French supermarkets banned from throwing away and spoiling unsold food

'Supermarkets will be obliged to sign a donation deal with charities'

Supermarkets in France have been banned from throwing away or spoiling unsold food by law.
The stores are now required to donate unwanted food to charities and food banks.
To stop foragers, some supermarkets have poured bleach over the discarded food or storing binned food in locked warehouses.

This law was voted unanimously by the French senate on Wednesday after a petition was launched by Courbevoie councillor Arash Derambarsh.

It will apply to any supermarket with a footprint of 400 square metres or larger.

If companies flout the law they coud incur fines up to 3750 Euros.

Jacques Bailet from Banques Alimentaires, a network of Food banks, told the Guardian: "Most importantly, because supermarkets will be obliged to sign a donation deal with charities, we’ll be able to increase the quality and diversity of food we get and distribute

"That is very important for food banks because this is a real source of quality products, coming straight from the factory."

Mr Derambarsh is now looking to get an EU-wide law banning supermarket food waste.

He said: "The next step is to ask the president, François Hollande, to put pressure on Jean-Claude Juncker and to extend this law to the whole of the EU.

"This battle is only just beginning. We now have to fight food waste in restaurants, bakeries, school canteens and company canteens."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-law-bans-supermarkets-throwing-away-and-spoiling-unsold-food-giving-them-to-food-banks-and-a6855371.html

This is great -- we have enough food to feed the world, but we keep throwing it away.

Think it is really great, would be really good if it was brought in Europe wide.

England seems to always be behind the times these days in Europe. Why haven't we done this?

It worries me about pouring bleach over unsold or unwanted food though; what if someone eats that without realising? Or an animal does?

I think it's highly dangerous Eds, and cruel.  Can you imagine if you were living on the streets and desperately hungry, found the food that had been thrown out, sat in front on you, but stinking of bleach while your stomach rumbled and spasmed (because it does when you are that hungry, it hurts as well).  It's a disgusting practice.

I agree and deem it inhuman to throwaway, damage such food.

This sell by date is a big con also.

Yes sell-by and use-by dates have been proven a con.

As for this "bleach" thing, well let's face it, supermarkets don't have to do this, they do it to stop people making a mess of their bins by ripping bags open.
Why don't they just lay the food in its packages, out on the floor in front of the bins, leaving a sign saying "Help yourselves if you're hungry but please put any packaging in the bins provided"

People that are homeless will always forage and professional foragers will forage, regardless.

It's a sin to spoil good food whilst people are starving.
Amazingly in this country it's against the law to bin surf for food.

It's common sense for supermarkets and shops to donate edible food rather than spoiling it...hopefully we will follow suit.

eddie wrote:Why don't they just lay the food in its packages, out on the floor in front of the bins, leaving a sign saying "Help yourselves if you're hungry but please put any packaging in the bins provided"

One word: liability! Otherwise it's a great idea.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:Why don't they just lay the food in its packages, out on the floor in front of the bins, leaving a sign saying "Help yourselves if you're hungry but please put any packaging in the bins provided"

One word: liability!  Otherwise it's a great idea.

Hi Quill, hope you're well xxx

Liability shouldn't enter into it and unfortunately I think it's about profit    There are lots of charities who could and do make good use of supermarket "waste".

I'm also in favour of this. The only concern is the "use by" date. Food has to be fit for consumption, even if it's free. Mind you, the "use by" dates are so cautious these days anyway.

Also, what if there is no food bank in the area? Who would be responsible for collecting/delivering the unsold food to the nearest one?

Raggamuffin wrote:Also, what if there is no food bank in the area? Who would be responsible for collecting/delivering the unsold food to the nearest one?

Volunteers do loads of work similar to this.
Just as a side note in my local paper more jobs are advertised for volunteers than for paid work.
Not sure when this came about....a sad time of the times though.

Syl wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:Also, what if there is no food bank in the area? Who would be responsible for collecting/delivering the unsold food to the nearest one?

