Is the retailer exclusively responsible for food loss?

Nowadays, plenty of food is disposed of from the retailer of supermarkets every day. As indicated

in the index by the UN, approximately one-third of food production all over the world gets wasted every

year. These days, the report that roughly 4,000 lunch boxes were discarded in the revenue of the opening

ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics has attracted people’s attention in terms of the sustainability of food

resources. This problem is frequently attributed to retailers’ failures because they are directly connected

to consumers, who finally made the decision about shopping in the supply chain. However, I argue in

this paper that the responsibility for food loss is not solely on retailers, and it is essential that the other

factors, including, best-before date, the process of production and distribution, and emerging services,

should be taken into account to reduce the waste of food dramatically.

Firstly, a lot of food is inevitably wasted every day because the best-before date of food is set too

strictly. It is widely known that it is totally different from the expiry date and indicates neither the

deadline of food safety nor the law restriction. The best-before date is a measure of how long food can

be consumed deliciously. The law states, however, that if a consumer becomes ill because of the food

they have bought, the seller is liable for the illness. Therefore, the seller's criteria are forced to be set at

the best-before date just in case. The Consumer Affairs Agency of Japan has launched a project to
stockpile expired food of best-before date as emergency food for the case of disaster. Because changing

the law is not easy, these types of projects are crucial to preserving food supply besides the best-before

date.

Secondly, the production and distribution process is also an influential factor in food loss. Although

retailers are often the focus of attention when it comes to food loss, there are also many food issues

before the food arrives at the supermarket. In the processing of food, substandard and defective products

are discarded, and during distribution, surpluses and unsold goods occur between traders rather than

between consumers and retailers. What we should focus on is that these wasted foods can still be

consumed. Therefore, new systems in which the surplus foodstuffs at the stages of production and

distribution are immediately sold or distributed for free to consumers should be developed in order to

eliminate unnecessary waste.

Finally, a new tendency during consumers starts to prevent them from shopping from a retailer. Due

to the emergence of home delivery services such as UberEats, the sales of retailers especially in prepared

food are declining gradually these days. Then, a lot of ready-to-eat food is disposed of because this trend

creates a gigantic gap between previous sales estimates and current sales. Since this trend seems to

continue for a while, retailers need to contrive some brand-new strategies. One of the ways to react to
this situation is partnering with supermarkets and food delivery services, adopting a strategy to be

completely trendy. Additionally, packing delivery services is also significantly attractive. Consumers

choose the food they need on a weekly basis on the internet and the retailers package and deliver it

directly to their homes. To compete with new sorts of popular services among customers, retailers also

need to develop new approaches, leading to the decline of food loss in total.

Altogether, I maintain that it is not rational that the retailers are exclusively subject to the critic about

food loss, and in order to decrease the amount of waste, people need to tackle several issues ascribed to

the strict rules, detailed processes, and upcoming trends.