Dear friends,

 

It’s a recipe to feed the world — stop wasting a third of all the food we grow, and stop tens of millions of children going to bed hungry each night.

The ingredients are all there — an amazing movement in France just won a law making supermarkets give unsold produce to the poor and homeless. The whole EU is consulting on how to stop supermarkets cancelling vast orders of food farmers have grown for them. And the UN is agreeing a goal to halve food waste.

Timing is everything to get this recipe right. We already have a network of politicians ready to table legislation, we just need to build a huge push behind them. Let’s race to build a million-strong petition, submit to the EU consultation before it ends, then work with allies around the world till we win the laws we need. Add your name, then send this to everyone you’ve shared a meal with:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/food_waste_loc/?biEWLbb&v=61604

For 15 years I and the organization I founded, Feedback, have battled the supermarkets’ scandalous levels of waste. In Kenya, we discovered that up to half the veg grown for Western supermarkets is destroyed. Supermarkets say the produce is the wrong shape or colour, or cancel entire orders when they’re ready to ship.

I’ve met day labourers working for less than $2 a day, who say they don’t get paid when orders are cancelled: they can’t send their children to school or feed them. Some farmers even have to sign contracts preventing them from giving out the food for free to those who need it.

In the UK it is now illegal for supermarkets to mistreat farmers in these ways. A regulator has powers to receive anonymous complaints from farmers and fine supermarkets up to 1% of their turnover. Already the biggest supermarket, Tesco, is under investigation, and we’re taking the message to other supermarket bosses.  

The UN is agreeing a goal to halve global food waste by 2030, and opportunities are coming thick and fast. The EU is running a consultation on how to stop supermarkets’ unfair trading practices as part of a new plan to reduce waste across the continent. The UK and France have started to show what’s possible, and politicians in Berlin, Brussels, Madrid and Washington DC are already pushing for change. Now it’s up to us to give them a huge public mandate to win the laws we need to end food waste. Add your name:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/food_waste_loc/?biEWLbb&v=61604

Nothing is more central to how we live as a global human race than finding ways to feed everyone. If we nowjoin together the burgeoning food waste movement and theAvaaz community around the world, we can feed the hungry and remove the huge pressure on poor farmers and our precious environment.With hope,Tristram Stuart, with the Feedback and Avaaz teams

MORE INFORMATION:

Putting a stop to global food waste (Feedback)
http://www.feedbackglobal.org/stopdumping

EU supermarkets blamed for Kenya food waste (Al Jazeera)
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/02/2013222152652620999.html

France to force big supermarkets to give away unsold food to charity (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/22/france-to-force-big-supermarkets-to-give-away-unsold-fo…

France Wants To Forbid Supermarkets To Destroy Unsold Food (Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/22/france-supermarkets-unsold-food_n_7420702.html

5 Amazing Strategies to Eliminate Food Waste and Feed the Hungry (Time)
http://time.com/money/3913386/food-waste-feed-hungry/

EU circular economy consultation launched (Letsrecycle.com)
http://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/eu-circular-economy-consultation-launched/

Tesco probed by new regulator (BBC)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31143452