Stalker was interested in an item on BBC Newsline on the 19th July.
The piece was investigating the amount of waste that is produced in the agri-industry because of so called "ugly veg".
The amounts chucked because consumers demand pristine produce and thus stores demand on behalf of the consumer, were quite staggering. We're well accustomed in the mushroom industry to requirements of size and grade.
The UFU put up their spokesperson Patricia Erwin to plead the case for more enlightened consumerist practices. She said that consumers have to break the trend of only purchasing cosmetically beautiful produce for the cycle of waste to be halted.
The message is simple, but changing our modes of thinking in this regard is not easy. We're conditioned by media and nurture to avoid anything even remotely unclean or imperfect in regards to food. Breaking that conditioning would take many years of deep psychological therapy, Stalker reckons.
Although with demands that potatoes pass a skin brightness test, that apples undergo a crispness examination and that carrots be straight and clean-shaven of all root hairs – something has gone very wrong. Maybe supermarket buyers need to be psychologically tested.
In The Sunday Times one farmer reported how Tesco had tested his potatoes with a "brightness meter", to see if their skins were shiny enough.
Seems like the people at Tesco might need to be tested with a brightness meter themselves?
