Ms Fiona McCoole:

The EPA supported the Department in 2022, and the Department of Health, regarding an interdepartmental working group on food labelling, which considered developing Ireland's position on the EU Commission's package of revisions of food information to consumers regulation, under the Commission's farm to fork strategy and Beating Cancer Plan. We had five elements, one of which concerned front of pack nutrition labelling and nutrient profiles. Another element was revising the current date marking rules for use by and best before.

We have, from our behavioural insights work, found that the population has a good understanding of the difference between use by and best before but do not necessarily demonstrate the corresponding behaviours and, therefore, we would advocate for better practices around use by and best before dates on packaging. The reasons that people give for wasting food are as follows: 68% said that passing the use by date was one of their main reasons and 45% said passing the best before date was one of their main reasons. We know that the use be date is the health and safety aspect. One of our campaigns has been that the best before date does not relate to food safety and food is still okay to eat after that. The focus of advice from the stop food waste programme is to reinforce the message that best before dates do not relate to food safety and it is still okay to use food after that. The main recommendation is always plan to use one's food and do not leave it to the point where one is not sure whether one is going to eat it anymore.

We have worked with Safefood Ireland and the FSAI on advice that we have given on freezing and use by dates.

We have collaborated on complementary campaigns with Stop Food Waste and Safefood on communications around food safety and food waste prevention. We have had dedicated campaigns on this too through Stop Food Waste. It is something we are very conscious of. For example, at Christmas we share information around food safety at Christmas, linking to best before and use by dates. Later this year, Too Good to Go is planning a campaign around best before dates. We plan to support that as well. It is absolutely a focus. We need to make sure that all of our campaign messaging is very much linked to improving behaviours so that people are very much aware and they change their behaviour to make sure to take action. That could be to freeze something. One thing we found was that consumers did not realise you could freeze food up to the use by date and that is a prevention activity. If you have space in the freezer, you can put your food in there rather than throwing it out at that stage.