FSGWS Best Before Dates – Policy Change September 2022
FareShare Glasgow & the West of Scotland is a regional centre for FareShare. The FareShare network sends food and other essentials to over 9500 charities and community groups across the UK. At FareShare, we’re always looking for ways to get even more food into our network. This is particularly important now, as the Cost of Living Crisis piles even more pressure on people who are already struggling.
We’re also passionate about reducing the wastage of food, water and other resources, which has such a devastating impact on our planet.
To help achieve this, we’re trying to make working with FareShare more flexible for our brilliant Food Partners. The newest step in this involves rolling out a new Best Before Dates Policy, simplifying the process of redistributing surplus food.
This will increase the good-to-eat food and drink we can accept, while still maintaining the quality of the food we redistribute. We’ll be extending the time we will accept on non-chilled items past their Best Before date. This will allow us to save and redistribute even more good quality food to those most in need.
This follows in the footsteps of recent moves such as the wider rolling out of Too Good To Go’s ‘Look Smell Taste’ label, which has now been adopted by over 40 major brands across the UK.
Why Is It Changing?
A huge volume of Best-Before labelled food is thrown away across the UK weekly – and it doesn’t need to be.
Found on products like yoghurt, biscuits and crisps, Best Before labels are an indicator of quality, not safety. This is very different from the Use By label, which indicates when perishable food is no longer safe to eat. Our new policy will only be applied to non-chilled, best before labelled products. Everything we accept will still be of high quality, and safe – and, in fact, delicious – to eat.
By adjusting our policy, the FareShare network will not only make things easier for our food partners and allow us to supply even more good-to-eat surplus food, it’ll help ease some of the toll of unnecessary global food waste on the environment.
What’s Changing?
The FareShare network will be extending the time we will accept on non-chilled items past their Best Before date. Certain food types will now receive automatic extensions.
This may mean that our frontline charities may receive items slightly further outside of the Best Before date than previously. These will only ever be sent out after inspections to ensure that safeguarding standards, including intact packaging, are met.
For more information, please take a look at FareShare’s Full Best Before Dates Policy