Is food waste illegal?

Existing food legislation focuses primarily on meeting basic hygiene requirements, i.e. making food suitable for human consumption from a microbiological perspective.

The food waste issue is recognised at EU and UN level and objectives have been set, but most legislation lacks powerful tools to reduce food waste.This project will investigate whether the resource conservation requirements in Swedish environmental legislation can be applied alongside food legislation, without setting aside food safety.

It will also investigate the impact of implementing stricter food waste legislation on individual players and at national level.

Sweden already has strong legislation intended to reduce waste in the Swedish food system, but it is now necessary for the rules to be applied, so it is important to demonstrate their potential to lower waste levels.

We believe that there is great under-utilised potential in existing legislation since the rules are not applied, but also recognise the need to refine environmental and food legislation to better meet the needs of a circular economy in society. Resource management must not be accompanied by reduced food security.

In case work in the project, we will investigate the technical, personnel and hygiene scope together with food business operators on how to comply with current legislation regarding reduced food waste. We will also assess how the legislative practice could be changed to save resources.