Cluck

[ewx]

Half a million chickens every day? Can that really be right?

(...and the report itself, located by GDR.)

Comments

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

well...
Simply, no, it can't.
We need to know how the figures are arrived at. I imagine few people actually throw away a chicken at all, for example, so I assume there's some notional % of a chicken getting dumped by rather more people. At which point it all becomes very dubious. Do the bones count? The head? That tiny bit of dark meat you can never separate that nasty-looking vein from but would otherwise have eaten? How many are cooked by caterers and then not eaten coz the people catered to didn't fancy chicken that day? Are they counting chickens that were bred for food but never made it to a food product for some reason? In fact, how much of all this waste is from the catering industry and nothing much to do with _us_ at all?
Are they counting as waste the stuff that goes to pigswill?
The whole thing's rub, I reckon.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The article says they went through the bins of a couple of thousand volunteers (and presumably then scaled up). So I could well believe that it's purely non-commercial wastage they're talking about (even if I have trouble accepting the number they come up with).

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

We need to know how the figures are arrived at.

Read the report! (http://wrap.s3.amazonaws.com/the-food-we-waste.pdf) The methodology is set out on pages 12–18. In particular:

In total, 2715 householders were interviewed and several weeks later the waste from 2138 of them was collected. [...] All waste was bagged at the kerbside and given a unique identifying code. It was then taken to a sort site, often a local authority municipal waste site. During the food analysis stage, the team of sorters would go through the residual and food waste containers and extract any items of food that had been thrown away, including inedible food waste such as peelings, bones and cores. The food was categorised into one of 13 food groups (e.g. ‘meat and fish’; see Appendix A, Table A1) and assigned a food stage category (e.g. ‘fresh or raw’ or ‘home cooked or prepared’; see Appendix A, Table A2) prior to being weighed.

This approach seems exceptionally thorough to me and I really can't think of a better approach.

I assume there's some notional % of a chicken getting dumped

The waste was measured by weight and is given in the report in tonnes per annum. Someone (not the report’s authors, possibly the Independent journalist) has divided by 365 and some value for the average amount of flesh on a chicken to get a figure in chickens per day.

Do the bones count?

Answered on page 15:

The avoidability rating involved defining the food as one of the following:

• avoidable food waste. The food has been thrown away because it is no longer wanted or has been allowed to go past its best. Examples include an apple or half a pack of cheese;
• possibly avoidable food waste. This is food that some people will eat and others will not, or that can be eaten when prepared in one way but not in another; examples include bread crusts and potato skins; and
• unavoidable food waste. This waste arises from food preparation and includes foods such as meat bones and hard vegetable or fruit peelings (e.g. melon rind); it also includes used teabags and coffee grinds.

How many are cooked by caterers and then not eaten coz the people catered to didn't fancy chicken that day?

None, because these chickens don’t end up in kerbside household waste.

Are they counting chickens that were bred for food but never made it to a food product for some reason?

No, they are not.

In fact, how much of all this waste is from the catering industry and nothing much to do with _us_ at all?

None of it; see above.

Are they counting as waste the stuff that goes to pigswill?

Kerbside waste collecton doesn't go to pigswill. So no, they are not counting that.

The whole thing's rub, I reckon.

At least have the decency to read the report before you lazily dismiss it!

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

The whole thing's rub, I reckon.

Imagine how you would feel if you had spent weeks sorting through thousands of bags of household waste, carefully assigning each half-rotted piece of food waste to its proper category, only to have your work airily dismissed as "rub" by someone who hadn't bothered to read the report.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Imagine how you would feel if you made a light-hearted comment and somebody took it seriously!