the volunteers for a local children's theatre when they had donor galas. A friend worked there as their fundraising manager. We always knew we'd have lots of leftover...
[+3] - ehBeth - 05/23/2015All of those things - supermarket waste going to shelters etc, catering food given to agencies that distribute food, food donated by restaurant to shelters - are done in Canada on a regular basis....
[+3] - ehBeth - 05/23/2015This is one of the agencies I've been involved with locally. http://www.secondharvest.ca/about this is one really interesting program they run http://www.secondharvest.ca/hunger-squad...
[+3] - Walter Hinteler - 05/23/2015Actually, France already had had a law and regulations to prevent food waste ... since a couple of years. The law now was just amended, because the voluntary results weren't so good as thought
[+3] - ehBeth - 05/23/2015It's always great to see progress in connecting food with people. Another initiative to prevent food waste that I think is interesting is grocery stores making plans to sell less attractive...
[+3] - saab - 05/24/2015There used to be a EU law which regulated the size and beauty of vegetables and fruit. GB had to throw out about 25% of the harvest. Once a store bought 500 kiwis, which were 2 millimetres too...
[+3] - Walter Hinteler - 05/24/2015[quote][IMG]http://i59.tinypic.com/14j100m.jpg[/IMG][/quote] [url=http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=5471][b]Source[/b][/url]

View best answer, chosen by Ionus

So why cant we do this everywhere ?

2 Replies

@Ionus,

We can.

I didn't realize it was that unusual an idea.

I do recall from my time as a volunteer with one agency that it was sometimes difficult to arrange donations of food that was already prepared (or needed to be prepared promptly) as the other agencies had to know quantities so they could arrange the right number of staff/volunteers to handle the pickup/prep/delivery in a timely way.

0 Replies

@Ionus,

That question I have asked long ago and here are some of the reasons.
1.If a person gets ill s/he can sue the supermarket if they take waste.
2. If food is leftover from a catering you cannot give it to someone else as they might get ill. and sue.
3. Food might get destroyed being moved from a supermarket/firm/restaurant/party to some other place like an old people´s home or a shelter for homeless.

It seems like it is better for homeless to find the food in carbagecans than to get something direct from a supermarket.
These are all very correct and logical reasons which you should under no circumstances doubt. - please

2 Replies

@saab,

I dont doubt what you say...it makes sense . I wonder how France will avoid the suing debacle ?

0 Replies

@saab,

All of those things - supermarket waste going to shelters etc, catering food given to agencies that distribute food, food donated by restaurant to shelters - are done in Canada on a regular basis. No lawsuits I'm aware of.

There are rules about handling food in all of these situations but it's been happening for at least 20 years.

2 Replies

@ehBeth,

I would like to see it happen in Oz...we have big cities where it would be practical . Do you know how it works procedurally ?

2 Replies

@Ionus,

This is one of the agencies I've been involved with locally.

http://www.secondharvest.ca/about

this is one really interesting program they run

http://www.secondharvest.ca/hunger-squad

basic how-to

http://www.secondharvest.ca/donate-food

on the legal side - there is specific legislation that covers this

Quote:

You are not liable for any risk associated with your donation. Second Harvest food donors are protected by Ontario's Donation of Food Act, 1994. This legislation protects those who, in good faith, donate or distribute fresh food.

0 Replies

@Ionus,

I used to help co-ordinate the volunteers for a local children's theatre when they had donor galas. A friend worked there as their fundraising manager. We always knew we'd have lots of leftover food after galas. Pretty much anything that hadn't been plated could be donated. My friend would call Second Harvest and let them know what night we'd need a a pick-up. We'd call again the night of the event as soon as we had a sense of the amount of food we'd be donating - so they'd know what size vehicle to send for pickup.

Regrettably they could never take any of the leftover bottles of wine - and we always had more donated for the galas than we needed. A lot of times, each volunteer would end up taking home 2 or 3 bottles of superb wine at the end of a gala. We learned to always bring a cloth bag to carry home our wine Cool

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Thanks, ehBeth, wouldnt it be great to see that adopted widely ? Obviously the legal aspect would have to be tightened, but to have so much waste in our countries and have people go hungry outside our windows is shameful . Kudos for all your work too !

2 Replies

@Ionus,

Actually, France already had had a law and regulations to prevent food waste ... since a couple of years.
The law now was just amended, because the voluntary results weren't so good as thought

0 Replies

@Ionus,

It's always great to see progress in connecting food with people.

Another initiative to prevent food waste that I think is interesting is grocery stores making plans to sell less attractive produce. There's no need to throw out vegetables because they're not pretty.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

There used to be a EU law which regulated the size and beauty of vegetables and fruit.
GB had to throw out about 25% of the harvest.
Once a store bought 500 kiwis, which were 2 millimetres too small - all had to be thrown out. Was not even allowed to give them away.
At least some or all of these absurd laws have changed.
Now we are supposed to buy local agricultural food. I am all for that - but not that EU exports chicken to Africa. Chicken which sells cheaper than the chickens produced locally in Africa. So the chickenfarms close down.

Distributing food is often a question of organisation and volontary helpers.
Things seem to change to the better.

2 Replies

@saab,

saab wrote:

There used to be a EU law which regulated the size and beauty of vegetables and fruit.

That wasn't just an EU-law but many counries before the creation of the European Union had 'classes' in fruits, vegetables,meat etc as well. And still have.
It's the consumer (mainly, at least) who wants "class 1a".

saab wrote:

GB had to throw out about 25% of the harvest.

Quote:

In the UK as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested due to their failure to meet retailers' exacting standards on physical appearance.

Source

0 Replies

This is getting even more interesting...I only thought of food as I ate it ....sometimes . So there is large wastage even in the fields ? I wonder how prices let alone availability will be affected if this wastage was diminished ? I was aware during gluts that some farmers in some locations are paid to not grow, and that sometimes cheaper imports force producers to not harvest .

1 Reply

@Ionus,

Quote:

Source

1 Reply

@saab,

Quote:

Now we are supposed to buy local agricultural food. I am all for that - but not that EU exports chicken to Africa. Chicken which sells cheaper than the chickens produced locally in Africa. So the chickenfarms close down.

Can you expand on this, it is not the best english . It comes across as a little confusing, to me anyway . Thanks !

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Do you know why processing has such a huge waste in the Third World ?

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Quote:

All of those things - supermarket waste going to shelters etc, catering food given to agencies that distribute food, food donated by restaurant to shelters - are done in Canada on a regular basis. No lawsuits I'm aware of.

There are rules about handling food in all of these situations but it's been happening for at least 20 years.

I had relatives in the Salvation Army and they have been doing this for a long time, I used to help load & unload trucks as a teenager in the 1960s. Often it was not exactly "waste" but products close to their end-date.

0 Replies

@Ionus,

Quote:

In the case of cereals (Figure 3), wheat is the dominant crop supply in medium- and high-income countries,
and the consumer phase is the stage with largest losses, between 40-50% of total cereal food waste.
In low-income regions rice is the dominant crop, especially in the highly populated region of South and
Southeast Asia. For these regions, agricultural production and post-harvest handling and storage are
stages in the FSC with relatively high food losses, as opposed to the distribution and consumption levels.

Source

0 Replies

France Moves to Prevent Food Wastage

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