BOGOF

DEFRA has been thinking, "How can we reduce food waste?"

They have come to the conclusion that we collectively leave things mouldering in our fridges until they have to be thrown out. The result, says the logic, is that we should buy it in smaller quantities.

The final conclusion is that one policy must be to reduce how much food we take home, and so they are planning to outlaw BOGOF, that is "buy one and get one free" offers from supermarkets.

Ultimately it is based on a report by WRAP, a quango devoted to cutting waste. They have difficulty in discriminating between all waste, including potato peelings, apple cores, coffee grounds, tea leaves, cheese rind, etc and waste more narrowly defined - food which goes "off", such as partially consumed food with the remainder forgotten the following day, yogurts over date, etc., or merely food left on the plate. (An increase in some of these is a sign of a better diet, with more fresh food and less pre-prepared or tinned food.)

Wrap takes the more general definition and decides that we waste one third, whereas the narrower definition would suggest a total under 20%. This smaller figure is admittedly still probably significant.

But the idea of intervention is stupid. What do they expect supermarkets, and others, to do if they have too much stock left? Is two for one any worse than price reductions? Are the latter to be banned if we still do not comply? If unsold stock, condemned by the government's own rules about "sell by date" and "consume by dates", the ban will mean that the supermarkets will waste the food rather than us. The only difference is that we will not get the benefit!

I can see the next government action - weighing supermarket waste bins and fining them. They do not seem to appreciate that in a free society, and ours is still nominally free, production and supply decisions are made without knowing what will happen in the future. While we are free, even nominally, what business is it of the government if I, rather than the supermarket, waste otherwise unsold food?

This seems like fanatics who have run wild in the silly season! The target is the wrong one. The EU generally, and the Common Agricultural Policy in general wastes much more, and while our government may not waste much food it wastes tremendous quantities of resources and finance, especially in promoting quangos like Wrap and inefficient departments like DEFRA.