Pensions Back-lash

Were you born after April 1978? Then you will be the first generation of both males and females who won’t receive a penny in state pension until you reach the age of 68 – and there is even talk of raising that to 70. Why have we so meekly accepted this when in Ireland and France it has reached the point of bringing down governments?



It played no small part in Sinn Fein’s victory. Sinn Fein’s extraordinary election victory in Ireland is widely seen as a protest vote against the disarray in public hospitals and soaring rents in urban areas. Yet the exit polls also revealed that plans to raise the state pension age in Ireland to 67 in 2021, and 68 in 2028 was the third most important issue among voters after health and housing. It seems almost every political party was taken aback by how frequently the pension age was raised on doorsteps during the election. Sinn Fein pledged to roll back the state pension age to 65.



 Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said during the election campaign: “For us the idea that somebody would be forced to continue working until they’re almost 70, or that people of 65 or 66 will be sent down to the dole queues, it’s absolutely disgraceful.”



In France, the protests have gone on to the streets. The rail network has been paralysed, electricity supplies cut, and violent demonstrations met with police teargas. All this because Macron’s government is proposing that those born after 1974 won’t get a full pension (more generous than in the UK) until they are 64, at present 62.



 In Britain, we have been browbeaten by endless talk of the demographic time bomb; the idea that they’ll be trillions of elderly people and hardly any young workers coming up behind them to support pensions as before. There is no alternative, we’re told.



Yes, the population is ageing, and state pensions take up a vast proportion of public spending. But recent projections show that the population is ageing rather less fast than predicted. Even in 2017, before the slowdown in longevity growth was part of the picture, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the EU were projecting that Britain’s demographic time bomb was much less explosive than elsewhere in Europe.



It projected that age-related expenditure on pensions would rise from 7.7% of UK GDP in 2010 to 9.2% in 2060. That’s an increase of 1.5% of GDP over a half century although that will, of course, be in part because of the measures we have already put in place. Other countries face much bigger forecast burdens; the Netherlands and Belgium are in the 8-10% range.

Yet Britain is fast-tracking to a pension age of 68 ahead of every other Western European country apart from Ireland.

No Aid

CDC, formerly known as the Commonwealth Development Corporation, a government development corporation that invests billions of pounds in Asia and Africa,  stands accused of squandering public money and failing to make a difference to poverty levels.



It has provided “little to no evidence that … it is making an impact in terms of tackling poverty, providing genuinely additional resources or making effective use of government resources,” according to a new report.



In the past, the corporation, which has invested in luxury hotels, shopping centres, gated communities and private hospitals, has been accused of favouring high financial returns on its investments over tackling poverty. It uses tax havens, and critics say its executive salaries are too high and its accounts are opaque.
In 2011, the then secretary of state for international development, Andrew Mitchell, set out a new vision for CDC, pledging to make it more “socially and environmentally responsible”, with fewer investments in “harmful tax regimes” and greater transparency. He was concerned that too much money was going to private equity intermediaries, with the result that not enough was going to development projects. But in 2019, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact gave the CDC an “amber/red” rating, finding that it had produced an “unsatisfactory achievement in most areas”.
Now, according to Doing More Harm Than Good – a new report from Global Justice Now, a social justice organisation – CDC, which in 2016 saw its potential investment budget increase from £1.5bn to £6bn, remains a cause for concern. 



The report says that, despite Mitchell’s reforms, which were designed to reduce the amount of money being siphoned off by intermediaries, CDC today invests an annual £2bn via private equity funds compared with £1.9bn in 2011. Of the investments in which CDC owns more than 20%, two-thirds are based in tax havens – something that the institution insists is necessary to stop it being taxed twice, but which campaigners say is a cause for concern.



