‘Best before’ dates on food products should be banned to help fight climate change, the Social Democrats party has said, claiming that “there is no health and safety reason for them.”
In a statement this week, party spokesperson on climate and biodiversity, Jennifer Whitmore TD, said that scrapping ‘best before’ date labels would “dramatically reduce food waste in Ireland,” and consequently help the climate.
“The reality is that one-twelfth of our greenhouse gasses are created by food waste, so this is making it more difficult for us to meet our climate action targets,” she said.
“At today’s meeting of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, I pointed out that a million tonnes of food is thrown away in Ireland every year – 45 per cent of it because of the presence of best before dates,” she said.
“Best before dates are arbitrarily stamped on products by producers, with Safe Food Ireland saying there is no health and safety reason for them.”
Notably, Safe Food Ireland says on its website that:
“The ‘best before’ date tells us when the quality of the food will begin to get worse. This means that the food might begin to lose its flavour and texture after that date, but it would still be safe to eat.”
Many foods are technically safe to eat once past their “best before” date, but become stale, hard, or otherwise unpleasant to eat, such as biscuits, crackers, bread or chocolate.
Whitmore went on to say that producers are “unlikely” to voluntarily end the practice of including ‘best before’ dates on food products, because “it will hit their bottom line”, adding: “The more food is wasted, the more money they make.”
“For this reason, I believe that a mandatory approach to this issue is required,” she continued.
“There has been too much focus on educating consumers about their behaviour instead of putting the onus on producers to change their ways.
“Removing best before dates would be a simple thing to do. We should not need to set up groups or committees to achieve this.”
Stupid has no bounds with these people. Let’s guess what we’re buying or about to injest is OK or harmful to us? What a game to play when you’ve work in the morning etc.! “Sorry boss, can’t come in for the week, it happened again.. might die this time tho.. if only there had of been a way to avoid poisoning myself and the family.” Make it make sense!!!!
They are truly stupid people.
Except for fresh and perishable food, I have always been quite willing to eat food after its “Best Before” date, because a major factor in determining how long the duration between manufacture and expiry of the “Best Before” date is a combination of manufacturers desire to sell product and supermarkets desire to get stuff that is not selling off the shelves.
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For longer lasting products, the safety and taste is only a minor factor in the BB determination.
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The packaging is extremely important. Jarred and canned foods are likely to be perfectly safe for many years after the BB provided they have not been opened or the can damaged or rusting. Other forms of packaging are less durable.
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That said, Whitmore’s simplistic proposal is unserious. She’s just saying it for the publicity.
“Before entering politics, Jennifer spent ten years in Australia as a senior policy analyst alongside government Ministers, developing environmental law, water management and energy policy.” Yet another politician that never had a real job or real responsibility for getting something done or running a business talking shite.
PS: Why does Wicklow elect so many of these wothless losers like Whitmore and Harris?
Don’t forget Donnelly!
You answered the question.No nanny state or saving big companies more money , just use user discretion.
I.E if you eat raw or gone off chicken you are a idiot.If you throw away good looking veg you are a idiot.
The Isle of idiots who believe we are doing it for the environment.No its so big companies can leave rotten food on shelves and you pay more.
Price of beer goes up but that will save us all from drinking ourselves to death.Never mind all the fatties stuffing their faces being wheeled in for a gastric band and unable to work because of diabetes
In Norway they have a section of the shops with older dated food on the shelves for free .This can tackle proverty and doesn’t effect people like me paying for better tasting food.It also doesn’t pay the big companies for selling stale food.It could even give our illegal rapists a free meal. Scam scam scam like the cans and bottles returns scheme.
That woman needs her head examined.She went full blown retard there. Robert Downing Jr ,tropic thunder “Everybody knows,you never go full retard”
There are food banks and I understand some supermarkets are already donating nearing expiry date goods
And SD
wow, what great idea. Eat something that your not sure is safe it eat, and then if you get food poison you’ll know you shouldn’t have eaten it Or may be I could use my kids as guinea pigs and test the food on them first before I eat it. Why don’t they just stick labels on food saying if there’s fur growing on it don’t eat it. Well done Jennifer Whitmore, you concentrate on this huge problem and don’t worry about all the other problems that are currently destroying this country
What a load of bs, yes undoubtedly a lot of food gets wasted in the world, but I don’t believe for a second that ‘best by dates’ are responsible for the majority of it. Educate the consumer to take better notice of the dates.? Plus, it’s essentially a gauge for the consumer, take that gauge away & it’s a total food poisoning lottery. Also, I straight away thought of restaurants & takeaways, they’ll exploit this to the max, “it’s ok, those noodles are only 5 years old.!”, & “when did you buy that beef ? it doesn’t matter, it lasts forever.?!”
