ONE of the most predictable
upsets in our house is the dialogue
that inevitably follows my wife
attempting to throw out food that
has met its use-by label date.
I routinely argue that this is advisory
data but she, conversely, believes that
it has been placed there for a purpose
which should be recognised.
I fully understand the concept but
inwardly I rail against throwing out
perfectly usable food because we over-
ordered or changed our plans without
prior consultation with the contents of our
fridge. I’m certainly not
sure which of us is right
but, deep down, I suspect
that we both are.
In a recent survey
of 2,000 people, carried out by the
website Power of Opinions, some 28%
of people across the UK ignored these
warnings.
There is some regional variation
with 21% in London and 34% in the
north-west ignoring the warnings and
one can understand people’s confusion
when the chief executive of Morrisons
admits that he uses the “smell test” to
ascertain whether food remains safe to
eat and the MD of Waitrose telling The
Times that he often ate fruit and veg,
cheese, meat, sausages and bacon a day
or two afterwards.
Women are slightly more likely to
ignore the dates, 30% v. 26% when
compared with men. What do you do?
This poses an interesting
conundrum. We know that these “use
by” dates are placed on food for safety
reasons but we also feel empowered
to question the margin of safety if it
seems excessive to us.
Additionally, we recognise that the
concept of a nanny state is something
against which many of us feel compelled to rail until, of course, an
intimate visit from salmonella or E.
coli bacteria causes us to re-assess the
situation.
As we all know, to our cost,
the symptoms of food poisoning
usually begin 1-3 days after eating
contaminated food, although some
toxins can cause food poisoning
within a much shorter time. Are we
somehow inured to the significance of
the advice because our food is mostly
presented to us in a sanitised and arms-length form? If the pâté comes
wrapped in Tesco Finest packaging,
are we less likely to believe it could be
harmful as it sits there a little tired and
emotional in our fridge? Or is it simply
that, deep down, we feel we have
enough information to make our own
decisions?
One of the reasons that millions
of voters across Europe have red
a warning salvo in the direction of
the political classes is that European
central government has become
detached and isolated from the needs
and wishes of its electorate.
Many of us feel that rather less
attention to the shape of bananas or
the acceptability of smoked foods
and rather more interest shown in key
issues such as education, health and
economic stability would make us feel
more comfortable with the concept of
remote government.
Add to this the sheer unbelievability
of some decisions and you can hear
the nation collectively mutter that you
couldn’t make it up!
I remember, perhaps
ve years ago, talking to
a regional manager of a
famous sandwich chain
whose business has been
built on the promise that
every day’s products are
completely fresh and
who used, every evening,
to give any unsold
sandwiches and other food to the
homeless in his part of London.
That sensible and altruistic action
came to an end when European
legislation left his company exposed to
potential litigation and now we see that
supermarkets are wasting thousands of tonnes of surplus food because
subsidies for green energy make it
cheaper to turn it into biogas than
to donate it to the homeless and the
hungry.
The charity FairTrade reports that
only 2% of surplus food generated
by the food industry is redistributed
(source: all-party parliamentary enquiry
into hunger and food poverty) and that
British households
throw away 4.2 million
tonnes of food a year.
However, reducing
food waste in the
home could save the average family
some £700 a year
(source: WRAP) at a
time when, despite
the encouraging
signs of economic
recovery, most British
households are still
feeling the pinch.
In the end, this
all signals a lack of
joined-up government
when taxpayers’ money is being used
to fund the production of anaerobic
digestion plants when there are
between five and seven million people
currently in food poverty in the UK –
that’s something in the region of 9%
of the population.
There are currently 82 such plants
in the UK with a further 213 having
received planning permission but food
poverty is not, currently, considered a
priority. FairTrade has found that much
of the food sent for destruction is still t for human consumption but there
are no plans to ascertain the scale of
the problem.
The net result is that, individually,
we find ourselves taking daily decisions
which my wife would describe as
gambling with our health because there
is little public understanding or trust in the food labelling system or the Food
Standards Agency itself.
The resultant manipulation of
important data by individuals in an
attempt to ll a vacuum caused by the
absence of authoritative, scientific
leadership sets a dangerous precedent.
In a sound, well-balanced society,
people willingly follow the rules which
have been set out for the greater good,
but is it not dangerous to allow people
to interpret data because we have
collectively failed to persuade people
that the system is robust?
When the senior officers of two of
the nation’s biggest retailers admit that they ignore the data
that their companies
are legally required to
use as part of food
standards labelling, is it any wonder
people go off-piste
and disregard the
warnings?
We’ve seen the
calamitous effect
that such individual
interpretation of
data has had in the fields of antibiotic
usage and childhood
vaccination but
perhaps we think that
a couple of days of
solitary confinement in the loo would aid compliance no
end – so to speak.
In our own veterinary backyard, we
have seen how leaving an information
vacuum about vaccination intervals
has altered the dynamics of small
animal practice, so we could, perhaps,
see this food labelling issue as an
incentive to increase our engagement
with our client base to ensure, as
much as possible, that we can provide
authoritative, useful and potentially
critical information to build sound,
lasting and valued relationships in a
world where people are increasingly
left to their own devices.
To me, that sounds like a far more
positive approach.
