MORE than one third of farm-grown fruit and veg is binned as soon as it’s picked – because it’s too ugly for supermarket shelves, it is claimed.
Fresh produce amounting to more than 50m tonnes goes to waste across Europe every year due to “aesthetic” reasons, researchers estimate.
A team from the University of Edinburgh examined how much food is discarded within the European Economic Area (EEA) every year before reaching the point of sale.
The UK’s share – which includes items deemed to be misshapen or the wrong size – is said to be 4.5m tonnes.
Professor David Reay, of the institution’s School of Geosciences, said: “The scale of food that is wasted when it is perfectly safe to eat is shocking at a time when one tenth of the world’s population is perpetually underfed.”
According to the study, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, food loss and waste (FLW) is “one of the great scourges of our time”.
The team said they found few direct measurements of such losses, but that “avoidable” FLW from “on-farm cosmetic grade-outs” could reach up to 4500 kilotons per year across the UK, stating: “Our estimates suggest over a third of total farm production is lost for aesthetic reasons.”
Produce deemed unfit for sale may be ploughed back into fields or used in animal feed.
And the environmental impact of growing the waste food is said to be equivalent to the carbon emissions of almost 400,000 cars.
The paper states: “The use of aesthetics for classifying and accepting fresh food for sale and consumption is built into food quality standards and regulations of the European Union.
“The food distribution sector in Europe and the UK is oligopolistic in nature; a small number of supermarket chains control a large market share. The influence of these ‘multiples’ enables them to impose additional proprietary ‘quality’ criteria.
“Produce that doesn’t meet these standards may be lost from the food supply chain, never seeing a supermarket shelf – it may not get past the supplier, or even leave the farm.”
To counteract the issue, scientists suggest greater use of misshapen produce in chopped or processed goods, or for sale at a discount to charities.
Stephen Porter, also from the School of Geosciences, said: “Encouraging people to be less picky about how their fruit and vegetables look could go a long way to cutting waste, reducing the impact of food production on the climate, and easing the food supply chain.”
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