Fucking madness..!
I just discussed this with my son who works part time in a convenience store. He straight away said how would the store know which products to put in front of other products etc.? That date gauge is absolutely necessary for so many reasons.
How about a best before date on climate scaremongers and scammers.
She’s right but this is just a tired Soros funded party in an outlier state. Yawn.
Now come-on folks, enough cynicism, that’s something we can all rally around, start the healing of a fracturing community..
True Reggie, we can all sit around a camp fire singing kumbaya while eating out of date beans.
Oh, ok then……
“How about more beans Mrs. Whitmore ? “
Brilliant 😂
🤤
FSAI and EFSA will bring them back down to earth on this one.
Idiots
Best before: means it’s still edible but just beyond it’s best
Use by: means it needs to be chucked.
Honestly I’d support this but not to rally around the climate bull, but because I really just need to know when I shouldn’t eat something and to encourage effective and meaningful communications of valuable facts rather than the opinion of someone about when something is past it’s subjective “best”
Definitely the party with tin foil hats! A dose of foodborne clostridium botulinum or a dash of Campylobacter for these fruit cakes. I for one, have been in the food industry and the effects when due diligence of dates is not respected is lethal, and must be continuously prevented. A company I worked with produced 150,000 meals a day for aviation, so if the products we were using had no dates or if we could not have any traceability, the consequences of any incident would be left to faith, like playing Russian roulette….with peoples lives. The quality and hygiene we used was clinical, and for good cause. The history of food labelling is very interesting and it came about due to the fact that people were consuming spoiled food and were getting sick or dying from this. I wonder if these socialists would take full responsibility for the deaths of infants, children or the frail if food without dates was the norm? Dates are a source of assurance from the manufacturer that the product, in this case for the looneys, baked beans, has been produced/manufactured on such a date and that it is recommended for consumption by another date. Its a standard quality assurance and food safety protocol. Its about time that people tell it to the face of these lunatics that their woke and environmental soap box politics is a lot of cobblers….like a used sell by date, they themselves need chucking in the bin.
Let me see if I understand this correctly. If that string of printed alphanumeric characters is removed from the tin pictured above … the weather will get better. Do I have that right? Am I following “The Science”?
Wicklow must have he three worst tds imo. If Carlsberg did TDs..l
Yeah I think she’s dead right in this. Any consumer protections (packaging ingredients, fabric information, return policies, whatever) should at the very least be accurate. If there’s good evidence that food product producers are just stamping inaccurate dates to satisfy some bureaucratic constraint written in some EU law, then let’s scrap it. I’m glad she’s saying “let’s get rid of this law that doesn’t work”, rather than “let’s expand our bureaucracy to enforce this law more strongly and demand more accurate measurements”.
Any indication that the establishment parties see any value, even minor value, in occasionally reducing government grips on us is a win in my book!
Three reasons against it for ya:
– best before dates are, as the article says, a means of informing consumers that quality will begin to degrade after that point. Not that useful to the typical SocDem voter, grabbing beans on toast between college classes and trans rights rallies, but to the normal consumer it’s good to know if the food/ingredient in a tin might negatively impact the overall meal.
– a lot of people and charities survive on prices of items past their best before dates being drastically reduced. Again, not really relevant to the typical SocDem voter, as their parents are usually paying their food bills for them, but it does matter to a section of society that I’ve found myself in once or twice.
– finally, it’s a Social Democrat saying it. The Lost Boys of Irish politics, never grew out of their student union days, and missing all those modules to stand in solidarity with ‘Queers for Palestine’ and any other bizarre group of protestors they can find certainly did not help with their critical thinking skills.
Granted, I agree with your sentiment about it beta good thing if establishment parties want to remove power they hold…sure do…but this ain’t that.