By: Marie Adant, Summer 2024 Intern
Preface
As an intern this month [Summer 2024] at Foodrecovery.org, I wanted to dedicate a blog post on food policy implementation from both sides of the Atlantic. This interest dates back to the beginning of my internship, where my missions focused on conducting outreach in California and attending conferences on the advancements of its state food and environmental policies. Week by week, I
started gathering more facts and observations about food policies in the United States (US), extending to the Midwest. Having had some previous knowledge of the French food system and
currently taking political science courses, this blog post is thus a capstone project of bits and pieces I have gathered on the subject.
Introduction
It is commonly assumed that food waste from country to country depends on people’s cultural perception of food. This idea can mean differences from portion sizes, to the conception of food in an anthropological sense. When it comes to facts, French people indeed tend to waste less and this could be reattached to a more philosophical approach to food. Many French people indeed take a lot of pride in taking five-hour meals with their families on the weekends, so much so that they have demanded it to be enshrined as part of the UNESCO World Heritage in 2010 (Reinier, 2007). If you think that French people may have too much pride in their culinary culture, which explains why they waste less food, this assumption is a good place to start. On the other side of the Atlantic, the US, like many other countries whose culture has been influenced by Protestantism, holds a different approach to food.
In other words, while the French tend to live to eat, Americans tend to view food as a means to live. One can link this to the conclusion that Max Weber makes in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), in which he argues among other things, that the protestant work ethic of early settlers (namely Puritans) contributed to the development of capitalism. Indeed, initially, Protestantism incentivized its followers to follow a modest lifestyle, centered on work, and put aside luxuries such as expensive clothes, entertainment, art and arguably—food, as feasts were framed as lavish (Weber, 1904). Although in the early stages of Protestantism in the US, materialism was discouraged, accumulation of capital certainly was encouraged. Progressively, some stances against materialism disappeared, as people started spending more of their capital and kept the same work culture. Nevertheless, contrary to people from countries that have been historically tied to Catholicism, namely France, Americans tend to value food differently and arguably less as underlined by their time spent eating daily, which is only half compared to the French (McCarthy, 2020). As food has started getting overproduced in abundance as an effect of capitalism, Americans gradually consumed more, but also wasted more of it, as it became seen as less significant of a resource.
Context
Today, the average American wastes 325 pounds per person per year while it is only 138 pounds of food for the French (Recycle Track Systems, 2024; Notreenvironnement, 2024). But what may cause this gap? Although we have seen that history and culture play a big role in explaining it, it can be easy to start guilt-tripping individuals for their lack of sensibility towards food waste rather than environments, as well as political and economic systems. Although individuals are supposed to be held accountable for their actions, it is crucial to remember that it may be shifting the focus elsewhere from the roots of the problem. Different cultural environments may make it difficult for some people to waste less food due to bigger portion sizes, or misleading expiration dates such as the US’ confusing distinction between “use by” and “best before” labels. Plus, it is counter-productive to guilt-trip individuals, especially when most of it can be put down by governments who control policy, as well as, firms who control food labels and packaging. Given that humans are generally not comfortable with change (and taking the blame, for that matter), it is further key for governments, hand-in-hand with firms to facilitate nudges that would de facto enable more collective change. One example could be France’s policy on the ban of single-use plastic tableware, namely in fast food restaurants passed in 2022. Given that an estimated 55% of the single-use plastic tableware was used while people were eating in, which meant that transitioning to reusable tableware and making it part of the law, made it gradually widespread and facilitated consumers to collectively waste less (Chrisafis, 2022).
Although it may seem obvious to some it is important to highlight that instead of playing a never-ending blame game, the focus should be on cooperation in policy-making and implementation. Thus what other elements, other than culture, can play a role in the amount of food waste in a country? The implementation of the Californian policy of SB-1383 (2016) and the French policy of the “Loi Garot” (2016) can be interesting case studies.
A brief transatlantic comparison of policies
At first sight, these policies, which both tackle food waste, have a lot in common. The “Loi Garot” was first introduced in February 2016, as a result of wanting to be pioneers in the world on the matter of food waste generated by businesses and showcasing their environmental awareness to the world. In California, SB-1383 was passed in the California legislature in September 2016 and started getting implemented in January 2022. While the Loi Garot rather emphasizes the idea of preventing and repurposing, in addition to donating, California’s SB-1383 focuses mainly on donating, which has a more gradualist approach, by setting goals during the timeline of the policy’s full implementation. In both instances, food-generating businesses are supposed to collaborate with non-profits to prevent food waste. Although both policies are similar, since they started being implemented (2016 for France and 2022 for the US), the Loi Garot has been more efficiently implemented.
