Major policy strategy report from the Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has cited Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal as an authority for their key policy recommendations: government should require “food retailers and manufacturers to report the tonnages of food waste from their businesses at least on an annual basis”; surplus fresh food should be donated to charities such as FareShare; and retailers should stock more cosmetically ‘imperfect’ produce.

This is a significant development, and one that should be applauded. However, the government-backed Food Industry Sustainability Strategy has been calling for the large retailers to record how much food they waste since 2007; the government pledged that they would get the supermarkets to agree to targets for reducing their food waste by February 2009: but so far, not one of the supermarkets has complied with the government’s request. Some of the supermarket chains claim to be making progress: M&S has claimed that their waste reduction policies have cut food waste in their stores by 20% in just 12 months – an impressive achievement - but without transparent reporting, there is no way of verifying these extravagant claims. It’s time for the supermarkets to agree to transparent food waste reporting, as demanded by the Efra Waste Strategy report, and if they fail to do this, for government to stop dithering and require that these worthwhile policies are implemented.

A similar problem prevails with the other issue highlighted by the Efra Waste Strategy report: that supermarket ordering regimes often cause suppliers to waste tonnes of good fresh food unnecessarily (by over-ordering, cancelling orders and changing orders last minute and then expecting the supplier to bear the cost of the waste). This is something that the Groceries Standard Code of Practice (GSCOP) aims to prevent. But as the Competition Commission has concluded, for this to work, we need an independent Ombudsman to police the GSCOP, or else it will be as ineffectual as its forebear, the SCOP. Again, the government needs to stop prevaricating and act by establishing a fully independent Ombudsman to police the GSCOP.

House of Commons
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Waste Strategy for England Third Report of Session 2009–10
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmenvfru/230/230i.pdf

"Minimising food waste 

37.Commentator Tristram Stuart has criticised the lack of firm data on how much food waste individual retail companies produce, and recommended that such companies be required to publish this information. There is also criticism of the relationships between some retailers and suppliers which is considered to cause suppliers to waste food when retailers decide not to purchase it at short notice or which fail strict aesthetic criteria.

39. We welcome moves by retailers to offer customers the choice of buying produce
which, for aesthetic reasons, cannot be marketed as top category products. We urge all
retailers to develop a wide range of such products for sale. We also urge all retailers to
distribute to charities such as Fareshare any food which can legally and safely be used
and to give explicit permission to their suppliers to do likewise with branded products.
40. We recommend that Defra requires food retailers and manufacturers to report the
tonnages of food waste from their businesses at least on an annual basis. Defra should
also work with the food industry to ensure that retailers give suppliers sufficient
flexibility to be able to minimise wastage, including disseminating examples of industry
best practice."