What a terrible waste!

I spent the last couple of days in Dublin, judging the World Cheese Awards (see right). You can read more about it on my cheese blog, The Cheeselover, but there was one thing I wanted to share with you here.

At the end of the judging all the cheeses - some 2000 of them, worth thousands of pounds were apparently destroyed, for 'health and safety' reasons. They were apparently going to be rendered into 'cheese powder' whatever that is.

I'm sure the organisers are abiding by the letter of the law. Some of the cheeses were laid out overnight and certainly it would have been foolish not to dispose of the more perishable ones. But not to do anything with the aged cheeses which would have been perfectly edible is complete madness. As a cheeselover it makes me indignant. As an ordinary member of the public thinking about the use to which all that good food could be put I feel just plain angry.

I'm sure this is not the only example of profligate waste. Shops and restaurants have to throw away perfectly good food all the time. Isn't it about time we introduced some common sense into the regulations and treated our fellow citizens as grown ups capable of making their own choices about whether food is fit to eat or not?