to think that the Crown Prosecution Service should have better things to do ..

[bonvivant]

than prosecute people taking unwanted food from a skip?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/three-charged-vagrancy-act-food-skip-iceland

If someone was hungry enough to rifle through my bin for food I don't see how I could mind.

Exactly. And where is the harm in taking something that is destined for landfill. When we used to do it we were of the mindset that if we got sick it was our problem. We wouldn't have considered trying to sue the shop. Although we used to take mainly vegetables, unlikely to get sick on that.

Rifling through an Iceland bin is not the same as your home bin.

You could be in the house, worried about the noise outside or be vulnerable in some way. It's your personal sanctuary.

No ones in fucking Iceland at night. And it's no ones sanctuary. Unless your beige food then it's your sanctuary

They shouldn't have been trespassing, but yes this could be about setting an example and about public order. If you intend to leave people without an income then you need to be sure they will lie down and die and not come and take your food.

It's not easy being rich.

plebgate total waste of money this is more of the same they could caution them like they do for more serious offences but NOOOOO they want to go the whole hog and make and example and waste thousands of pounds we cant afford honestly if these people were married to me i would be booting them out for being so irresponsible with money

and personally i couldnt care less if someone goes through my bin if i catch them at it i will give them food from my kitchen i might be poor but im not graceless

If you intend to leave people without an income then you need to be sure they will lie down and die and not come and take your food.

Yes it would seem so.

As above, they are trespassing.

Worse, the three accused are squatters. They should certainly be prosecuted for that alone, under the new squatting criminalisation. Squatting is evil and they should be punished severely for it.

Wow. Sometimes I'm not proud to be a human.

We prosecute hungry people for taking food that has been discarded and no one else would eat?

We have real, innocent, normal people going hungry and becoming ill and malnutritioned in a country where many tons of food goes to waste each year. If you want to know how civilised a country is, look at how they treat the poor, the elderly, the sick and the disabled. I'm looking and I'm ashamed.

I'd rather see there be some sort of coordination for distributing these leftover products to those that need them in a safe manner. The amount of food that is thrown away is quite obscene when there's people going hungry.

If someone was starving I'd rather they knock on my door than rummage through my bin, and I'd happily give them something.

Caution requires an acceptance of guilt

Miscellaneous. Great speech bit they committed an offence

Dr Nick, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed again?

Or are you IDS?

I guess they feel that people will take food from the skip instead of buying it.

Do we know how many times the accused have been found to be skipping? Have they already been cautioned before and it's now the logical next step?

Do we havw to tier criminals to needy and not needy? Turn a blind eye to people shoplifting?

I do agree that the food waste problem is out of control and there must be better ways to use the fppd that is near or at expiry.

Excuse awful spelling mistakes, my "smartphone" is an oxymoron.

I agree with all cats arguments. The law was broken. Food wastage is terrible. But these guys with no housing costs and a job decided they were different.

The problem is all around health and safety regulations. Food shops have to be incredibly strict with removing date-expired food. Most charities won't take it because they also have to abide very very strictly to these rules.

So for example, they're not allowed to give away a sandwich tomorrow that says best before today. And so the charity would take very little and would have to use it all up that evening. On top of that supermarkets have no way to predict how much stuff is going to be chucked away - after all ideally they'd like it to be almost nothing. And often the food isn't removed from the shelves until very late at night leaving even less time for charities to get it. So charities obviously don't want to commit time to standing around every night on the off chance something is there that they can use.

And as DrNick says, it's also about liability. So if someone becomes ill after taking food from a supermarket bin the supermarket could be responsible. Many food shops cover the food in blue dye in order to deter people.

There is no difference between this and shoplifting. It is taking something that you're not entitled to.

DrNick do you employ such a hard and fast attitude with every situation you encounter? You are incredibly frustrating.

It is definitely not in the public's interest to pursue this case. Could I or realistically anyone give a hoot about how is rifling through supermarket bins at night? No.

It was in the BIN. I.e. no longer wanted/fit for consumption. I would say that other than the bin being on your property, the contents of the bin is fair game.

And I agree that it is shocking the amount of food waste around us but the fault lies with excessive h&s regs around food and an increased tendency to litigation in the uk.

I promise you most supermarkets would much rather it was given away to charities who could use it. After all that's loads better pr than this.

It is theft. 'The intent- to permanently deprive' is there, whether it is in a bin (would this be fine if someone stole food from the bin in your house?), a skip or on a shelf.

Most poor, malnourished people in the UK still abide by the law, not commit crimes.

WeakAtTheCheese has given the reasons why it's not realistically possible to arrange to give this food away.

I believe some shops do turn a blind eye to food being taken from skips, but there's a constant worry that word will spread and the back end of the delivery bays will be haunted by people waiting for stuff to be chucked out.

I'm sorry, can some one explain why I will be fined for putting out too much rubbish... because we must recycle. But large companies can just bin tons of perfectly edible food when there are people hungry enough to eat it!?

Can you really deprive someone of something they've already willingly discarded?

If the supermarkets heavily discounted food on the day before its expiry date, this wouldn't be a problem. Any food in our local supermarket that is heavily discounted flies off the shelves. But many supermarkets offer paltry discounts or just don't mange to the dates properly. Our local Tesco always has out of date food on its shelves - I know because we have been caught out once or twice buying the stuff. Sorry I place all the blame with the supermarkets. We have reaped what we sowed - our local corner shops wouldn't have wasted all this food.

But would they be liable if they had taken reasonable steps to secure the food items?

Interesting point sock.

Perhaps food retailers should pay to make their rubbish secure until it's removed.

At first it seems like blaming the victim for getting burgled but it's quite common for other businesses to have to take steps to be good neighbours.

Fast food restaurants have clean up patrols, supermarkets get fined if their trolleys are found dumped and city centre bars sometimes club together for security patrols as part of their licence agreements all because they attract trouble.

I read a few years ago in the Littledick's column about a man who was fined by his local council for nuisance caused by not securing rubbish stored in the yard of his business site. He also had to buy a secure cage for it.

People were breaking in and stealing the rubbish for scrap value but then scattering anything worthless in the nearby roads and taking only the valuable stuff.

Littledick was outraged at the imposition on a hard-working small businessman.

But I guess residents were sick of it and it cost the council lots to keep clearing it up.

I agree with dahlen that the prosecution may be because it has public order consequences.

Maybe the answer is for local authorities to ensure food retailers secure discarded food as part of their trading licence.