The healthy production of Danish tomatoes, boosted by this year’s warm summer, has not been allowed to go to waste by a producer in Odense.
Alfred Pedersen & Son is one of two producers taking part in an initiative set up earlier this year by NGO Stop Wasting Food (Stop Spild Af Mad) in an effort to cut down wastage by selling irregularly shaped, but perfectly edible produce.
The agreement, which was reached in May with supermarket chains Salling Groups and Rema 1000, enabled vegetables that would otherwise be seen as surplus to be sold at the companies’ stores at discounted prices. The three euro cents per vegetable sold are then donated to Stop Wasting Food under the scheme.
“We have for many years spoken in favour of selling vegetables of this kind in Danish supermarkets. This will help to reduce waste during primary production as well as create growth in the food retail sector.
After ten years of debating food waste I am sure that Danish consumers are ready to welcome irregularly shaped vegetables on to supermarket shelves,” Stop Wasting Food's founder Selina Juul said when the scheme was introduced.
Customers have since snapped up the misshapen tomatoes, which have been sold whole and as ‘food waste ketchup’, with a total of 75 tons of the produce sold since May.
100,000 trays of the ‘ugly’ tomatoes, around 50 tons, have been sold in that time, according to figures from Alfred Pedersen & Son. Both the tomatoes and ketchup had performed well at stores, the producer’s head of sales Claus Duedal Jakobsen told The Local.