The House of Lords EU Committee has called for urgent action on food waste in Europe highlighting that at least 90 million tonnes of food is wasted across the EU each year.

In a report, the Committee urges action on the basis that food waste represents a financial and environmental loss of resources. The 15 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK each year equates to a financial loss to business of at least £5 billion per year. Environmentally, the carbon footprint of worldwide food waste is equivalent to twice the global greenhouse gas emission of all road transportation in the USA.

The Committee finds that efforts across the EU to reduce food waste are 'fragmented and untargeted' and call on the new European Commission, to be established in November, to publish a five-year strategy on food waste prevention within six months of taking office.

The report also calls for retailers, and in particular the big supermarkets who dominate food sales in the UK, to act more responsibly in limiting food waste by both farmers and consumers. In particular the Committee says that supermarkets should move away from incentives such as 'buy one get one free' for certain types of produce, which may result in more food waste at home. They should also work harder to avoid cancelling orders of food that has already been grown by producers a practice which leads to unsold, but perfectly edible, food being ploughed back into the fields or left unharvested. It is estimated that millions of tonnes of food is wasted annually in this way.

The Committee calls for Government action to encourage retailers to redistribute unsold food, where safe, for human and animal consumption rather than to be recycled via anaerobic digestion. They suggest that VAT rates could be amended and tax breaks offered to encourage supermarkets to donate edible unsold food to food banks rather sending it to be composted. This would form part of a refocussing of EU policy in this area away from a 'waste hierarchy' toward a 'food use hierarchy' that stresses the use by humans of food initially intended for human consumption.

The report also welcomes the review on legislation regarding the feeding of food waste to animals. The transfer of human food waste to animals should, however, only take place if scientific evidence establishes that it is safe to do so.

Commenting, Baroness Scott of Needham Market, Chairman of the Sub-Committee that conducted this inquiry, said:

"Food waste in the EU and the UK is clearly a huge issue. Not only is it morally repugnant, but it has serious economic and environmental implications. The fact that 90 million tonnes of food is wasted across the EU each year shows the extent of the problem and explains why we are calling for urgent action. Globally, consumers in industrialised nations waste up to 222 million tonnes of food a year, which is equivalent to nearly the entire level of net food production of sub-Saharan Africa."