EDITORIAL: Federal bureaucrats attack food waste

Americans waste a lot of food — so much so that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration are calling on U.S. businesses and individuals to do their part to reverse the trend.

Left out of the new initiative, however, is an acknowledgement that a number of federal programs are huge contributors to this problem.

As Baylen Linnekin reported last week for Reason.com, the three government agencies have announced a joint agreement to reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfills. The deal, part of the government’s Winning on Reducing Food Waste initiative, promotes the economic advantages of reducing food waste and cites educating businesses and consumers as key to the program’s success.

“An unacceptable percentage of our food supply is lost or wasted,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a news release. “As the world’s population continues to grow and the food systems continue to evolve, now is the time for action to educate consumers and businesses alike on the need for food waste reduction.”

But as Mr. Linnekin points out, the federal government is largely responsible for much of that profligacy.

Mr. Linnekin, who has written extensively about food waste, reports that nearly 40 percent of all food is wasted. He notes that Americans wasted 133 billion pounds of food in 2010 alone and that 40 million tons of food end up in America’s landfills each year. But instead of pointing at consumers and businesses, the federal government would do well to re-examine its own role in the problem.

“Perdue’s own agency is responsible for causing massive amounts of food waste under its National School Lunch Program, farm subsidy programs and the USDA’s inane system of food grading,” Mr. Linnekin writes. “Seafood regulations implemented by the Commerce Department cause similar waste on the high seas. But acknowledging or reassessing these government contributions to food waste doesn’t appear to constitute any part of this month’s joint USDA, EPA and FDA agreement. Instead, it puts the onus on us.”

Mr. Linnekin says that countless businesses have already developed — and are continuing to develop — new strategies for reducing food waste. McDonald’s, for example, uses so-called “ugly” apple slices in its Happy Meals. Grocery chain Kroger is similarly committed to selling imperfect produce in its stores. Grocers often cook and sell rotisserie chickens when customers don’t buy them in raw form.

Food waste is a problem worth tackling. But perhaps the FDA, EPA and Department of Agriculture should address their own wasteful policies before they begin hectoring Americans for cleaning out the refrigerator.