Food banks: Morrisons reject 10,000 pasties because they were 17 minutes late

Supermarket chain Morrisons reportedly rejected a delivery of 10,000 Cornish pasties as they were 17 minutes late.

It comes as part of an inquiry led by the Archbishop of Canterbury into food wastage in the UK in which the country was found guilty of wasting 4.3 million tonnes of food every year.

In addition, the report found that currently just 2% of the edible waste is diverted to charities.

Don Gardner, the manager of the Camborne, Pool and Redruth Food Bank, said he had to turn the pasties down as he could not cope with the amount.

The report quotes him as saying: "I had 9,864 Cornish pasties [offered to me] because the lorry was 17 minutes late to Morrisons.

"That shouldn't happen. I was offered 30,000 spring greens the other day because they were going to be ploughed back into the field.

"I couldn't have them because I didn't have anywhere to put them. I was offered 10 tonnes of tomatoes from Kent because they were too big for Tesco."

A spokesperson for Morrisons told the Daily Mail: "We are puzzled by this claim because it's our policy not to turn away fresh food from our depots.

"We'd very much like to look at this further but it's difficult when the report has no record of the time or location of the delivery, nor details of the supplier."

However, Morrison's is setting out plans to expand its partnership with FoodCycle – a charity that combines volunteers, surplus food and spare kitchen – during 2015 to cover more local areas.