Brown: stop wasting food
Britons can help bring food prices down by cutting the amount they waste every year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday.
Brown was speaking as he was travelling to the G8 summit in Japan where the rich nations’ club is meeting to discuss rising fuel and food prices as well as global warming.
A government study has found Britain wastes around 4m tonnes of food a year, adding something like £420 to the average family’s shopping bills.
Rising food and fuel prices have pushed Britain’s inflation rate to 3.3 per cent, well above the central bank’s 2 per cent target and Environment Secretary Hilary Benn predicted Britons could at best only expect a slight easing in prices.
“The experts say we may see them come down a bit, but they’re not going to go back to where they were a year ago,” Benn said.
Meanwhile senior officials at the G8 were yesterday trying to get American President George W. Bush to put aside misgivings and agree to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century.
Bush is under strong pressure from Japan and Europe but says he will not back a numerical target unless big polluters including China and India agree to binding commitments to curb their carbon pollution.
A face-saving statement that goes beyond last year’s summit pledge in Germany to “seriously consider” cuts of 50 per cent by 2050 is especially important for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who has made climate change the centrepiece of the talks.