The last Open Thread was in October 2017, so I thought we were overdue for a new one.
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Should EAs work on reducing food waste?
According to USDA statistics, a significant percent of food purchased by consumers goes uneaten (15% of chicken, 35% of turkey, 20% of beef, 29% of pork, and 23% of the edible portion of eggs). If consumers wasted less food, they would purchase less meat/eggs/dairy, which would lead to fewer animals suffering on factory farms.
One factor that could be driving food waste is confusing date labeling. For example, an egg container may have a 'Sell By' date meant to help retailers manage their inventory, but a consumer who sees the label and date some time after purchasing might throw the eggs away thinking they are no longer safe to eat. One possible solution is a federal labeling law that limits producers to listing the freshness date and the expiration date (and requires them to use specific easy to understand phrases when listing either). However, there are several reasons that working towards such a law may be a bad use of resources. First, legal change may be unnecessary as it appears the food industry may voluntarily adopt such a system. Second, it's unclear how much labeling reform reduces food waste (I was unable to find any studies in my brief search). Third, it may be that the primary benefits of reducing animal product consumption are the long term effects, in which case reductions in consumption driven by factors other than concern for animals may be much less impactful. Of course, there may also be other ways to reduce food waste (to which the first two concerns would not apply).
Interesting. It's strange that I've never heard anyone talking about decreasing animal suffering by decreasing food waste before. I wonder if anyone investigated such possibilities, I couldn’t find anything by googling. I happened to talk with an ACE researcher today and he didn’t know about any such research either. I think it's possible that there are some effective interventions in this area. Because there are many ways to reduce waste. For example: