Delhaize seeks to limit amount of unsold fresh foods

Every day, Belgian supermarket Delhaize is forced to throw or give away tens of thousands of packages of meat, fish, bagged salad and other refrigerated items that are expired.

To limit the amount of waste, the grocer has instructed personnel to leave products with longer use-by dates off the shelves until ones with earlier dates have been sold, according to reports in papers of Mediahuis.

A Delhaize spokesperson told the papers that because spoilt food is “bad business” for the company, “we have to find solutions for ourselves, as well as for the customers.”

In a separate interview with Le Soir, the spokesperson explained that the recommendation applied only to products intended for rapid consumption, with a use-by date of four to five days maximum. “From experience, we have found that it’s a natural human reflex to look for the products with the longest use-by date,” he said. “It’s completely normal, but it’s a phenomenon we’d like to limit.”