Food waste on 'staggering' scale

[Shallot Man]

i seem to recall that during WW2, the pigs swill was cooked & called "Tottenham Pudding"

[PAULW]

ALAN

Unfortunately untreated food waste was linked to the devastating 2001 foot and mouth outbreak. So it's not as easy as all that Paul. See http://archive.thenorthernecho.co.uk/20 ... 76795.html[/quote]

Bobby Waugh was a scapegoat, if you read the reports you would have seen the goverment was preparing for the F&M outbreak for 12 months before it happened, that aside there are/where companies who rendered all butcher/slaughterhouse waste there are big companies Pauls/Dalgety's who make animal feed and if DEFRA employed staff who knew what they where doing instead of uni rejects who walk around with their finger up their bum stringent checks could be made to ensure the job was done properly.

[Geoff]

Isn't the answer a regulation for vegetable swill, or am I missing something?

[Johnboy]

As Shallotman says 'Tottenham Pudding' was a wonderful scheme made from the waste products from that part of London and subsequently copied in many areas of the country. The term 'Treated' is the a very valid term because the trouble begins when a civil servant/politician, who will be forever anonymous, gives the go-ahead to a producer, against scientific advice, to reduce temperatures to reduce costs.
This means that certain pathogens are not killed off by the reduced heat. This is really what happened when the BSE problem arose.
The 64000 dollar question is can the private sector be trusted not to cut corners in the name of economy? Sadly I do not believe they can be trusted.
Wonderful as it could be and I feel that 'Tottenham Pudding' could solve a very great problem it could also lead to another set of problems for a Pig Industry already very hard hit at present.
Probably best destined to the history books.
JB.

[Granny]

There's an interesting article in the Guardian's G2 section today about how not to waste food - all very sensible. There are a couple of useful looking links as well. I'm sure Alan could direct people to it and them!
---------------
Granny

[Geoff]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... icalliving

http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

[kwa50]

for the short sell buy dates (particulary M&S)its ridiculous sometimes the sell by date is that day or the next, who can eat the whole thing etc. I am sure its a ploy to get us to throw away food that is perfectly fine and then buy some more - someone here is making a huge profit.

Just having a moan.
kwa50
www.craftchallenge.co.uk

[Shallot Man]

I remember in WW11 my mums sell by date, was her nose & tast.

[Monika]

What DOES happen to supermarket food which is notionally past its "best before" date? Is it given away or thrown away? Because no doubt much of it would still be perfectly good to eat for a few more days at least.
We only shop once a week and I am always very careful to look at the "best before" date to see that it will "last" for the rest of the week. It's then I notice that many things like yogurts, pates etc should be eaten on that very day so, presumably, the supermarket will remove it from the shelf that very evening. And then where does it go?
Nationwide that must amount to tonnes of food!

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Monika, if it's the same as five years ago, it goes into skips then off to the landfill sites.

[Monika]

That's dreadful, OH, I did hope that at least some of it might be given away to somebody who would appreciate it.

[Beryl]

M & S used to give their sandwiches to the homeless. I don't know if they do still do it.

Beryl.

[Parsons Jack]

I'm afraid OH is right. It goes off to the landfill site. I used to work for one of the large supermarkets at nights, and every evening at the close of the store at 10pm, bags upon bags of food would be brought out to the back door area for putting in the compactor. This was bakery, chilled, veg produce, meat counter, hot food counter, you name it, they had bags of it. It must be like that in every large supermarket in the country. They are not allowed to give it away, in case of prosecution if somebody gets food poisoning. I must confess though, that not all the jam doughnuts made it to the compactor It must involve millions of pounds a year.

[John]

Nobody has mentioned the enormous amount of waste that goes on before the food gets to the supermarket shelves. The supermarkets insist of everything being cosmetically perfect so I'm thinking about all the stuff that they reject because of some slight imperfection, fruit that is just to small or too large, not straight enough, not the right colour and so on - all of which is perfectly edible. I guess this is all dumped or ploughed in.

John

[Primrose]

On the issue of population control, in olden times I guess it was fairly self regulating because the pests and plagues often wiped out large numbers of people, even if they had large families and life expectancy was fairly low. Since antibiotics have been introduced, huge numbers of lives have been saved and we're all living to a ripe old age, so we have a lot more mouths to feed. In Africa where Aids and HIV are rife, and also drought and famine, nature seems to be providing its own natural form of population control.