Oswestry21

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A recent news article in the ‘Tizer reported that Sainsbury’s in Oswestry has started handing out free storage containers to customers to ‘help people do their bit to reduce the amount of food that goes to waste’.

      Laudable though this initiative may appear, it is somewhat ironic given the role that supermarkets play in creating food waste. Each year, up to 20 million tonnes of food are wasted in the UK, and most waste occurs before food even gets into our homes. British farmers are forced to waste millions of tonnes of fruit and veg before they even leave the farm, simply because the produce does not meet the strict cosmetic standards stipulated by supermarkets.

     Within homes, consumers bin around £12 billion of groceries each year, including nearly 100,000 tonnes of poultry meat. One major cause of food waste within homes is date-labelling, which confuses customers.

      Sell-by dates, which supermarkets use for stock control, have nothing to do with food safety.

      Best-before dates, which are supposedly for quality control purposes, are overused and often unnecessary; it’s obvious when fruit and veg, for example, are past their best.

     Even use-by dates are abused, as manufacturers set dates far in advance of when the food is likely to go off.

     Another source of food waste is supermarket bogof (buy one, get one free) offers or, even worse, buy three for the price of two, which encourage customers to buy far more fresh produce than they can realistically use before the excess starts to rot in the fridge or fruit bowl.  Consumers are essentially paying supermarkets for the privilege of throwing away excess supermarket stock, and thus saving the supermarkets the cost of doing so.

      Fortunately, shoppers in Oswestry can evade sell-by, best-before, bogof and other corporate chicanery by purchasing fresh produce from independent local food shops and market stalls, who will sell the exact amount you need – and offer free advice on what’s in season / the best cut of meat for a particular recipe, etc. 

This is the transcript of a talk given at a public meeting in the Memorial Hall, Oswestry, on Sunday 28th Sept. ‘08.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, my name is Angus Hannagan. I would like to talk to you about the effects of the proposed supermarket developments on the health and well being of the local community. I would stress that I am giving this talk not as the Chairman of the Shropshire County Primary Care Trust, but as a concerned resident of Oswestry Borough, I live in Trefonen. I will, of course, be calling on some of the knowledge that my public appointment makes available and my access to statistics. (more…)