Annually in Montenegro, about five million loaves of bread are thrown away or given as animal feed, as well as hundreds of thousands of various pastries. About 2.200 tons of wheat flour is needed for their production, according to data obtained by "Vijesti" from the bakery industry.
The reasons for such large amounts of basic food waste are that large retailers demand that their bread shelves be full because of the impact on the customer, and they don't care how much will remain unsold because they return that bread to the bakers without paying a fee. Bakers calculate this cost of the expected return of the bread into the selling price of the bread, so that it is ultimately paid by consumers, not traders.
The EU prohibits the conditionality of traders
This practice is banned in European Union countries where traders have to bear the cost of returning or throwing away food with a short shelf life, which they ordered and did not sell. This is stated by the Research Center of the Parliament of Montenegro in its report "Legal solutions related to the reduction of food waste in certain countries" from February last year.
Ordering bread, but also other food, just to fill the shelves of retailers regardless of how much is sold, according to claims from the bakery industry, causes multiple damage - the price of the final product increases for the cost of wasted food, the amount of waste increases, the amount of flour consumption increases and wheat, the price of which is rising due to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and is becoming a scarce commodity, i.e. it is difficult to procure. So, with this practice, Montenegro wastes food, which it procures from imports at increasingly high prices and sometimes with great difficulty.
According to the data presented by "Vijesti", the calculation of the cost of the bread that the merchants returned to the bakers was calculated in the selling price for the consumer in the amount of five to eight cents per loaf. For example, the abolition of VAT on flour and bread led to a decrease in the price of bread by about five cents.
100 tow trucks went to the toss, and they boasted about five
For the quantities of thrown bread and other baked goods, use as much flour as can fit in one hundred large and full trucks. The extent of this relationship is shown by the example that in March the Government boasted about the import of five truckloads of flour, which at that moment temporarily prevented a shortage of bread in Montenegro.
According to bakers' data, traders return 12 to 14 percent of unsold bread to them, while the percentage of returns is even higher for other baked goods. Large industrial bakeries produce 80 to 90 thousand loaves of basic bread per day, while other small bakeries produce a total of about 20 thousand loaves, so the total annual production is more than 40 million loaves. Considering the average percentage of returns, approximately five million unsold loaves are returned to bakers annually, which they throw away or sell for a pittance as low-quality fodder.
The representatives of the bakers have tried to raise this topic several times in previous negotiations with the Ministries of Economic Development and Agriculture, but so far there has been no response to it. They hope that it will now be triggered by the announcement of new problems in deliveries and prices of grain and flour.
In its report, the Assembly's research center discussed legal solutions that deal with the issue of throwing away surplus food in 25 countries, as well as the key features of the EU regulatory framework whose goals are to reduce food loss and waste "from field to table".
Expiring food must be donated
The Slovenian law on agriculture prohibits traders from returning to food producers delivered but unsold expired products. This law prohibits a business entity - a trader from abusing its market power and thereby exploiting the other contracted party, i.e. the trader could not condition a farmer or other food producer to sell him a product on the condition that he can return all unsold quantities to him after the expiry of the deadline without compensation .
This law also stipulates that food has two deadlines - "expiry date" and "best before", which allows traders and manufacturers to sell food with a "best before" date but not a "best before" date, with tax discounts can be donated to soup kitchens, the Red Cross or similar institutions.
In its report, the Research Center of the Parliament of Montenegro listed other European countries that have similar laws, and recommended that similar legal experiences be applied in Montenegro.
The first among the countries to adopt such laws was France in 2016, and it introduced obligations for supermarkets operating in facilities larger than 400 square meters to redirect food that cannot be sold, but is still safe for use, free of charge to non-profit organizations that deal with food redistribution. Similar laws were subsequently adopted by other member states, and there are also some EU directives at the level of the entire union.
Food waste is a huge expense, affects insecurity and limits resources
"Food loss and waste are a global challenge that has gained importance in public and political programs in recent years. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, approximately one-third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted, while in the European Union about 87,8 million tons of food is lost or thrown away every year. Loss and waste of surplus food contribute simultaneously to large economic costs, insecurity regarding food supply, malnutrition, water consumption, and has an impact on the environment and limited natural resources," the Research Center states in its report.
They state that the key principles in reducing food waste are contained in the EU Waste Directive, which calls on member states, among other things, to: reduce the generation of food waste on the way from primary production to distribution; reduce household food waste; encourage food donation and other forms of redistribution for human consumption, by prioritizing human consumption over use in animal feed and processing into non-food products; as well as monitor and evaluate the implementation of measures to prevent food waste.
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