New Labelling Guidelines to Cut Food Waste

As reported by the Guardian, according to Wrap (the Waste and Resources Action Programme) 5.3m tonnes of still-edible food is thrown away each year in the UK alone, costing the average family £680 a year – or more than £50 a month. It appears that confusing food labelling in supermarkets may be partly to blame for a huge waste of edible products. Contrary to a more direct and clearer labelling policy in countries like Italy and France, the UK food labels used to include ‘sell by’, ‘display until’, ‘best before’ and ‘use by’ ultimately making it all very confusing for shoppers. The newly enforced government guidelines rule that packaging should only carry ‘use by’ or ‘best before’ dates, while ‘sell by’ and ‘display until’ labels are removed from supermarket packaging to avoid confusion that ultimately results in good edible food being thrown away for no reason.

Hello from Istanbul and… some Thoughts on the E Coli Outbreak

Apologies for my silence this past week, but I have been through a few super busy days in preparation to my business trip to Turkey where I arrived this morning. By the look of it I’ll have lots to report from this emerging and vibrant new market. I’ll try to visit a few supermarkets/retailers in between appointments and take a few snapshots of the shelf offerings.

Also for those of you that noticed I didn’t do a trade show post for the month of June, because I didn’t think there was anything relevant to suggest, but by all means if you do have any suggestions please send them through…

Lastly, a word on the recent E Coli outbreak in Germany. It seems that food scandals have no boundaries and do affect even the ‘highly regulated’ EU market. Considering we are still in the dark on what to blame, firstly it was cucumbers, then meat, now it appears bean sprouts may be at the source of the outbreak and a pitiful blame game has been going on between producing countries like Spain and Germany, it appears we are not doing all that well in protecting end consumers and public safety after all. As the Guardian puts it we are all victims of a broken food chain fuelled by profits, greed and globalisation. We ultimately can have very little if no control at all over the possible outcomes of a system that is geared to churning out vast volumes of food and raising productivity, but at the lowest cost. It seems to me that in the end all the regulations and paperwork manufacturers, farmers, importers, exporters, retailers are snowed under only serve the purpose of creating some sort of legal traceability for institutional convenience if a problem does arise, instead of safeguarding public health as the first priority.

Another Food Safety Scandal from China

Exploding watermelons in China have made today’s news on many websites and blogs. Unfortunately another scandal in regards to Chinese food safety after the melamine-tainted milk, toxic bean sprouts, steroid-laced pork and meat that ‘glows’ in the dark as the UK Telegraph reports. Watermelons exploding like ‘landmines’ due to the use of excessive quantities of ‘forchlorfenuron’ in an attempt to boost profits by getting the fruit to market early. About 20 farmers and 45 acres of watermelon around the city of Danyang in eastern China were affected, CCTV reported. Once the smile for this piece of funny news fades away, we are left with doubt and worry for all the unregulated, unsafe product that floods our markets daily.

image courtesy of The Guardian