Food for Thought

The switch to biofuels will be slowed down in the UK as the Government looks at the impact of green fuels on world food resources. The rapid switch to biofuels has been blamed as one of the factors which have put millions of people worldwide into ‘food poverty’ and caused rocketing prices in staples such as rice and grain. The Environment Secretary, Ruth Kelly, said yesterday that the introduction of fossil fuel alternatives will proceed more ‘cautiously’ after the publication of the Gallagher Report which called for lower biofuel targets to save rainforests and preserve food resources. At the same time Prime Minister Gordon Brown highlighted the amount of food waste in the UK - a third of all shop purchased food is thrown away, and Brown commented on some supermarket’s BOGOF practices (Buy One Get One Free) which didn’t always produce savings when food discarded and not eaten. A letter in London’s Metro newspaper went further saying (quite rightly in this bloggers opinion) that supermarkets need to ’stop putting sell by dates on products that don’t need them’ adding ‘if the government is at last seeing light on this waste problem then it should get the food agencies and supermarkets to come up with sensible sue-by dates’. Well said Syd Vaughan!