“CDC has demonstrated a near-total resistance to reform by continuing to make more profit than it should and by channelling its investments through tax havens,” said Daniel Willis, an aid and climate campaigner at Global Justice Now and co-author of the report. “This ‘market knows best’ approach to development uses aid money to facilitate the extraction of wealth from the global south to the global north – the exact opposite to what any institution with a development mandate should be doing.”
Global Justice Now highlighted several CDC investments which it said were a concern. These include the Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund, which invests in private healthcare institutions around the world, and Bridge International Academies, a low-cost private school chain with significant operations in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda.
The report states: “Our research has found numerous issues with Bridge schools, including exclusion of poor and disadvantaged children; violation of health and safety and labour conditions; and a severe lack of transparency and accountability. The situation became so serious that authorities in Kenya and Uganda actually tried to stop the schools operating.”
CDC has also invested in a company which operates coal-burning cement factories in east Africa, one that owns a petroleum pipeline in Cameroon, and another that owns an oil-burning power plant in Benin.
The report states: “The evidence presented here undermines the claims made by government ministers … that CDC is ensuring that its investments will ‘soon in real terms’ be compliant with the Paris agreement on climate change.”
CDC has also invested in a company which operates coal-burning cement factories in east Africa, one that owns a petroleum pipeline in Cameroon, and another that owns an oil-burning power plant in Benin.
Willis said: “This is not development as we know it. CDC has continually failed to show how its investments are genuinely tackling poverty around the world. What’s more, the aid money being channelled through CDC is actually exacerbating inequalities, damaging the environment and undermining human rights.”



Hunger should be over – but it isn’t

Between 1968 and 2017, the world’s population increased by 113% from 3.55 billion to 7.55 billion. 



Over the same time period, the average global food supply per person per day jumped 27% to almost 3,000 calories.



In sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, food supply per person per day rose from 1,852 in 1961 to 2,449 in 2017 – a 32 percent increase. 



https://quillette.com/2020/02/11/the-battle-to-feed-all-of-humanity-is-over-humanity-has-won/

Defence Spending Rises

According to the report, which measures over 170 countries, global defense spending rose 4% in 2019 compared to 2018.



 The U.S. continued to claim top spot in military expenditures, spending $638 billion in 2019. China was the second biggest spender at $185 billion. Both countries’ spending grew 6.6% compared to the prior year. But, “the trajectory of the two states’ defense spending is diverging,” wrote Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, IISS research fellow for Defence Economics and Procurement, in a related blog post. “The budget increase in the U.S. was the largest in 10 years, and spending has increased year-on-year since U.S. President Donald Trump took office. While spending is still rising in China, the pace of growth is decelerating.” As a result, the spending gap between the two countries has widened. 



The U.S. increase alone of $53.4 billion, the report added, was roughly on par with Britain’s entire defence budget.




What Health Benefits?

Poor adults in Britain today are in worse health than those born in 1920, according to a study which warns of widening inequalities and a looming crisis for the NHS.





Research carried out at University College London compared the health in adulthood of 16 birth cohorts, ranging from those born between 1920-1922 up to those born between 1968-1970. It found a wider gap between rich and poor among later generations despite the arrival of free healthcare. Lifestyle factors such as higher smoking rates among poorer people born later in the century, alongside a decline in social housing provision, were also blamed. 

Dr Stephen Jivraj, who led the study, said it was also likely that the difference was down to working-class Brits who were born in 1920 having benefitted from their working lives coinciding with an era of high employment in traditional industrial occupations compared to later generations entering the workforce in the 1980s. He added that the growth in health inequalities also runs parallel to rising income inequality in Britain during the 20th century.
Dr Jivraj, an associate professor in UCL’s department of public health and epidemiology, said: “If you look at the period and what happened to people during their working lives for people born in these cohorts, income inequality is one of the major things that has changed over the period.
“It is much greater for these people born in the later 20th century than for those in the earlier part of the century. That has really driven poorer health among the poorest in society for many reasons including support for public services. I think it’s tied to de-industrialisation – people who would have been the poorest in society who were born in the 1920s would generally have found it easier to find good quality work than they would have done if they had been born in the late 1960s. They are two things that I can’t directly attribute to this difference in rich and poor, but they certainly tally. So on the one hand, you have something that doesn’t seem to tally – why hasn’t the creation of the NHS meant narrowing of health inequalities because it means free healthcare for everybody? But there’s a lot of other factors at play that increase inequalities in health.”

