Waste not, want not; especially when it comes to meat

By Rita Jane Gabbett on 6/5/2013 http://www.meatingplace.com/

Government officials in the United States and the United Kingdom are urging their respective countrymen to stop wasting food, including meat.  
In the United States, both the USDA and the Environmental Protection Agency have launched programs to raise awareness about food waste and stimulate efforts to reduce, recover and recycle in the United States.
As part of the program, USDA will also work with industry to streamline procedures for donating wholesome misbranded meat and poultry products, update U.S. food loss estimates at retail and pilot-test a meat-composting program to reduce the amount of meat being sent to landfills from food safety inspection labs.
USDA’s U.S. Food Waste Challenge invites participants across the food chain to list food-waste activities, in order to disseminate information about best practices and stimulate the development of more practices. The EPA Food Recovery Challenge asks participants to set specific quantitative food-waste goals and then works with them to measure progress and attain goals.
Food waste in the United States is estimated at roughly between 30 to 40 percent of the food supply, according to USDA. In 2010, an estimated 133 billion pounds of food from U.S. retail food stores, restaurants and homes never made it into people's stomachs. The amount of uneaten food in homes and restaurants was valued at almost $390 per U.S. consumer in 2008, more than an average month's worth of food expenditures.