Perilous
Times
Over a billion tons of food wasted every year: UN
by Staff Writers
Rome (AFP) May 11, 2011
Around a third of the food produced in the world every year --
around 1.3 billion tons -- gets lost or wasted, the UN's Food and
Agriculture Organisation said on Wednesday.
"Given the limited availability of natural resources it is more
effective to reduce food losses than increase food production in
order to feed a growing world population," the FAO said in a
report.
FAO said the amount of food lost or wasted every year is
equivalent to more than half of the world's annual cereals crop.
Some 925 million people around the world suffer from hunger.
The report said that the problem in the developing world was
mainly food losses -- through, for example, crop failures and poor
infrastructure.
In industrialised countries, the issue is more about "retailers
and consumers throwing perfectly edible foodstuffs into the
trash."
The report found that in Europe and North America consumers wasted
between 95 and 115 kilograms (209 and 253 pounds) of food every
year.
The report found that in the retail industry there was an
"over-emphasis on appearance". "Surveys show that consumers are
willing to buy produce not meeting appearance standards as long as
it is safe and tastes good," it said.
"Consumers in rich countries are generally encouraged to buy more
food than they need," it said, giving as an example oversized
ready-to-eat meals produced by the food industry and fixed-price
buffets in restaurants.
The data was contained in a report commissioned by FAO from the
Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology for "Save Food!" -- a
conference being held in Germany later this month.