Prof Jivraj found evidence of deteriorating health in the poorest third of the population, while wealthiest third had improved. One in four (26%) men born in 1920-22 who were living in the poorest third of British households when they responded to the survey as adults said they had a life-limiting illness. That compared to 16% in the richest households.
For men born in 1968-70, more than a third (35%) of those living in the poorest households reported a life-limiting illness compared with only around one in 10 (11%) of those living in the richest households. 
For women, in the poorest third, 23% of those born between 1920-22 reported a life-limiting illness as adults compared to 32% of those born between 1968-1970.
For women in the richest third, however, there was little change in adulthood illness – from 13% to 12% – for those born in the early ’20s compared to those born at the end of 1960s.
The paper states: “There is a suggestion that increased income inequality is responsible for increases in poor health in Britain in the latter quarter of of the 20th Century. This could be due to the increased marginalisation of the poorest in society who have not shared equally in postwar economic growth.”
It added that lifestyle may also be at play.
“Other factors strongly related to income might explain differences in the health of people born after 1945 compared with those born before, including smoking which has increased in the poorest in society, and housing tenure, which has become increasingly polarised by social class and likely to become even more so in future through housing inheritance.”
The findings come amid concern over impact of austerity on life expectancy in the UK, which has stalled and even fallen in some parts of Scotland for the first time in decades. However, Prof Jivraj said the research comparing health outcomes for those born in 1920 to those born in 1970 points to a longer term decline in health for the poorest Brits.
“It would appear that we were looking after people better in those generations than we are today,” he said. “I think poorer people in society today are getting a much rawer deal that in the past in terms of housing provision, social security payments – I think things are tighter for those people than they were in the past.”



He said: “What this is saying is that someone who was born in 1970, who is in the poorest section of society now, the probability of them being ill at a given age is greater compared to previous generations. The consequence of that is greater demands placed on health and social care in the future, at earlier ages, which is really problematic for health ans social care sectors across the UK. We already have an ageing population, which means more older people as a share of the overall population, who will require health and social care. But if poorer people are also getting ill earlier in life – people who won’t have private health cover, or resources to pay for it themselves – it makes an even more pressing case for us to tackle this.” 

We need is a red revolution, not a green new deal

There can be no peace, no security, no freedom under capitalism. So long as capitalism continue to exist, hunger and war are inevitable. They are unavoidable in our society. Continue capitalism and we face the certain prospect of new wars and more food insecurity. World hunger is not due to the lack of technology to produce more food, but due to the capitalist system and multinational companies that control food supplies. The causes of hunger have little to do with a shortage of food. the real question is not whether starvation can be prevented, but whether it will be.



 Build socialism to give us undreamed of wonders to enrich our life. Socialism, and only socialism, will create a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without master and servile nations and, hence, a world without war and commercial competition. A world administration will not be a government of a dominant economic class but democratic decision making bodies with the primary duty to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, joblessness, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people. Its preoccupation in socialism will be to assist and improve continually the living standards of the people, to extend their leisure time and thus make it possible to heighten the cultural level of the whole world. That is why socialism will guarantee peace, security and freedom and prevent the destruction of mankind. Socialism will end the root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life.



With socialism, these instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with it the factor of profit as the prime mover of production, the sharp divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth.



In abolishing classes in society, socialism will replace the form and type of governments which exist today. Governments will become administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the instruments of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political as well as the economic rule of big business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class. In abolishing classes, elite government and war, socialism will at the same time destroy all forms of dictatorship, political as well as economic. World socialism will be the freest, most democratic society ever known, truly representing the majority of the population and subject to its recall. Socialism will assess the industrial potential of the world, determine its resources, the needs of the people and plan production with the aim of increasing the standards of living of a free people, creating abundance, increasing leisure and opportunity for cultural enjoyment.



Socialism will not concern itself with profits and war, but with providing decent housing for all the people. Socialism will provide education for all the people. Socialism will eliminate illiteracy, which is one of the hallmarks of capitalism, and cease to regard schools and colleges primarily as institutions to produce skilled labour to help operate the profit economy.



