The British Retail Consortium has warned that UK plans to implement a new EU regulation on May 1 – prohibiting the disposal of all waste foods containing animal products via landfill – will hurt small food retailers hardest.

The regulation would require around 750,000 tonnes of food waste each year to go to incineration. Defra has listening to retail concerns about full-scale implementation of the regulation before the UK has the capacity to tackle the food waste that would need to go to incineration each year and has asked the EC to allow for a transitional period before the regulation applies in the UK.

BRC director general Bill Moyes said: 'The proposed implementation would not only be impractical to the entire sector, it would pose huge problems to smaller retailers who sell meat or meat products loose.

'This could make it uneconomic for many small retailers including farm shops, farmers' markets and convenience stores, to sell the variety of specialist and traditional products that consumers have come to expect.

'Given that there is no additional risk from the sale of loose products, the BRC believes that transitional arrangements should apply to all retail food waste until appropriate incineration capacity exists.'