Macedonia is not an exception when it comes to throwing food before its expiration date which it can be donated to citizens from various social groups, from homeless to employees with lower incomes who cannot afford more than a modest meal daily. The food is neither processed nor recycled.
The UN’s the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO, ranks Macedonia on the 8th spot according to quantities of thrown food compared to number of citizens. it was determined that mostly what is thrown is vegetables and fruit, and poultry and fish is the food that is the least thrown away. The data that is published publicly shows that Macedonia wastes food in enormous quantities that can feed around 13.000 citizens with three meals a day.
“While on one hand we have a surplus of food, there are over 400.000 citizens who have problems to provide enough food due to a lack of finances and who have one meal per day. On the other hand, around 30% of the produced or imported food is never used because it is wasted very soon after it is produced, during the transportation or is thrown during distribution” stressed Natasha Dokovska Spirovska of “Journalists for Human Rights” at the closing conference for the “Mobilization of the community in the fight against hunger” that was realized with the support of the EU.
The goal of the research was evaluate the number of companies that are willing and ready to donate food, an evaluation of the quantities of food that would be donated. All of this would be for the benefit of various humanitarian activities and projects by institutions and organizations. The result of the project indicate several issues: that food store owners aren’t aware of possibilities of donating food, the degree of knowing the regulations is low and that there aren’t any stimulating measures for food donors.
The polls that was implemented among food producers, markets and restaurants, indicated that the biggest problem in the country is the lack of information about the condition of the food donation. One one side there are families that cannot provide enough meals during the day and on the other there are producers, distributors and restaurant owners that are wasting food as unnecessary surplus.