Socialism will create a system of health preservation and insurance in which the needs of the people and the improvement of the human race would be the paramount consideration. Above all, socialism will provide jobs for all. But this will be work without exploitation. For the aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but the utilisation of machinery, technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress.



The modern world contains all the pre-conditions necessary for socialism. All about us we observe enormous industrial complexes containing machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvellous technology which has not only made it more possible for humanity to control his natural and social environment to create a fruitful life of abundance, but has made it imperative. Socialism will place at the disposal of science and the scientists all the material means to help better mankind. Only socialism can place science where it properly belongs: in the service of the people. We are at a crossroads and can travel the road of capitalism, towards more chaos, war, poverty and barbarism, or we can take the socialist path toward true freedom, peace and security, the road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time.





Money Towards Meat Lovers

The livestock sector is responsible for about 14.5% of total human-derived greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have provided evidence of a link between cancer and diets involving pork, beef and lamb products.



The EU has been accused of an “indefensible” approach to human health and the climate crisis in spending tens of millions of euros each year on campaigns to reverse the decline in meat eating and trying to rebut so-called “fake news” on the mistreatment of animals bred for food.  €60m has been spent in the last three years on 21 meat marketing campaigns, including in the UK.



Sjoerd van de Wouw, a researcher at Wakker Dier foundation, said the funding policy was outdated indefensible. “We understand that you need to consider the interests of producers but not by completing ignoring the interests of consumers and the climate,” he said.



A €2.5m subsidy for an initiative aimed at Danes and Swedes. “Pork is no longer a natural part of the diet of young Scandinavians,” the commission website says. “They tend to eat less meat in general and to avoid pork in particular. The aim is to increase consumer demand and thus halt any otherwise expected fall.”



A campaign in favour of the Dutch veal sector to promote the meat of calves in the Belgian, Italian and French markets received a €6m subsidy.



“The veal market has been declining since the 2000s,” says a description of the project on the commission website. “There are various reasons for this: the economic crisis, changes in consumption behaviour and above all a lack of top-of-mind awareness. France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy are minded to fight this fall in consumption by boosting the image consumers have of European veal.”

One recent campaign entitled Pork Lovers Europe, which secured €1.4m for marketing, including a “road-show” with a pink bus painted to look like a pig, noted “that the consumption of pork meat in Europe has decreased in recent years”. 



It continued: “Therefore, it is very important to promote pork meat to restore the confidence of the consumer, which was shaken by news such as the last IARC [International Agency for Research on Cancer] report.”

Scientists at the IARC, a UN agency, reported in 2015 that the consumption of bacon, red meat and glyphosate weedkiller increased the risk of developing cancer. The Pork Lovers Europe adverts targeted consumers in the UK, Spain, Germany, France and Portugal.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/14/eu-spending-tens-of-millions-of-euros-a-year-to-promote-meat-eating

Huge Change is Possible

Striking school students have joined Valentine’s Day rallies across the world as the protest movement attempts to ratchet up pressure on governments and companies before crunch UN climate talks in Glasgow later this year.  Climate strikes were planned in 2,000 cities across the world on Friday, and that bigger actions were planned for the coming months. Friday’s action was not intended as a mega-strike like those in September, when more than 6 million people took part, but it showed how the campaign has evolved.



In London, the young demonstrators held banners proclaiming “Roses are red, violets are blue, our Earth is burning and soon we will too” and “Climate change is worse than homework” as they marched through Parliament Square on Friday to mark the first anniversary of nationwide climate strikes in the UK.



Students in Durham, Glasgow, Brighton and dozens of other cities also braved often wet and cold condition to march through the streets chanting, “What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now.”

In India on Friday, strikers turned their focus on government plans to deforest swathes of the Aravallis mountain range, which is a conservation area that provides freshwater and oxygen for Delhi and other cities. Some carried banners in English reading: “I love Aravallis”, “Our green lungs” and “Protectors are turning destroyers”.



In Sydney, climate strikers demonstrated with banners that depicted the devastating bushfires and blamed the government of Scott Morrison for the “climate chaos” that has hit Australia. In the Philippines, climate strikers organised an educational storytelling campaign to raise public awareness.



