A two-tier food system for people living in poverty

Waste vegetables discarded after processing for retail sale at a farm in Lancashire. Photograph: EnVogue_Photo/AlamyView image in fullscreenWaste vegetables discarded after processing for retail sale at a farm in Lancashire. Photograph: EnVogue_Photo/AlamyLettersA two-tier food system for people living in povertyJane Middleton says the question we should be asking is not how can we use up surplus food, but how we can ensure that no one has to rely on charity to eat

Charlotte Hill (While British children go hungry, we waste 1.1bn meals a year. Bring on the redistribution revolution, 6 October) conflates two separate problems. One is food waste; the other is domestic food insecurity. If, as she suggests, we use the former to address the latter, we are simply creating a two-tier food system where people living in poverty do not have the dignity of making their own choices.

While the work of food-waste charities such as the that one Hill heads is commendable as a sticking plaster, in the long term it entrenches poverty and removes any incentive for large corporations to tackle the food waste they create.

The right to food, established in the United Nations charter, includes the right of individuals to acquire food by socially acceptable means – in effect, having enough income to buy it in the same way as everyone else. The question we should be asking is not how can we use up surplus food, but how we can ensure that no one has to rely on charity in order to eat.

People on low incomes are not there to make large corporations feel good about themselves via charitable donations. Hill says that “unavoidable surplus food” is generated in our farming system. If this is the case, then consider coming to an arrangement with schools, hospitals and prisons, but please don’t view people struggling to make ends meet as a repository for your waste products.

In a country with food surpluses, we should be battling against the institutionalisation of food aid, not encouraging it.Jane MiddletonBath