Volunteers do loads of work similar to this.
Just as a side note in my local paper more jobs are advertised for volunteers than for paid work.
Not sure when this came about....a sad time of the times though.

Volunteers would be great. However, if it was an actual law, it would need to be more formal than that in case volunteers can't be found, or if they can't be bothered to do it one day.

feelthelove wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

One word: liability!  Otherwise it's a great idea.

Hi Quill, hope you're well xxx

Liability shouldn't enter into it and unfortunately I think it's about profit    There are lots of charities who could and do make good use of supermarket "waste".

Hi hon...xx

That's the difference between a normative statement and a factual one. Liability shouldn't enter into it (normative), but it does (fact). As long as there is exposure, you are going to see folks shying away from the practice giving away food out the back door.

You are so right, it's about profit. Exposure to liability puts a big dent in profits.

feelthelove wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

One word: liability!  Otherwise it's a great idea.

Hi Quill, hope you're well xxx

Liability shouldn't enter into it and unfortunately I think it's about profit    There are lots of charities who could and do make good use of supermarket "waste".

Liability would enter into it if the food had gone off and someone got food poisoning though.

Raggamuffin wrote:

feelthelove wrote:

Hi Quill, hope you're well xxx

Liability shouldn't enter into it and unfortunately I think it's about profit    There are lots of charities who could and do make good use of supermarket "waste".

Liability would enter into it if the food had gone off and someone got food poisoning though.

Exactly.  You leave food unguarded out the back door, baking in hot sun and spoiling, street-cleaning truck soaking and squishing half of it, and someone eats it and has some intestinal disorder...you got liability.

Or the health department.  We have clutches from Marin County come to San Francisco and set up tables and hand out sandwiches to the homeless...along comes the health department and closes them down and gives out citations.  Another form of liability.

Original Quill wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

Liability would enter into it if the food had gone off and someone got food poisoning though.

Exactly.  You leave food unguarded out the back door, baking in hot sun and spoiling, street-cleaning truck soaking and squishing half of it, and someone eats it and has some intestinal disorder...you got liability.

Or the health department.  We have clutches from Marin County come to San Francisco and set up tables and hand out sandwiches to the homeless...along comes the health department and closes them down.  Another form of liability.

Yes. In this age of litigation it would be easy enough for someone to point the finger and say it wasn't their own fault that they ate some rotten food, it was the fault of the supermarket for not keeping it away from them.

Liability could also be an issue if shops are obliged to donate food. There's a difference between "use by" dates, "sell by" dates, and "best before" dates, so there would be a lot to sort out. The time it takes for food to arrive at a food bank would have to be taken into account, as well as storage facilities.

Raggamuffin wrote:Also, what if there is no food bank in the area? Who would be responsible for collecting/delivering the unsold food to the nearest one?

Don't a lot of churches run their own food banks? The food could be given to the churches, which could then ask people not to donate when they've got too big of a surplus.

In my part of the world, just about any church you walked into would feed you with very few questions asked.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:Also, what if there is no food bank in the area? Who would be responsible for collecting/delivering the unsold food to the nearest one?

Don't a lot of churches run their own food banks? The food could be given to the churches, which could then ask people not to donate when they've got too big of a surplus.

In my part of the world, just about any church you walked into would feed you with very few questions asked.

Possibly - maybe the Salvation Army, or another Church.

I think it would really only work for food which has quite a long shelf life really - the kind with a "best before" date.

Where I live the Sally Ann have loads of men hanging around it for whatever reason, they could go and carry free food back to the hall, prob solved, if we had an agreement here but I suppose Health & Safety aerosols would have something to say about it..

Lots of people are working to tackle the issue of food waste.  This is just one example:

We save food and we change lives

We save good food destined for waste and send it to charities and community groups who transform it into nutritious meals for vulnerable people. The food we redistribute is fresh, quality and in date surplus from the food industry and the charities we work with can be found across the UK.

http://www.fareshare.org.uk/