In Scotland, Holly Gillibrand, who was one of the first strikers in the UK when she started a vigil outside Lochaber high school in Fort William in the Highlands, said the growth of the movement had been incredible.



“When I began striking over a year ago, Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future  were not well known at all and I was one of very few strikers in the UK, but since then, everything has changed. The movement has gone from one person to 7.5 million. Even if we still aren’t getting the radical action we need from governments, politicians are feeling the pressure to act and we just need to keep pushing, keep shouting, keep rebelling until they do.” Holly continued her strike on Friday, with a hot chocolate to help get her through the wet weather.



Among those striking for the first time on Friday was a group in Rwanda, where protesters tweeted images of themselves holding signs that said: “Rwanda stand for climate.”
A year ago, the size of the protests in the UK took police by surprise, as thousands defied their teachers to skip school and join the still nascent movement. The students are now backed by longer established environmental organisations, including Global Justice Now, Greenpeace and the Green party. Among those at Friday’s march in London was a trade union climate bloc.



Friends of the Earth are backing the school climate strikers, who it credits for shifting public opinion. There is still a long way to go, but with technology developments and strong policies, the group said there was cause for hope. “Huge change is possible…”

Indeed the change the Socialist Party seeks is huge.



Does it make sense to risk destroying civilisation for the sake of profit? Capitalism imposes ecological devastation on the planet. Capitalism is the problem that socialism can solve. Socialists aims to produce and distribute resources by and in the interests of the whole community. In a money-free society production can be planned properly and the world’s resources conserved instead of being wasted or damaged for the sake of making a quick profit. The risk to the world posed by the threat of dangerous industrial processes and indiscriminate waste of resources has never been greater in spite of all the efforts of reformists and ecological pressure groups. Only the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism can halt the destruction. We must replace capitalism before it destroys the earth.



Against continued capitalist chaos, the Socialist Party fights for a new social system based upon the overthrow of the exploiters. Against nationalist hatreds and hostilities, the Socialist Party proclaims and practices proletarian solidarity, the unity of the workers of all lands against their capitalist exploiters. Against endless wars of conquest, the Socialist Party strives to eliminate war through a socialism.



The capitalist are trying to throw the burden of this world crisis on the working people. When capitalist production does not bring sufficient profit, the capitalist uses every means to guard himself against loss. He throws the workers pitilessly out into the street. He raises the cost of living. He beats down salaries, and for this purpose he creates lock outs and mobilises strike-breakers.



The capitalist seeks to increase the hours of work or the efficiency of labour, in case wages remain the same. Protection for the workers is made impossible. The most indispensable articles are raised in price, the production of goods which do not bring big profits is stopped. We see this best in the failure to relieve the shortage in dwellings. Housing accommodations for the lower classes are neglected. Hospitals and nurseries are closed. Invalids, pensioners, and cripples are abandoned. Through the most subtle systems of taxation a considerable part of the workman’s income is stolen. In order to carry this out more easily the capitalist buys the periodicals, the newspapers, controls literary production and employs thousands of agitators to influence the workers in a manner favourable to his own interests. The capitalist strives to demoralize and to destroy the workers’ organisations, especially the labour unions. With a subtle system of swindle and lies capitalism tries to eliminate these organisations from the struggle against it. When it does not succeed in this, it tries to destroy them by means of force.



Global warming and the environmental crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. The uncontrolled exploitation and gross waste of resources typical of capitalism, is the source of this disaster. Short-sighted hunt for profit, neglects and abuse of science under capitalism destroy the world’s environment at an accelerating speed. Science, technology and industry can be positive and beneficial to society, but private property and the priorities of the elite and the ruling class create great problems. Our answer is that the working people must organise to overthrow those who threaten the existence of the people of the world. Only a planned socialist economy has strength to remedy a future climate catastrophe. Planned economy makes social and sensible use of the resources. Production will be planned on the basis of what serves society, not what yields the most profit. The producers themselves, the workers, will decide what to produce and how – not “the market”.



