Emily Broad Leib

It seems like a simple solution: Companies with excess food should just donate it to people in need. So why don’t they? Maybe they’re worried about liability. Perhaps they can’t afford to transport the food to where it will do the most good. Or, they’re unsure about the expiration-date labeling and would rather not chance giving away past-due goods. So what’s to be done? Plenty, according to a report released Thursday, March 9, by The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Natural Resources Defense Council...“If even a quarter of the recommendations in the report are embraced and implemented, millions of pounds of wholesome food will make it to those in need instead of clogging up our landfills,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and one of the report’s main authors.

The majority of Americans have no clear idea what “sell by” labels are trying to tell them. But after 40 years of letting us guess, the grocery industry has made moves to clear up the confusion. On Wednesday, the Food Marketing Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the two largest trade groups for the grocery industry, announced that they’ve adopted standardized, voluntary regulations to clear up what product date labels mean...“I think it’s huge. It’s just an enormous step,” said Emily Broad-Leib, the director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. “It’s still a first step — but it’s very significant.”...Of course, that is just a drop in the waste bucket: To make a real dent in America’s food waste problem, Broad-Leib said, more will have to be done. The Food Law and Policy Clinic is arguing for several federal interventions, including policy changes that make it easier for companies and farms to donate food and incentives to encourage them to do so.

There could soon be something new to check out at your grocery store. The food industry is working to simplify labels on perishable food. Date stamps like “best by,” “sell by,” “use by” and “best before” can be confusing for shoppers...“There’s always this habit of going to the back of the shelf and taking the milk with the date that’s furthest out,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. “I think this will really help consumers know when does that date matter and when does it not really matter for safety reasons.”

At the same time the government urges Americans to eat healthy foods, it heavily subsidizes farmers who produce corn and other crops used in junk foods, and invests little in those who grow fruits and vegetables. The result? A pound of fresh broccoli costs about $2 in any supermarket, while a calorie- and fat-filled cheeseburger is half that price in many fast-food restaurants. This system that makes healthy food expensive and junk food cheap should be fixed, said a panel of experts who gathered at Harvard Law School on Nov. 30...Bittman was joined by...Emily Broad Leib, assistant clinical professor of paw and director of the Food Law and Policy clinic...Leib expressed concern about a House bill that proposes cutting food stamp benefits by $40 billion. “This could be small compared to what we might see coming,” she said. “This program is a safety net for many people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to put food on the table.”

It’s hard to know how to interpret food date labels. If it smells fine but it’s past the best-by mark, should you pitch it? And what does “sell by” really mean anyway? Professor Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, is on a mission to help decode the mixed messages sent by those puzzling stamps on our food. The professor was recently honored by Food & Wine and Forbes as one of the 20 most innovative women in Food and Drink for her work surrounding food waste.

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib. Multiple policies could be implemented to address food waste and its impacts on the environment, food security, and our climate. In particular, we should eliminate laws that cause healthy food to go to waste, incentivize food donation and, when needed, enact penalties for senseless food waste. Let's start with consumer confusion, and the misguided laws regarding food date labels. Eighty four percent of consumers report they frequently throw food away after the sell-by date has passed, despite date labels being indicators of freshness, not safety. What's more, in the absence of federal law on date labels, no two states have the same date label rules. Several states even restrict or ban the sale or donation of past-date foods. Federal legislation is needed to eliminate state laws that require past-date — but still safe — foods to be wasted, and to standardize date labels so they are clearer to consumers.

The future of food is here, and it’s decidedly female. The editors of Food & Wine and Fortune magazines teamed up to spotlight women entrepreneurs, activists and leaders in the food world who’ve worked in the past year to transform the way people dine. Twenty earned a spot on their Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink 2016 list...Emily Broad Leib At the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, Leib is tackling the enormous problem of wasted food, which crowds landfills and leaves many hungry, by trying to change legislation around the way food is labeled. “We want to make labeling laws clearer, so when people pick up a yogurt, they know when it’s OK to eat it and when to throw it out,” she tells Food & Wine and Fortune. It may also make perfectly fine food easier to donate.

An op-ed by Emily Broad Leib, Sally Greenberg, and Roni Neff. The July 4 weekend marks our nation’s birthday and the time when Americans celebrate — not only with fireworks, but with picnics, backyard BBQs, pool parties. Sadly, one byproduct of these celebrations are the many tons of food that we will inevitably waste after these family gatherings. Today, 40 percent of food produced in the United States is thrown away each year (over two-thirds of that by consumers). Ketchup with a date label that says it has expired.” Salad dressings that are past their “use by” dates, chips and cheese with passed expiration dates. As a result of confusing date labeling policies, consumers regularly toss out foods that are perfectly safe, wholesome, and still taste good.

Ninety-one percent of Americans toss their food after the date on the labels have passed, but in many cases, they may actually be wasting perfectly safe food. There are three types of dates used on food labels: "sell by," "best if used by," and "use by." But all three have nothing to do with food safety. Rather, they signal how long the manufacturer thinks the food will taste best. "So the manufacturer will do taste tests with consumers and say, 'this is when everyone still thought my product tasted good,' and they're not about safety, but many people throw food away," said Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic..."Food safety means it was contaminated, you could get E.coli or salmonella, something like that.... We want to eat food that tastes good, that's good quality, but it's much more subjective," Leib said. "You're not going to get sick if you eat something. It's just about what you think tastes good."

