Agriculture committee  Thank you. We held the Cut Waste, Grow Profit forum two years in a row. We are currently working through the process of whether or not to hold it again this year, for a third year, given the number of other initiatives that have since sprung up. The forum had two purposes. One was definitely to share ideas, share practices, communicate practices that are occurring around the world, not just in the U.S. and Canada.

Agriculture committee  Is it getting out as much as I'd like it to? Absolutely not. Part of the reason is that it's not on the radar of many businesses. I'm envious of what WRAP has been able to achieve. It hasn't been able to achieve that with a $20 donation overnight; it's taken years. That's spawned a multitude of initiatives around the world.

Agriculture committee  There are some initiatives going on in Canada at the moment—for obvious reasons, I don't want to mention names—for diverting to processing products that aren't suitable for going to retail stores. One of the challenges, though, is that our food industry is so complex that it's often not feasible to take product from one supply chain and move it over, say, from the fresh supply chain into the processing supply chain.

Agriculture committee  Some of the distributors and the food banks are working together well now. Certainly, one thing I would encourage more is that there has been talk about a tax incentive, and that is certainly one area that could work. The other area that could work is more explicit protection. Some businesses—many businesses—don't share as much food as they could with food banks because they fear prosecution, even if something they didn't do themselves leads to sickness through the redistribution of food.

Agriculture committee  We don't do it specifically in that area. However, I was talking just last week to a major food manufacturer, and there were issues regarding the U.S.-Canadian border that led to an entire 40-foot container load of product going to waste.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to see more emphasis on developing a business case. Many businesses don't see the connection between reducing food waste and increasing profitability. Many businesses don't see it, often because they don't measure it. It's not high on the radar screen. I mentioned WRAP in one of my earlier responses.

Agriculture committee  It's very valuable work.

Agriculture committee  —largely lost.... Okay, yes.

Agriculture committee  Those are two great scenarios. I'm not an expert on farmers’ markets. They operate...and most consumers will actually go to a farmers' market for quite different reasons than they'll go to a retail store. They're two very different animals, by large part. The key driver behind someone going to a farmers’ market is primarily a bad experience with shopping as well as with the food afterwards.

Agriculture committee  It does occur at the consumer level, but part of the reason so much food waste occurs at the consumer level is the way the industry operates, which has led to changes, for instance, in how Tesco operates. It does not do as many of what you now know as the BOGOF, buy one, get one free.

Agriculture committee  It's a good question. We do quite a bit of consumer research. We do quite a bit of work with the entire value chain, from production inputs at the farm level, through to retail and food service. As part of that, we do quite a bit of consumer research. For instance, we had a peach study four years ago now, in conjunction with Loblaw, and we asked consumers how they kept their peaches at home.

Agriculture committee  —and that goes even in the U.K.

Agriculture committee  Food safety definitely plays into food waste or the creation of food waste, but it doesn't necessarily play into it in the way you might expect. For instance, let's go back a few years to XL Foods. All that meat was wasted. That meat could have been used in other respects; it could even have gone into pet food, for instance.

Agriculture committee  I feel that public institutions have a role to play in this. We have seen many regulations introduced. Some of them would increase not reduce food waste. Part of that is its interpretation, as well as the lack of coordination among the different regulations at the different levels of government.

Agriculture committee  We know some of the issues surrounding labelling. As you said, the best by date, the use by date, are certainly factors that play into the amount of food waste. Certainly more can be done on coordinating the use of those labels, because for instance you can have two products side by side, they're packaged at different facilities by the same company, and those use by dates are presented differently.