Tesco to give all unsold food to charity after finalising deal - Polidicks

[URL="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tesco-to-give-all-unsold-food-to-charity-after-finalising-deal-a6925971.html"]Source[/URL] [QUOTE]Tesco has agreed a deal to donate all the unsold food from its stores to charity. [/QUOTE]

After working in a Tesco store for 5 years and seeing the amount of stuff that got thrown out, this is a good thing. If the other supermarkets followed suit, families going hungry would be much less of an issue.

In the end this helps everyone. Most of these goods are still fine if they go past their date by like a day or two. Some goods you don't chance with, but most of the time they're still perfectly edible, so folks down on their luck will have easy access to free foodstuffs. However, I expect a significant amount of the donations would be diet sodas, if sites like approvedfood are any indication.

Is this temporary, or is it forever? When I worked at Tim Hortons we werent allowed giving away old food or donating it because some lady who received the food was allergic to peanuts and she sued the company or something like that.

That's great, and certainly better than wasting it, but could they face any legal trouble if someone were to fall ill from expired food?

When I worked at sainsburys we used to donate most of our food to a local zoo and they would feed the animals with it ( I guess they took some themselves ) from a profit perspective it saves the store money as well so it's a win win

[QUOTE=Gum100;49921169]That's great, and certainly better than wasting it, but could they face any legal trouble if someone were to fall ill from expired food?[/QUOTE] They might have good samaritan laws when it comes to stuff like this.

As long as the food is properly prepared sicknesses shouldn't really crop up.

I wasn't even allowed an expired bottle of Dr.Pepper when I found one at the Co-op. I thought 25p and an agreement not to sue in case of illness or death was a pretty good deal, but they still poured it down the drain, the bastards.

Two weeks ago I saw the peanut butter I had expired five months ago. It didn't smell wrong and tasted normal, so I ate it and I had no problems after. Expiration dates are a joke(unless we are talking about meat, fish, eggs, etc... you shouldn't play with those) and throwing away huge amounts of food simply should not happen.

It's a good sentiment, but on the business side of things, wouldn't this discourage people from buying things so that the maximum amount is donated?

This is really a problem in all industries. I worked in a dollarstore and had to throw out several full shipping boxes of chocolate because it was going to expire a month before next year's christmas.

[QUOTE=A Sock Accnt;49921366]It's a good sentiment, but on the business side of things, wouldn't this discourage people from buying things so that the maximum amount is donated?[/QUOTE] No because if you're in the super market, you're not likely to be the person in line at the food bank who will benefit from this.

[QUOTE=A Sock Accnt;49921366]It's a good sentiment, but on the business side of things, wouldn't this discourage people from buying things so that the maximum amount is donated?[/QUOTE] No...? If I want something, I'm buying it. I'm not going to go "I could eat this, [I]oooor[/I] I could not eat it so it gets given away to somebody else."

[QUOTE=Gum100;49921169]That's great, and certainly better than wasting it, but could they face any legal trouble if someone were to fall ill from expired food?[/QUOTE] No, they are covered under good Samaritans laws. In the United States, Clinton signed a bill named "the Good Samaritan Food Act" which limits the liabilities of businesses who donate foods to non-profit. You often hear stories of "small businesses" being sued to bankruptcy for donated food that turned out to be harmful That is an unequivocal myth.

I volunteer at a foodbank every week and yea, it's on the charity to make sure that the food is still edible and hasn't been past due for too long. Hopefully Tesco won't start dumping useless shit to charities, it's super frustrating to receive a giant box of K-cups or something else equally unusable.

[QUOTE=greasemunky;49921623]Hopefully Tesco won't start dumping useless shit to charities, it's super frustrating to receive a giant box of K-cups or something else equally unusable.[/QUOTE] Like diet sodas.

[QUOTE=ironman17;49921632]Like diet sodas.[/QUOTE] Oh there's far worse things than diet sodas, like seltzer water with some really shitty sweetener trying to pass it's self off as sparkling apple cider.