20/20 Vision for 2020

Capitalism is a disaster for humanity. It promises poverty, hunger, disease and war. Our environment is fated to be destroyed by climate change and harming our food supplies which is already leading to mass migrations from rural areas. All this results directly capitalism itself. It comes from the system of wage labour, the need to produce for profit and the necessary accumulation of capital which demands continual market expansion and growth. It is the system of production for profit which is creating this catastrophe. The only way out for mankind is changing to a system of production for use and needs, ending the exchange economy, no more buying and selling. Money will cease to have a function. Borders and frontiers will be abolished as nations and the State itself disappear. Socialism is the total transformation in economic, social and political relations where working people take control of  their own lives and begin running their own communities. Only a social revolution can create society anew to replace capitalism with a system that aims to satisfy human needs.



We must be free of the ideology of the ruling class and must have a strategy which will end exploitation and oppression. We are revolutionary socialists who believe that capitalism — as a system based on capital accumulation and profit — is inherently a system of inequality, injustice, and war. Our enemy is capitalism.  Capitalism dominates our economic system. Under capitalism, a handful who own the factories, the mines, the farms, and the banks control the wealth that the majority of the people produce. Capitalism organises globally for growth and profits. Under capitalism you either eliminate the competition, or are destroyed yourself. This drive sends the corporations around the world, seeking out cheaper raw materials and corrupting local governments to insure a “friendly investment climate.” Capitalism continuously seeks cheaper labour costs. This is why we see so many factories out-sourced and moving “off-shore.” Capitalism is a system of violence. Poverty is built into its operation. The capitalist class needs to maintain its grip on the levers of power. A socialist revolution will require the unity of the working class. The capitalist class has kept the working class of divided.



The struggle for a liveable planet is now a life-and-death issue. Corporate greed has polluted our air and poisoned our water. Capitalism’s blind consumerism causes us to squander so many of the world’s resources needlessly. The environmental movement has powerful support from youth, determined not to pass on to their children a poisoned earth. This movement offers a great potential for a receptive audience to socialist ideas..



 It is this system that we are fighting. We want a social system where the wealth of the World is not in the hands of a few billionaires, but is collectively controlled by the people. We seek both economic and political democracy. Human needs cannot replace profit as the motivation of society unless the people control their communities, their neighbourhoods, their workplaces. We believe that everything possible must be done to move in the direction of building a cooperative commonwealth. Socialism is not and cannot be anything other than the self-management of production, the economy, and society by the working people. For us, socialism is impossible without democracy. Both in how we organise and in what we organise for.



Campaigns that mobilise activists like foot-soldiers with generals giving them their marching orders may appear efficient in some ways. But they also duplicate the hierarchies of a capitalist, society, hierarchies that undermine people’s belief in their own abilities and their trust in others. The job of the Socialist Party is to find ways to propose social change and democratic practices, even though we may risk being marginalised. Our own movement must be infused with democratic decision and solidarity.



In order for the society working people will create to be just equitable, it must embody socialist ideals. The fundamental change is not to preserve capitalism. Do we have a blueprint for a socialist society? Can we envision what such a society looks like? If we rely on the people, if we pool our own collective experiences we can broadly outline a socialist future. Our political compass for where we are headed should always have socialism as its destination – a world free from destitution.



Wasted Food

Reducing food waste is a key challenge in fighting climate change. Wasted and lost food accounts for almost 10% of all our greenhouse gas emissions.
Common estimates for global food waste are too low, according to Dutch researchers, who suggest every person in the world is wasting about 500 calories of food a day. Previous estimates have put global food waste at 214 calories per day per person (214 kilocalories/day/capita – a kilocalorie is another word for what’s commonly called a calorie). Without waste, we could feed five people instead of four, they said. The research did not include food lost in the production process before it gets to the consumer. The widely quoted figure of one third of all food available for human consumption lost or wasted is made up of both food lost before it reaches the consumer, which the study did not look at, and food wasted once it arrives in the kitchen.
They say behavioural change is important, such as encouraging shoppers to switch from buying in excess or hoarding to shopping for “enough”, with the thought that you can always acquire more.