FareShare urges UK Government to provide £15m for food redistribution

Food charity FareShare has urged the UK Government to provide £15m towards the cost of redistributing surplus food in its new #FeedPeopleFirst campaign.

The proposed funding would be used to offset the costs of charitable food redistribution. According to FareShare, there is currently no incentive for food companies to redistribute surpluses, given the costs of harvesting, repackaging, transporting and handling surplus foods.

Figures released recently by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) have shown that 300,000t of food waste in the retail and wholesale sectors, valued at £800m, could have been prevented. For the hospitality and food service industry, the figure was 700,000t of food wasted, worth £2.5bn.

WRAP concluded that of the 270,000t of surplus food in the supply chain currently, only 17,000t is being redistributed through charities, with the remainder left to rot in fields or sent to anaerobic digestion to be made into animal feed and fertiliser, despite still being edible.

The charity claimed that if the government can meet the offset costs then an additional 100,000t of food could be redistributed across the UK, as well as saving charities £150m.

FareShare CEO Lindsay Boswell said: “It’s completely wrong that we have a situation where it’s cheaper to send thousands of tonnes of good edible food to anaerobic digestion plants or to animal feed, when there are millions of people experiencing food insecurity and regularly skipping meals across the UK right now. FareShare redistributes just 5% of the available surplus food, but with that we help feed half a million people a week – so just imagine what we could do with 100,000 tonnes.”

One barrier to redistribution is the confusion surrounding ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates on food products, prompting WRAP to publish standardised guidelines on labelling in November last year. In February, UK food producer Cranswick committed to reducing food waste under the WRAP’s Courtauld Commitment 2025, which is working towards a 20% food waste reduction by 2025.