Global consortium aims to use surplus food to tackle hunger in developing world

Apr 3 2013

"A consortium of donors, NGOs, supermarkets and agro-businesses are working on plans to [send] surplus food, currently wasted in industrialized countries, to the developing world to tackle hunger," Owen Barder, senior fellow and director for Europe at the Center for Global Development (CGD), writes in the center's "Global Development: Views from the Center" blog. "In a new public-private partnership, donor agencies and supermarkets are planning to work together to develop ways to ship this surplus to Africa," he notes, adding, "Food that is approaching its use-by date will be bought by donor governments at cost and repurposed to tackle hunger in countries that need it most," and "[o]fficials are working with the merchant navy to develop a European equivalent of the U.S. Cargo Preference Act so that the food is carried in nationally registered vessels" (4/1).