'Best before' is not 'use by'. That distinction, long misunderstood across South Africa's food system, is one of the central clarifications in Sans 2088, the country's first national framework for food donation and redistribution.
Somewhere in South Africa today, a food manufacturer will destroy produce that is safe to eat. The best-before date has passed, or the packaging is imperfect, or the stock is surplus. Donating it is theoretically possible, but without clear national guidance on what is safe to give away, who bears responsibility at each point in the chain, and what receiving organisations are required to do with it, the easier decision has always been disposal.
South Africa loses or wastes more than 10 million tonnes of largely edible food every year, while 63.5% of households are food-insecure, according to FoodForward SA. Nearly half of that waste occurs at the processing and manufacturing stage, where uncertainty about what can safely be donated and fear of legal liability if something goes wrong have long made destruction the easier commercial choice.
Read more Committed to halving food waste by 2030, South Africa doesn't know if it's winning March 31, 2026 Sans 2088, South Africa's first national standard for food donation and redistribution, is the first serious attempt to change that. Published by the South African Bureau of Standards (Sabs) on 17 April, the document is currently in draft form and...
