A major supermarket has announced changes to hundreds of its fresh food products next month. Waitrose will be removing best before dates from its products and instead ask shoppers to use their own judgment when deciding if a product has gone off or not.
This decision has been made in a bid to tackle food waste, similar to the moves made by Morrisons and Co-op, who have also removed their best before dates. It is expected that other supermarkets are set to follow, and Marks and Spencer last month stated that they will remove the criteria on 300 of its fruit and vegetable products.
Waitrose products affected by these changes will include packaged fruits and vegetables reports The Lincolnshire Echo. These changes are expected to save millions of baskets worth of food from being wasted.
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In 2018 Tesco removed the dates on more than a hundred items of fresh food in its stores, and in January 2022 plans were announced by Morrisons to remove "use by" dates on milk and instead encourage consumers to use a sniff test. Experts at the Waste & Resources Action Programme said that these dates on fruit and vegetables are unnecessary, as the dates are about the quality of food whereas use by dates are to show when products are unsafe to eat.
Marija Rompani, director of sustainability and ethics at John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose, said: "UK households throw away 4.5 million tonnes of edible food every year, meaning that all the energy and resources used in food production is wasted. By removing best before dates from our products, we want our customers to use their own judgement to decide whether a product is good to eat or not, which in turn will increase its chances of being eaten and not becoming waste.
"By using up existing fresh food in our homes, we can also save on our weekly household food shop, which is becoming an increasingly pressing concern for many." Catherine David, director of collaboration and change at WRAP, added: "Best before dates on fruit and veg are unnecessary and create food waste because they get in the way of people using their judgement when food is still good to eat.
"We are absolutely delighted by this move from Waitrose which will help stop good food ending up in the bin. We estimate that removing dates on fresh fruit and veg could save the equivalent of seven million shopping baskets of food from the bin, which is huge."
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