Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP, Dr Dan Poulter, is urging the Government to extend its Food Waste Fund, which helped redistribute surplus food to charities such as FareShare.

The idea behind the successful initiative, administered by DEFRA and which ran for 9 months this year, was simple – by covering the modest additional costs of harvesting, packaging and transporting surplus food, growers would no longer have to pay more to distribute their excess food to charities than they would to have to plough it back into the fields or sent it off to be recycled.

After visiting FareShare’s depot in Ipswich recently, Dr Poulter has seen first-hand the outstanding work they do, redistributing high quality, fresh produce to local charities and he has pledged to support them in their representations to the Chancellor ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review.  If the funding is extended by Government, food distribution charities will be able to double the amount of food they can get to vulnerable people,

Commenting, Dr Poulter said “I am supporting calls for the Government to extend this funding to save food from going to unnecessary waste and to ensure that surplus food goes to charities such as FareShare for redistribution.  A modest investment of £5million per annum will help to offset costs faced by growers and manufacturers who ultimately want to do the right thing with their food surplus.”

“It cannot be right for millions of tonnes of fresh, high quality produce to simply go to waste and that is why I am backing FareShare’s calls for the Government to continue and extend this funding, so that they can continue to deliver good quality, nutritious food to local charities here in Suffolk and across the UK.”