James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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133. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment whether there are plans to implement a scheme that bans the destroying of food, which is still fit for consumption, in order to tackle unnecessary food wastage; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1899/24]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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My Department published Ireland’s National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap 2023-2025 in November 2022. The Roadmap sets out a number of priority actions to bring the focus on food waste prevention, across key sectors in the food supply chain, together in a coherent manner.

One of the key actions in the Roadmap that was implemented last year, for example, was the launch by the Environmental Protection Agency of a revised Food Waste Charter, which calls on businesses and State Agencies operating across the food supply chain to sign up to the Charter and commit to reducing food waste.

Food donation and redistribution plays an important role in preventing food waste and is a key focus of the Roadmap. Significant volumes of surplus food are already donated by retailers (to FoodCloud, for example) for onward distribution to charities.

Actions in the Roadmap that are aimed at further preventing edible food in the retail sector, for example, being wasted include: Investigate the potential impact of a prohibition on the destruction of edible food in advance of its ‘use-by’ date; investigate the regulatory and legal barriers to ‘Good Samaritan’ acts of donation and whether mandatory donation of edible food from retail; and outlets would reduce food waste.

My Department will be progressing the implementation of the above actions as set out in the National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap 2023-2025.