Kellogg’s waste victories
Sir, Kellogg’s welcomes the Waste Not Want Not campaign, which resonates so well with our own Breakfasts for Better Days initiative. In 2013, we made a global commitment to maximise our food donations, including diverting edible surplus food to charities like FareShare and the Trussell Trust. We instituted product donation guidelines that now permit us to donate some foods up to eight weeks past their best-before date.
There were various barriers to implementation including the cost of providing food to charity vs the income we receive by selling the food for animal feed. We overcame this challenge as we identified that the social return on investment was greater than the costs and lost income. However, we would welcome government incentives such as those available for anaerobic digestion.
The result of this work has seen us increase the amount of edible surplus food we donate from 13% in 2013 to 52% in 2015.
There is clearly more work to be done but we have made progress in 2016 by diverting foreign language packs, for example, and we will strive to find more solutions.
Paul Wheeler, director of corporate affairs, Kellogg’s UK
Packaging tech vs waste
Sir, In response to ‘Bring barcodes into the food waste battle’ (thegrocer.co.uk, 27 October), I would point out that packaging technology also has a role to play in delivering the environmental and economic benefits of reducing food waste. Our own collaboration with Tesco and Cargill addresses portion control and food waste concerns in the poultry category, which, if adopted across the UK market, could prevent up to 10,000 tonnes of poultry food waste per year, providing a huge saving in carbon emissions, supply chain costs and wasted resources.
Daniel Dayan, CEO, Linpac
Going too far with GCA
Sir, Your article ‘Who should Tacon tackle next?’ (22 October, p14) outlines several positive options regarding the review of the GCA.
However, extending her remit down the supply chain to include contractual relations between farmers and purchasers would lead to unnecessary and excessive regulation, hindering the industry’s flexibility to respond to the marketplace. Regulation of the dairy sector by the GCA would also raise the issue of why other agricultural sectors should not be included, and would set a complex precedent.
Judith Bryans, CEO, Dairy UK
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