Advocates push for unified labels to curb food waste and combat SA's hunger crisis

Daily Maverick

4 days ago

A unified label would eliminate consumer confusion, reduce needless food waste and simplify compliance for the industry.
It is estimated that up to 31% of the country's food production is lost or wasted each year, while millions of South Africans go hungry. Food losses and waste happen at different stages of the food supply chain, from production and distribution to consumption and disposal.
There have been growing calls to rework policies to help reduce waste, whether it be through incentivising the donation of goods to food recollection organisations, or educating the consumer on responsible consumption.
JX & Co, a food advocacy company, is petitioning for unified and clearer food labels, specifically expiry dates, to curb food waste. In its petition it writes: 'We found that inconsistent expiry labels 'Best Before', 'Use By' and the unregulated 'Sell By' fuel confusion and waste in South African homes, which discard over R10-billion worth of edible food each year. That same confusion widens the gap between surplus and access, exacerbating food insecurity and malnutrition.We're petitioning the National Regulator for compulsory specifications and the South African Bureau of Standards to adopt one clear, standardised mark: Safe to Eat Until [DD MM YYYY]. This simple change could halve household food loss while ensuring safer, more equitable access to nutrition,' the petition reads.
Daily Maverick interviewed JX Gumede who is spearheading this call at his Salt Rock home on the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal.
Gumede is a food justice advocate and an AI ethicist. When asked why he chose this campaign specifically he said that food labelling was one of the points at which we could make meaningful changes in food waste.
'Labelling offers a very good entry point, because with labelling it is a policy. And once you've got the policy, you then create a bottleneck for manufacturers and producers to have to get through that policy constraint in order to be able to access the market.'
Gumede said that although household waste was not the biggest food loss point of weakness, curbing food waste there could make a difference.
'Second to processing is retail, together with household consumption that contribute greatly to food loss and waste,' said Gumede.
'So I'm mixing retail and household consumption as one because the consumer is engaging the label at the store and is engaging the label at home in their fridge. So that's why I'm grouping it as one thing. And it is a significant part of food wastage, to the extent that it's in the region of about 20% of all food wasted comes from this confusion around food waste. A total of 1.6 to 1.8 million tons is wasted at household level. About 600,000 is wasted at retail level. So you're talking about more than two million tons,' said Gumede.
'It's not just labels (that contribute to food loss and waste), but labels make a big part of that. Because a very clear example is that if you look at a label and you don't understand it, research proves empirically that food labels create confusion. Due to the confusion created by food labels, there's wastage,' Gumede said.
Gumede said South Africa was not the only country facing this issue.
'There are certain countries also looking at having a unified label. Some countries have more than 20 different labels on food items. Can you imagine trying to decipher what they actually mean beyond what you assume they mean?
Sell-by date
'The sell-by date is a date that is useful for the retailer to rotate their stock. So it's basically giving the retailer a heads-up on when that item more or less should be off their shelves.
'Hence, even for this retailer, they remove it on the sell-by date. It doesn't mean the item is unsafe. It just tells you it should be a good idea, and it is a recommendation and suggestion that this item be sold and all off the shelf by (for example) 12 September.
'Now all of these dates, including sell by, use by, and best by, all of them have got a margin of safety. In other words, none of them has a date where the food or the item expires at 12 o'clock or at one minute past 12, it's now inedible. These are suggestive parameters, what they buffer.
'Consumers look at the date, they see the date, they grab the item, they remind themselves that the date has come, and even if it's a day or two and in the bin it goes. They don't do any sensory tests like, does it smell off? And I'm not recommending people should be relying on sensory tests for their safety, but I am saying common sense should prevail,' said Gumede.
'Our petition and the campaign we are driving is of one label, and label along the lines of 'safe to eat until' — that's it. Cuts out the confusion and the misunderstanding and optimal this and optimal that — safe to eat until. One label.'
Experts have proposed interventions such as supporting sustainable agricultural practices, improved storage facilities and efficient distribution systems. Reducing food loss and waste at the source, from farm to fork, is both cost effective and environmentally responsible.
The draft food loss strategy states that: 'The interventions include behaviour change through education: central to the success of this strategy is changing consumer behaviour. It is essential to raise awareness about the consequences of food waste and the importance of responsible consumption.
'Partnerships: collaboration with various stakeholders, including government agencies, food producers, retailers and NGOs is crucial to implementing effective food waste reduction initiatives.'
Gumede says he isn't discounting the food safety issues that caused the stringent laws and methods retailers use.
'I'm not promoting the selling of any food item, whether it's within the expiry date or not, that is spoiled and is not safe for human consumption.'
Gumede was a commercial farmer and also studied philosophy and ethics, which led to his current role as an AI ethicist, specifically within food justice. He will be a speaker at the the 7th annual Food Indaba this weekend. The indaba began on 7 July 2025 and will end on 20 July, under the theme ' Artificial Intelligence and the Food System '.
'I understand that in order to not get into the issues of maybe, maybe not in terms of food safety they would rather bin it than donate the food, or even make it available beyond that date, which then calls on us to question whether our policies incentivise people, retailers in particular, to still offer that food at a discounted rate after its best buy date. There are countries where there are certain provisions to help retailers sell food,' said Gumede.
'In South Africa, we don't have any loopholes. There's no leeway. There's no accommodation yet we have the highest inequality levels in the world. We also have one of the highest wastage per person of any country in the world. So the fact that we selectively employ highly restrictive food safety standards in a country where nearly a quarter of South Africans go to bed without food, those are positions that I cannot readily reconcile,' he said.