Hilary Benn, the UK’s Environment Minister has obviously been reading Tristram Stuart’s book, “Waste..The Global Scandal Uncovered” and food production as a cause of global warming.

Mr Benn has been talking about the UK’s food production and consumption with the release of the Department of the Environment, Farming and Rural Affair’s first ever food security assessment.

Mr Benn called for Britons to wake up to global affects of food production and supply:

“Last year the world had a wake-up call with the sudden oil and food price rises. While we know the price of our food, the full environmental costs and the costs to our health are significant and hidden. We need a radical re-think of how we produce and consume our food. Globally we need to cut emissions and adapt to the changing climate that will alter what we can grow and where we can grow it.”

He added:”We are going to have to play our part in helping to feed the growing world population. There will be another 2.5 to 3 billion more mouths to feed in the next 40 to 50 years, at a time when climate is changing. We are more self-sufficient in food now than we were in the 1930s and 1950s interestingly enough”
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“Last year we had a record wheat harvest, despite the very difficult conditions in which some of our farmers were trying to get that harvest in.”

He said that people could play their part in making food go further by reducing the amount of food they waste and buying more from local producers.

On the subject of food waste, Mr Benn agreed that “use by” dates are an important safety measure, but that “best before” dates served little useful purpose and could be ignored.

Mr Benn added: “There’s ‘use by’ and that’s very important because that’s food safety; but when it comes to ’sell by’ or ‘best before’, I think we as consumers [need to] understand better what those labels mean”.

“In the past, long before any such labels existed, people would look at the food in the fridge or in the larder and decide whether it was okay to eat.” DEFRA is now talking to the supermarkets about this problem.

Continuing Mr Benn warned of the effect of wasting food on global warming: “Throwing that food away – well obviously it costs us money in our pockets and that’s not very sensible, and if it goes to landfill then it produces methane and that adds to the problem of climate change.”

He argued that Britons should eat less imported food and more seasonal domestic produce. Despite seeking to cut Britain’s use of imported food, Mr Benn said he would not try to stop shops selling imported foods such as Spanish or African strawberries

Instead, he said he hoped consumers would chose to buy seasonal British produce. “It’s about people eating more food seasonally,” he added.

However, he admitted to Sky News that more homegrown food on our shelves could lead to less choice in supermarkets and more expensive products. But he stressed that the UK still had to produce more of its own food.

He also criticised the big supermarkets for offering only standardised fruit and vegetables, rejecting those that are oddly shaped or unusually coloured.

“You go into the supermarkets and you see the same apples and the same size. Celebrating variety – that’s something we should be keen to do,” Mr Benn said.

Rather than blaming the supermarkets, perhaps Mr Benn should have pledged to seek the repeal of the remaining European Union legislation on the cosmetic standards of vegetables and fruit.

The supermarkets’ practice of offering “BOGOF” (Buy one, get one free) and loss-leader deals. also came under fire from Mr Benn. They should be scrapped and replaced with half price offers, he said.

The measure would be one way of dramatically reducing the amount of food thrown away in the UK annually. These deals are contributing to an increase in carbon emissions. And are being blamed for people throwing away more than 4 million tonnes of food a year

And to help global warming further, it is estimated that cutting out unnecessary wastage would have the same effect as removing 20% of traffic from Britain’s roads.

Banning such offers and repackaging food in a variety of sizes to cater for single people as well as couples and families would also promote healthy living and improve the nation’s diet.

The Government’s waste watchdog estimates that 4.1million tonnes of food is thrown away each year, at an average cost of £420 per household.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs wants stores to sign up to stringent targets on waste reduction.

He felt that such deals encouraged waste and said that they might be banned. This comment has not gone down well with many people struggling to make ends meet. But Mr Benn has a point when it comes to easily- perishable products like vegetables and fruit.

Sadly, I fear that Mr Benn’s wise words will be ignored. People will only reduce

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