In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40% of the food supply. Can you believe it? How can all this food simply go to waste to rot in some landfill? The fact remains that there is hunger throughout the world. Right here at home in the USA, people go hungry every day when there is food available to feed them all.

This 30-40% figure, which is based on estimates by USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31% food loss at retail and consumer levels, corresponds to nearly 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food. Food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills and represents wasted nourishment.

We in the meat and poultry industry are especially vulnerable to the food waste issue because we produce and market a perishable product. Peruse your local market and you will find nearly every meat or poultry item with a sell-by or freeze-by or use-by date affixed to it. The waste ensues when some of those meat packages are not sold and routinely discarded at the store level or forgotten in the back of a home refrigerator, generating a penicillin-like experiment of mold.

Let’s do some math. Let's say an average of 25% — not the 30 to 40% the USDA estimates — of the meat and poultry we produce is wasted. That means that at least 122 pounds of every beef animal processed in this country will go to waste. How did I arrive at that calculation? Follow me here: Live beef animal equals 1,200 pounds times 63% yield, minus 3.5% shrink, times 67% yielded “take home” meat, times 25% waste, equals 122 pounds. Can that be true, 122 pounds from every one of the 600,000 head of beef cattle slaughtered weekly in the US — or 73 million pounds — will go to a landfill somewhere, generating more methane gas? For sake of example, maybe our problem is much less; say only 10% of beef is wasted — or 49 pounds from each animal, for a total of 29 million pounds per week. That’s still nearly 4.5 pounds of wasted beef for every citizen in our country every year.

Sure, I know that there are plenty of other food items that also go to waste either stuck in the back of the refrigerator like lettuce or shriveled old mold-covered vegetables or shrunken apples, but our business is meat and poultry and that is why I am trying to identify and emphasize the scope of our problem.

One of the causes of “our problem” are the “best if used by” statements on every meat or poultry package. What and who determines these arbitrary dates? Usually, it’s the company marketing such products that have done shelf life studies of their products to determine when they might “go bad.” These time frames often are then “safe sided” to make sure that there will be no litigious consumers who may claim harm if their meat or poultry product is not consumed before the use by time frame.

What’s the cure to help eliminate waste from these arbitrary dates? Two that I can think of. First, extend the dates closer to what the company’s shelf life studies show rather than pick shorter arbitrary time frames that reflect the worry of the company’s attorneys. Second, reformulate the products so that they are more shelf stable at the expense of taste or extending product shelf longevity possibly hurting sales. While that may work for processed meats, how do you reformulate fresh beef or pork or chicken for that matter?

Maybe there is another potential cure to address the hunger problem, and that is having a collection system for meat and poultry products that are nearing their shelf life limits and distribute them to those in need. Or maybe this food waste can be used as feed for cattle, hogs or poultry. Of course, such a collection and distribution system would have to accommodate the “use by” dates, but that can be worked out.

Not our problem, you say? I disagree; food waste is a problem that we can help cure and, at 29 million pounds of beef wasted every week, it is one we are obligated to help solve.

Waste not, want not

Join for free* to continue reading.