Tesco Ireland holds off on best-before waste initiative

Tesco Ireland is not following the lead of its parent company in the UK by removing "best before" labels from pre-packed fruit and vegetables in order to minimise food waste.

The UK retailer has announced its intention to take best before labels off around 70 of its pre-packaged produce lines including apples, potatoes, tomatoes, lemons, limes and onions in an effort to discourage consumers from binning perfectly edible food.

“We know some customers may be confused by the difference between ‘best before’ and ‘use by’ dates on food and this can lead to perfectly edible items being thrown away before they need to be discarded,” the head of Tesco’s food waste division in the UK Mark Little said.

“Best before” labels tell consumers that while a product can be used after a certain date it may it suffer in terms of quality . By contrast “use by” labels mean products should not be used after a particular date over food-poisoning fears.

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The company’s UK division said taking best before information off labels would encourage customers to make their own decisions about the freshness of produce and it stressed there would be a “rigorous stock rotation procedures in place” to make sure older items did not remain on shelves.

While the move has been welcomed by food waste campaigners in the UK it will not be replicated in the Republic in the short term.

"While we have no immediate plans to introduce this initiative, we will be keeping it under review," a spokeswoman told The Irish Times.

Irish households bin an average of €700 worth of edible food each year and one million tons of food, worth more than €700 million, is thrown out each year across the State.

The Tesco Ireland spokeswoman said despite its failure to roll out this initiative in the Republic it remained “committed to tackling the issue of food waste” and she pointed to its commitment “that no food safe for human consumption will go to waste in Tesco Ireland stores by 2020”.