The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) is embarking on a study to assess the safety and feasibility of allowing food that has passed their "use by"/"best before" dates to be donated, while maintaining food safety standards.
This was revealed by Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and the Environment Goh Hanyan during the debate on a motion calling on the Government to enhance food resilience and support efforts to reduce food wastage through partnerships with all of society.
The private member's motion — tabled by People's Action Party (PAP) MPs Nadia Ahmad Samdin, Valerie Lee, Ng Shi Xuan and GPC chairperson Poh Li San — sought to ensure that Singaporeans will continue to have access to affordable food supply amid geopolitical uncertainties and climate-related risks.
On the issue of food wastage, MPs had called for more Government support for food redistribution initiatives.
This includes the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act passed in 2024, protecting food donors from liability if specific safety conditions are met.
To this, the Senior Parliamentary Secretary stated that there are currently no international guidelines on how long food remains safe for consumption beyond its expiry date.
Notwithstanding this, the SFA study, could enable more edible food to be redistributed rather than discarded.
Findings from the study are expected to be shared next year, she added.
Affordability and local production
During the debate, Poh, who represents Sembawang West SMC, called for a more coordinated food import policy and food distribution ecosystem.
"We must make sure that we have some capacity to produce food. More importantly, that all of us, rich or poor, have access to safe, fresh and affordable food at all times."
She also called for local food production capability to be part of the Republic's Total Defence national security framework, highlighting that the present self-sufficiency rate is below 10 per cent.
Sembawang GRC MP Ng suggested shifting the approach of growing local in Singapore Food Story 2.0 (SFS), to producing local.
Ng, a business director at a homegrown company, proposed focusing on protein security and the role it can play as an additional production pathway under SFS 2.0.
To this, he called on the Government to clarify how Singapore intends to sustain and translate its investments in alternative proteins into enduring capabilities.
Resilience and food waste
Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Nadia pointed out that even as farm productivity improves, the resilience scorecard will need to reflect where vulnerabilities remain.
Illustrating this, Nadia highlighted that even if a food item is imported from several countries, they could all be exposed to similar disease outbreaks, weather patterns, or logistics routes.
"Where many farms depend heavily on the same input, a shock to that input can become a shock to the whole pillar," she pointed out.
Meanwhile, Pasir Ris-Changi GRC MP Lee, continuing on the thread of vulnerabilities, suggested going upstream to strengthen the resilience of supply chains that connect sources to Singapore.
This, she said, can be strengthened through global partnerships, noting that the Singapore-New Zealand Agreement on Trade in Essential Supplies, and the rice agreements with Thailand and Vietnam, presented examples of options in crisis.
"We should not only secure the food. We should design the pathway for the food to reach Singapore," she said, adding that a good food partnership should not simply be a promise of supply, but an architecture of options.
Lee also pointed to the Republic's 790,000 tonnes of food wasted last year, and the roughly 18 per cent food recycling rate as a potential to do more.
To this, she suggested looking at food rescue not just as waste management, but also supply recovery.
Lee also called on the Government to work with the relevant agencies to identify suitable land or spaces that could be used for community food-rescue storage.
Responding to the debate, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu pointed out that Singapore has built a food system that has weathered a pandemic, conflicts, and climate stresses.
"This resilience is the result of deliberate choices and collective effort by the Government, the industry, and our people. It must be renewed with every generation."
[[nid:730828]]
editor@asiaone.com