In France, it has been declared that 94% of businesses are complying with the law in 2021 with 23% of non-profits receiving more food than in the pre-Loi Garot period (Phenix, 2021). In addition, they have also decided to clarify expiration dates for consumers to better determine when to throw away their food. In the meantime, California has continued setting goal after goal, from having a “20% increase in food recovery for 2025” or having a “75% reduction in organics disposal” since 2021, and is combating food waste successes after another rather than quickly (Calcities, 2024).
The politics of food policy
It was over a Zoom meeting, at noon at the end of May. During the beginning of my time at Foodrecovery.org, I was encouraged to take part in the monthly Alameda County (CA) Food Recovery Stakeholder Network conference with a couple of other non-profits from California and the rest of the US. As I came to acquaintance with virtual Californian ice breakers and then, the StopWaste organization’s PowerPoint on the data of food donations in Alameda county, I thought to myself: why should volunteers still need to advocate for more food donations, cold emailing and calling business, when a bill on the matter has been passed by the California State Legislature? From my experience during the first week of my internship, I realized that it seemed as if non-profits were filling in the government’s work on the matter, making sure as many food-generating firms were complying with state law. Perhaps another hypothesis could be that because of France’s more general emphasis on social welfare, or government intervention to help causes such as poverty, their policy on food waste was being passed faster.
The financial incentive argument
What may also slow down the implementation of the policy may also be financial incentives. Indeed, in California, fines for not complying with SB-1383 remain a lot lower than the ones in France. While a business in California not complying risks $50-$500 (depending on how many violations occurred), in France a business risks from around $4282 to $11,429, in addition to removal of tax benefits in the future (FoodRecovery.org, 2024).
When the shape of the state comes into play
The shape of the state, or in other words, how a country geographically separates its powers, may also be what slows or accelerates the implementation of policy. Indeed, France organizes its state with Unitarianism, in which the government is centralized and where only one level of government is necessary for decision-making. In this organization which dates back to the French Revolution, the regions simply apply decisions from the centralized state. In other words, because it is one of the most centralized states in Europe, it is easier for France to apply its food policy nationwide, as attested by the data from above.
This reality is the case because the US uses federalism, a geographic separation of powers in which there are two levels of decision-making, the state and the federal level. With this system that dates back from the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention (1787), states simply have complementary powers to the federal state. The complementary powers include the categories of health, education, and environmental issues, to which SB-1383 belongs. This principle of federalism means that it may be trickier for governments to make changes at a state level because they need to conduct continuous legal reviews with federal law. In other words, for change to truly happen fast enough and at a wider scale, federal law should change first as it has supremacy over state law. Therefore, the goal of my argument is to prove that the US federalist system may explain why there is both a slower change at state and national levels.
Finally, regardless if a country is unitarian or federal, lobbies and even some disguised as non-profits are actively rooting against change. Sometimes creating monopolies, these entities are sabotaging small wins by advocating in political institutions, whether in Washington D.C. or in Paris. This observation that can be made both in France and the US can be an interesting starting point for future qualitative research and is an area I have not yet explored here.
Conclusion
The efficiency of food policy implementation is thus the result of long cultural and historical heritage. From France’s long culinary and Catholic tradition to the US’s heritage of overproduction partly originating from Protestantism, it is clear that unless systems change, policies have to be created around, and according to the political institution system in which they lie. Today systems are different and none is perfect which means different outcomes in terms of food recovery appear. Because of its highly centralized political institution system and more favourable cultural context towards food, France implements faster than the US food policy.
Bibliography
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Chrisafis, Angelique. “Ban on Single-Use Restaurant Tableware Hailed as Fast-Food ‘Revolution’ in France.” The Guardian, 28 Dec. 2022. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/28/france-ban-on-single-use-restaurant-tableware-hailed-as-fast-food-revolution.
McCarthy, Niall. “Infographic: Where People Spend The Most Time Eating & Drinking.” Statista Daily Data, 31 July 2020, https://www.statista.com/chart/13226/where-people-spend-the-most-time-eating-drinking
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