The minister () announced that, including dialogue with other ministries and implementation of suggestions from the supermarket sector. However, in the face of the food term rule, the government retreated. Food has roots in, and in, but current validity regulation also has its role: by inducing inefficient behavior in food disposal, it generates waste.
The problem is not in the individual decision of families to discard products or retailers who have stranded expired products, but may be in the regulatory model that induces the practice. Currently, Brazil occupies the tenth position among those, with about 94 kg per capita thrown annually, according to the UNEP (United Nations Program for the Environment); 60% of this waste occurs in homes, 28% in food services and 12% in retail.
This scenario could be reduced with adjustments to regulation, as recent research on dynamic expiration models demonstrates.
The traditional concept of “Fixed Expiration Date”, Fed) establishes conservative consumption deadlines that do not consider variables such as temperature and storage. In practice, this model induces consumers to avoid products close to maturity, even when they are still in good condition, as Jessica Aschemann-Witzel and other authors points out.
An alternative is the implementation of “dynamic validity dates” (“Dynamic Expiration Dates”, which adjust the salary according to the real conservation conditions. According to Yu Zhang and other researchers, these systems can reduce waste by up to 10% in refrigerated environments, allowing more efficient inventory management. However, in a hot climate country like Brazil, where degradation occurs rapidly and cold chains are failures, this solution needs to be complemented with clear policies to encourage consumption before maturity.
One of these policies is the progressive price reduction for products near the expiration date, a strategy widely applied in Europe. This approach increases the acceptance of these products without compromising in the UK, supermarket chains eliminated “best Before” labels in hundreds of items and implemented staggered discounts, reducing waste and expanding access to quality foods at lower prices.
Consumer education also plays an essential role. Thomas Fujiwara has shown that confusion between the terms “consuming up to” and “better before” is one of the main causes of domestic waste in countries that adopt the terms. Educational campaigns could reduce this misinformation and encourage the use of more objective criteria to evaluate quality, such as texture, odor and color.
In this scenario, Brazil would win by discussing its approach to food labeling. Dynamic validity, coupled with progressive discount policies and awareness campaigns, could be a viable way to reduce waste and make the food market more efficient.
However, the government faces a bigger problem: after years of fiscal disorganization and depreciability in economic management, political strength to lead this debate without the population seeing the agenda as an attempt to push spoiled food to the poorest – ancuse that () He directed the attempt to guide the issue by the previous government.
Without a structural change in economic policy, the mere change in labels will not be enough to contain food prices.
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