Ridiculous Supermarket Policies

[vegmandan]

Just been into my local Supermarket and they had bags of Potatoes and Bananas in the "Reduced" bin which will be thrown away tomorrow as they will exceed their "best before date"

How ridiculous that the EU have decided in their infinate wisdom that a vegetable that is "Bagged" has a sell by date where as if it is sold loose then it doesn't !!

A pototo or a banana isn't unsafe to eat if it's passed it's sell by date in a plastic bag !!.

OK If the spuds are green or the bananas are all brown and rotten then fair enough but to put a short time limit on selling a bag of spuds that will have been stored for the best part of 6 months quite harmlessley beforehand by the farmer is utterly preposterous.

The bananas I saw were still green but due to EU laws had passed their sell by date and would be disposed of the next day.

Needless to say I bought all the spuds at 49p per 5lb bag and the bananas at 24p for a bunch.

It's about time these Supermarkets took a stance regarding these daft EU laws and stopped throwing away perfectly good food.

Rant over.

[lynda66]

oh but i love that policy, cos it means you get twice as much for your cash

[SarzWix]

the EU regulations for selling veg are being overhauled at the moment I think, but that could just be the ones relating to 'ugly' veg. Sainsbury's had a big campaign about it, wanting to sell the less pretty veg at a cheaper price but weren't allowed to. Hopefully they'll look at this too, but if it involves common sense, they probably won't

[shirlthegirl43]

I was gobsmacked in Lidl a few weeks ago - girl was removing all the reduced stuff from the shelves - still a day to go on the 'display till' date. I asked if it was being put elsewhere for sale and was told no it was going in the bin no wonder food prices are so bloomin high!

[nerobot]

Crazy!

That's another reason why I like my local green grocers (now that I've actually found one, as they are quite rare in Glasgow). If something looks like it is going a bit brown or what ever, it simply goes cheap

Steven

[Rhona]

Here, some of the supermarkets donate some of the stuff they can't sell to homeless shelters and kitchens. Yours may do too - they don't tend to make a song and dance about it. Waitrose have quite good policies on that sort of thing but varies from store to store.

[Hilary B]

I was gobsmacked in Lidl a few weeks ago - girl was removing all the reduced stuff from the shelves - still a day to go on the 'display till' date. I asked if it was being put elsewhere for sale and was told no it was going in the bin no wonder food prices are so bloomin high!

And it doesn't even get composted, just goes to landfill! (and it won't be long before we run out of land that can be filled with rubbish, when a lot of it could be dealt with some other way!!)

[SlugLobber]

I was gobsmacked in Lidl a few weeks ago - girl was removing all the reduced stuff from the shelves - still a day to go on the 'display till' date. I asked if it was being put elsewhere for sale and was told no it was going in the bin no wonder food prices are so bloomin high!

You know if that had been me, I'd have said 'meet you round the back, nudge nudge, wink wink!'

Remember the programme when some posh person lived with some hippies who raided the bins of Tesco? I was gobsmacked at that, but unfortunately the programme resulted in them tightening up their security measures. Boo hiss!

[shirlthegirl43]

You know if that had been me, I'd have said 'meet you round the back, nudge nudge, wink wink!'

I tried that, she either didn't realise what I meant or else read too much into it

[Sue]

I worked at M & S over the christmas period and you have no idea at the amount of food waste there is. Trolley loads of smoked salmon for example.
Some evenings they would sell to staff at half to quarter price. Anything left was gone to waste. They used to give food away to charities but then there were problems with it being resold apparently.
It was good for staff - a major perk and I was able to stock up a bit for when I was on the dole again.
Sue

[jackie j]

Tesco used to sell to staff or sometimes if you were lucky give it away but some staff moaned that they didnt get any so it was stopped altogether. There is far too much stuff thrown out at all supermarkets because of overordering. These days it is automatic, if something is scanned at the checkout then that Item is re ordered the problem arises when the checkout operastor scans more than one similar item ie yogurts that are different flavours but same price same brand etc.