Here’s how Ottawa could tackle food inflation — and when you can expect it to ease
Global News
A new Parliamentary report suggests efforts to address so-called 'shrinkflation' and remove 'best-before' dates could play a role in limiting food inflation in the future.
Measures to rein in food inflation such as removing “best before” labels and standardizing packaging sizes to address so-called shrinkflation could help limit the impact on Canadians’ pocketbooks, according to a Parliamentary report released Wednesday.
The report from the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food looks at what drove price acceleration at the grocery store to decades-high levels over the past year but stops short of laying blame on grocers themselves, deferring to the results of an upcoming Competition Bureau report into concentration in the grocery sector.
The committee, which heard from dozens of academics and industry representatives over the course of its meetings between December and April, laid out a series of recommendations to tamp down food inflation.
One of the proposals is to look at the impact of removing “best-before” dates as a strategy to reduce food waste. The committee proposed extending the implementation timeline for the single-use plastics ban for some grocers to make sure their packaging is suited to extending food’s shelf life.
“Best-before dates are wildly misunderstood. They are not expiry dates. They refer to a product’s peak freshness,” the CEO of Second Harvest Canada is quoted as stating in the committee report. “Eliminating best-before dates would prevent safe, consumable food from being thrown out and save Canadians money on their grocery bills.”
In response to concerns about so-called shrinkflation — when producers keep prices steady but reduce the size of the product’s packaging — the committee also recommends adopting a standardized approach for unit pricing to help Canadians make “informed decisions” at the grocery store.
Other recommendations in the report include adopting a grocer code of conduct and initiatives to help producers access reliable labour and speed up automation efforts. Many of the proposals would be implemented via partnerships with provinces and territories, according to the report.
The agriculture committee’s probe into food inflation was spurred, in part, by accusations that grocers were seeing profits soar alongside decades-high levels of inflation because of price-gouging or “greedflation” this past fall.
