Tim Almond

A week or so ago, the BBC made a documentary about how some supermarket branches had staff who were doing things like trying to deliberately extend the shelf life of food for sale. Not only did they show the documentary, but it was trailed on BBC breakfast and BBC news outlets.

So, I was a little surprised to hear a report on Today on Radio 4, in which a freegan (along with a BBC reporter) were trawling through bins at the back of a store picking up food, condemning the waste of perfectly edible food. This was followed by an interview where someone from the British Retail Consortium was on, defending accusations of waste with regards to supermarkets throwing food away. He made the rather obvious point that supermarkets don’t like throwing food away because it costs them money.

It is right that supermarkets are investigated over matters of public health, but I don’t think this is what the BBC is up to. For some time, they’ve had it in for the supermarkets. First there was a snipe for a lack of fairtrade, lack of organics. Then, when they stocked fairtrade and organic, it was the price of fairtrade, and the food miles of all the organics. They find any reason imaginable to attack them, yet never consider to mention any of the benefits that they have brought.

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Tags: Politics, Radio //