...really hoping that's an exaggeration there, otherwise that's just about as bad as them passing off vomit flavoured candied grit as real chocolate. Truly a disgrace!

[QUOTE=ironman17;49921160]In the end this helps everyone. Most of these goods are still fine if they go past their date by like a day or two. Some goods you don't chance with, but most of the time they're still perfectly edible, so folks down on their luck will have easy access to free foodstuffs. However, I expect a significant amount of the donations would be diet sodas, if sites like approvedfood are any indication.[/QUOTE] Nah. Canned goods are the bulk of it. Chef Boyardee cans with dents in them, Campbell's soup, etc etc.

Canned gubbins are usually pretty standard either way. Although if there ain't no labels on 'em, that would cause a kerfuffle. Could be meatballs in gravy, could be hot dogs, but then someone opens it up, and BAM! it turns out to be treacle sponge.

No joke, I onced used an unopened, refrigerated, six to eight month "expired" container of ricotta cheese and it still tasted great.

[QUOTE=AntonioR;49921346]Two weeks ago I saw the peanut butter I had expired five months ago. It didn't smell wrong and tasted normal, so I ate it and I had no problems after. Expiration dates are a joke(unless we are talking about meat, fish, eggs, etc... you shouldn't play with those) and throwing away huge amounts of food simply should not happen.[/QUOTE] I don't know how it is over in Europe, but in the US, companies are allowed to set their own expiration dates on foods. It's why generally it's okay to actually eat things over their expiration dates in the US, since companies will set the expiration date for the shortest reasonable amount of time possible to try to get you to buy another. That being said though, you should make sure it's okay first before eating it.

Wal-mart has done this for years, It actually surprised me they don't already do this. A majority of our stuff that isn't bad gets donated unless it's something like produce which can go bad too fast to really send anywhere, so we just send that to farms and whatnot.

[QUOTE=Chrisholl;49922157]Wal-mart has done this for years, It actually surprised me they don't already do this. A majority of our stuff that isn't bad gets donated unless it's something like produce which can go bad too fast to really send anywhere, so we just send that to farms and whatnot.[/QUOTE] There's problems with just giving away unsold food, and it's mostly legal. For one, if food isn't sold by the end of the day, sometimes there's a reason. A lot of times it's because customer's are picky assholes, but it's also because sometimes there's genuinely something wrong with the fruit. You can't just give that all away - you have to inspect all of it. If you don't, you have a potential liability as you can't give away moldy bread or gone-off fruit. This created an additional issue as that food was thrown away, attracting homeless people. They would rummage through the trash and that created a liability issue for the entire dumpster area: should a homeless person get hurt by rummaging through the dumpster among other health issues, then the company gets blamed. This literally led to the practice of pouring bleach all over the food thrown away. It's crazy. Lastly, companies quite often focused on throwing food away to discourage overproduction. Some employees at restaurants would purposely overproduce so they could bring home dinner or whatever, which is costly. It is an additional factor to why food is thrown away quite often. It really just boils down to people not caring enough to create a functioning system that protects companies and feeds the needy. It's apathy. We all suck. (Except for me: I'm great.) It's cool to see stuff changing, though. I'm just afraid of any backlash or weird advocacy against this kind of thing. I know it's coming. Something weird is going to happen that pushes companies to justify not doing this.

[QUOTE=Chrisholl;49922157]Wal-mart has done this for years, It actually surprised me they don't already do this. A majority of our stuff that isn't bad gets donated unless it's something like produce which can go bad too fast to really send anywhere, so we just send that to farms and whatnot.[/QUOTE] In my store produce that's still salvageable is moved over to the meat room and stashed in their prep area for a couple days until Second Harvest shows up to take it.

Expiration dates are just guidelines, eg whats expected, not guaranteed. And yeah in the US they're not even required.

Lots of places do this locally, the Sainsburys i used to work at works directly with a local charity and gives them all non-frozen unsellable food, i think it was for the homeless though it's good that it's becoming an actual policy rather than something an individual has to organise

Most of what we donate is cans (I work at a walmart) because they get taken off the store floor if there are basically any imperfections in the can.