Ghana Must Ban Food Waste In Supermarkets And Hospitality Companies

Ghana’s lawmakers must pass a law to ban supermarkets and hospitality companies from destroying their unsold foods, and donate it to charities or farms instead. This is coming as a result of the increasing amount of food been wasted along Ghana’s food supply system. Chef Elijah A.Addo, founder of Food for All Ghana stated that the 2013 Ghana food wastage report showed food waste is fast becoming part of the Ghanaian lifestyle. The report captured the inefficiencies in the Ghanaian food supply system and provided detailed information on what government, businesses and consumers should do to improve our food system.

France this week passed a socialist proposal to ban food waste in supermarkets and other developed countries are making it a priority to reduce food wastage by 2025. French people throw away between 20 to 30 kilos of food per person per year costing an estimated $13million to $22 million whiles when compared, Ghanaians are throwing away over 40 kilos of food per person per year. This food waste ratio is much higher due to the high level of food imports, misunderstanding of date labels, and the rapid increase in supermarkets, hotels, restaurants and food products.

Currently, over 45% of the food produced and imported in Ghana is wasted along our food supply chain. If left unchecked, Ghana will be losing over $50 billion dollars by 2018 and this will have effects on country’s economy. Food imports in Ghana keep increasing at a rate of 10% annually”.

Food for All Ghana campaign is a national food recovery project to build West Africa’s first food recovery bank in Ghana in order to recover food to feed the less privileged and vulnerable in Ghana. Under its 2015 Food for All Ghana campaign it therefore entreats government to encourage stakeholders in Ghana’s food supply system to sign contracts with charities for unsold food donations and also set an urgent national agenda to reduce food waste as other developed countries are doing.The food for All Ghana campaign is spearheaded by a Goodwill Ambassador who will be unveiled to the public on the 13^th June, 2015 during the project launch.