An important source of food for many people in Romania are social groceries. To support this type of shop, it is crucial that the food waste law is salutary. Theoretically, traders would have been forced to donate expired products, and the social shop would have been able to resell them at symbolic prices to those people who neither have the financial means, nor fall under the “guaranteed minimum income” line. Retirees, families with many children, single-parent families, people with disabilities, retired on sickness – simply people on the other side of luck. But the law was postponed because it is in fact the removal of the amendment that would make it possible for these social groceries to operate.

Last week, a fairly unpleasant news came in: Agriculture Minister Petre Daea announced that the food waste law is once again postponed. The reasons invoked ranged from the “non existence” of the implementation methods to the “worry” that the current form of the law could encourage parallel trade – referring to the fact that if the foods close to the expiration date can be revived, even at extremely low prices, this would generate a trade that is hard to control.

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