The date labels printed on the food we buy — often accompanied by a “best by,” “use by” or even “expires on” stamp — are meant to provide useful advice about when a product is at its best. But some experts are saying these labels not only fail to communicate meaningful information to consumers — they may actually be contributing to a huge environmental problem by inadvertently encouraging people to throw out perfectly good food. A new survey, released last week by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, found that more than a third of respondents usually or always throw away food that’s past its date label. And 84 percent of respondents reported doing so occasionally...This is a source of confusion for the American public, it turns out. The Harvard survey found that more than a third of respondents believed date labels are federally regulated, and another quarter of them weren’t sure. That’s a big deal, because people may be more likely to take these labels seriously if they believe they’re mandated by the federal government, said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and an assistant professor of law. “If people think that they’re reading something that has standards regulated, then they think that it’s meaningful and communicating something to them,” she said.

When do you toss food from the fridge or cabinet to the garbage? When it’s past the “use by” or “sell by” date marked on the packaging? When starts to look clammy, wilted, or moldy? When it tastes off or fails the sniff test? Turns out, a lot of people rely on those labels, even when they’re not quite sure what they mean, according to a new survey released today at a food waste summit in Washington, D.C. The survey, conducted by a team from the National Consumers League, Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, and Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, probed how customers make sense of food labels, which are notoriously variable and unstandardized... “Many people throw away food once the date on the package has passed because they think the date is an indicator of safety, but in fact for most foods the date is a manufacturer’s best guess as to how long the product will be at its peak quality,” Emily Broad Leib, the director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and a survey co-author, said in a statement.

It is different this time for best-selling author Michael Pollan, and not just because his subject has changed. The people are different too. They’re not farming or fermenting or cooking. This time they’re dying. Pollan’s books about food, diet, and industrial agriculture — he is perhaps best known for 2006’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” — have made him an influential voice in America’s food fight over obesity, nutrition, and diabetes, and have made him revered by those who believe that something is fundamentally wrong with how we mass produce and prepare our meals...Assistant Clinical Professor of Law Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, hosted Pollan in a private meeting with clinic students and in one of her classes afterward. Pollan answered questions and asked students about their own food-related projects. Broad Leib credited Pollan with helping awaken the country to problems with the food system by explaining potentially dry topics like the intricacies of the U.S. farm bill in an easy-to-understand, engaging way. It’s telling, she said, that roughly three-fourths of student applicants to a Harvard food law summit last fall cited Pollan’s writing as influential.

A new short film produced in partnership by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC) and Racing Horse Productions spotlights how the confusion around expiration date labels contributes to food waste in America. "EXPIRED? Food Waste in America" looks at the specific example of milk in Montana, where the state law requires the sell-by date on all milk to be no later than twelve days after pasteurization. "After the sell-by date passes, the milk may not be sold or donated. As a result of the law, thousands of gallons of milk have been thrown away, and milk prices in the state have risen," writes Harvard Law Today...According to FLPC Director Emily Broad Leib, "date label confusion harms consumers and food companies, and it wastes massive amounts of food, which harms the planet.

The more scientists study the issue of food waste — and its worrying implications for both the environment and global food security — the clearer it becomes how much of a problem it is. Now, new research is giving us a few more reasons to clean our plates. A study just out in the journal Environmental Science and Technology concludes that we’re already producing way more food than the world actually needs — but a lot of the excess is being wasted, instead of used to feed people who need it...“So much of poverty and famine aren’t about a lack of resources overall — they’re just distributional [problems],” said Emily Broad Leib, an assistant clinical professor of law and director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. “It’s not surprising to see that, and both across countries and within countries this challenge of the food markets really being attainable for certain segments of the population and not for others.”

Emily Broad Leib is the co-founder and director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic. The clinic pairs Harvard law students with nonprofits and government agencies working to increase access to healthy food and assist farmers engaged in sustainable agriculture.Emily’s work began in Mississippi, which has one of the highest rates of poverty and obesity in the country. While a fellow in the Mississippi Delta, Emily worked on simplifying and clarifying laws that prevented small-scale farmers from selling their produce in farmers’ markets and helped start the Mississippi Food Policy Council. I spoke with her about food-policy councils, small farmers, food waste, and using food as a lens for understanding a community’s wider health problems.

Discussions about how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions frequently center on clean energy, more efficient transportation and sustainable agriculture. But research suggests that if we really want to pay attention to our carbon footprints, we should also be focusing on another, less-talked-about issue: the amount of food we waste each day...“The first step is really figuring out what is the right amount that we need to produce,” said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and an assistant clinical professor of law. Much of the food that goes to waste could be used by people who aren’t getting enough to eat. But it’s also likely that we could stand to reduce our overall production as well, cutting some of those emissions entirely. “I do think there’s a sweet spot, and we’re not hitting it right now,” Broad Leib said.

... According to Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, 90 percent of us throw food away—either always, most of the time or occasionally—when that sell-by date arrives. But what many consumers don’t realize is that those dates aren’t intended to be hard-and-fast deadlines. “They’re a guess by the manufacturer when they think the food will not taste as good or not be at its top quality,” says Emily Broad Leib, the director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. “They’re not intended to communicate safety.”

One of the U.K.’s — and the world’s — biggest grocery store chains announced big news on the food waste front this month. In the coming months, Tesco, which boasts some 6,800 stores worldwide but is headquartered in England, will expand its 14-store trial run of an initiative that saved the equivalent of 50,000 meals worth of food from heading to a landfill, donating that food, instead, to charity groups...Emily Broad Leib, director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, says that is because the U.S. has arrived at the issue later than countries like France and the U.K., where efforts to address the issue have gotten a significant head start on the U.S. and are, just now, coming to fruition. Still, Leib noted, Americans are making significant progress. “I do think it’s on the radar of more and more stores,” Leib told The Huffington Post.