The green beans are fresh, the broccoli crunchy and the baby corn sweet, but having failed “cosmetic” tests of international supermarkets, the Kenyan-grown food was hurled out as waste.
However, on Tuesday vegetables considered too ugly for shop-shelves were served at a special dinner for about 100 global environment ministers and top-level delegations to highlight the “scandal” of large scale, but entirely unnecessary food wastage.
The meal, held at the Nairobi-based UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), was organized by anti-food waste campaigner Tristram Stuart, who collected about 1,600kg of unwanted fruit and vegetables in Kenya for the meal.
Photo: AFP
“No economic, environmental or ethical argument can be made to justify the extent of food waste,” UNEP boss Achim Steiner told the dinner, where the previously tossed-out food was served up by top chefs.
UNEP is campaigning to slash the current 1.3 billion tonnes of food lost or wasted each year as part of efforts to ease the environmental impact on an “already straining global food system.”
Kenya is a key market for export of fresh vegetables to European supermarkets.
However, similar displays of the “disproportionate power of supermarkets” over farmers producing for export are found worldwide, Stuart said, showing images of rotting bananas in Ecuador, oranges in Florida or tomatoes in Tenerife.
“It is a huge scandal, but also a huge opportunity” for change, said Stuart, who said he was “genuinely shocked and distressed” at the amount of vegetables in Kenya rejected by supermarkets and thrown away.
Stuart criticized the “particularly pernicious practices” of international supermarkets with overly strict standards for appearance that will bin beans for being too long or not green enough.
Supermarkets also cancel orders after vegetables had been harvested, said Stuart, a British environmental campaigner who created the ‘Feeding the 5,000’ organization to encourage cuts in food waste.
While some unwanted produce is sold on the local market or donated, so much is rejected that much is left to rot or fed to livestock, prompting resentment among Kenyan farmers hit with the lost revenue, he added.
And some producers sign contracts with supermarket chains that block them from selling unwanted food on local markets or even donating it to charities, with farmers allowed only to use the vegetables for animal feed.
“If it happens in Kenya, it is also happening elsewhere in Africa, in Asia and Latin America,” UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall said. “This could be just the tip of the iceberg.”
Ministers were served a five-course meal including grilled sweet corn, lentils with tamarind and tiramisu made with mangoes.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the