food waste petititon

antrobus

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

...It's not even the risk of being sued which would hold us back. .... We don't want them to be unwell as a result of something WE have done. And we would be devastated if anyone died from food poisoning contracted from our kitchen - forget the risk of being sued, these are people we know and care for!

Well yes quite. I'm rather shocked by the idea that there might be charities out there that would even think about taking risks with the health of the very people that they are supposed to be helping.

And I would have though that the "risk of being sued" would be the least of their worries. If the worst happened, then the charity would be dead the minute the story hit the press. And it's not civil liability that would be the real issue; there is such a thing as manslaughter.

Savvy_Sue

StacFace wrote: »

Yeah of course I'm not suggesting you give out something that far gone and did say at the end "not that I'd recommend giving food that far gone to others". It was just to illustrate that if the food actually does look, smell and taste fine a day or so after it goes "out of date" then it's not going to harm you, because even food you can tell is dodgy doesn't do that much.

So, who gets to decide that it looks, smells and tastes fine? I wouldn't want that responsibility for our clients: I'll happily take it at home, but not at work.

StacFace

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

So, who gets to decide that it looks, smells and tastes fine? I wouldn't want that responsibility for our clients: I'll happily take it at home, but not at work.

The same person/people who check in-date food hasn't gone off early. Food doesn't suddenly spoil on the date the packet says, so if you limited it to food out of date by a day or two you're going to get a lot more food with only slightly higher proportions of bad than good food. You're bound to get the odd bad thing now so do the same thing with the bad food you get from this.

I'm only saying it should be an option, of course anyone who is uncomfortable with it shouldn't be forced to do it.

blackandwhitebunny

I wish people who get on the food waste bandwagon would realise that out of date food thrown out by supermarkets is a very small portion of wastage. :mad:
A great deal of the food distributed by fareshare is well within use by date (I work with them and receive a lot of this) It can be mislabeled e.g. plum tomatoes with a chopped tomato label, when this happens they will withdraw the entire batch or run, food withdrawn when the label or packaging is changed (Mr T gave them loads when they changed from value to whatever it is now) , damaged packaging (we often get cereals where the box is damaged but the plastic inner is perfectly fine and vegetables that have been overstocked by distributors who have to cater for what they think supermarkets might want. We've also had packs of individual fruit juices where one is missing so they reject the entire case as otherwise it messes up their stock records.
The bit that gets me really mad though is the amount of food that is produced and then dumped in landfills as its not cosmetically perfect, nearly 50% of the crop in some cases:mad: or the thousands of tons of salad that farmers would have produced to supermarket request for the Easter weekend and than dumped because the weather was bad and no-one wanted salads:mad: This is the kind of waste that responsible charities are actually targeting, not five loaves of bread thrown out by Mr T at 10pm.

kittiej

Some of the food comes directly from the supplier and not the retailer and could be the result of overproduction, underweight products, wrong recipe eg fruit scones without the fruit!

I do not however support Fareshare because they charge the charities a set up fee and then further charges for the food they need which imo is wrong since charities have enough trouble trying to get funds in without Fareshare capitalising on them.

CFC

antrobus wrote: »

In fact it's such a great idea, that there's already one whole charity known as FareShare doing just that. What's more, they have somehow managed to do it without obtaining any kind of legal immunity.

Why do people organise petitions on subjects they clearly know nothing about?

Because most people, sadly, are stupid.

Savvy_Sue

kittiej wrote: »

Some of the food comes directly from the supplier and not the retailer and could be the result of overproduction, underweight products, wrong recipe eg fruit scones without the fruit!

I do not however support Fareshare because they charge the charities a set up fee and then further charges for the food they need which imo is wrong since charities have enough trouble trying to get funds in without Fareshare capitalising on them.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but FareShare is itself a charity, and needs to cover its own costs somehow ... and if the amount the charity pays to FareShare is more than they'd spend if they had to buy a comparable amount of food, then something's gone wrong somewhere! I know we get very good VFM from them, as does the charity DH works for.

Also I believe they may operate in different ways in different areas: but our local one runs several vehicles (including refrigerated), and offers very good training to a range of volunteers.