Friday, 15 February 2013

Japanese restaurant fines customers with leftovers


A restaurant in Japan is fining customers who leave any food on their plate after their meal.

The seafood restaurant states on its menu that customers who leave any part of their dish will be fined a surcharge, which is donated to the fishermen who caught the meal.

The menu of The Hachikyo states: “The working conditions for fishermen are harsh and so dangerous that it's not unknown for lives to be lost.

“To show our gratitude and appreciation for the food they provide, it is forbidden to leave even one grain of rice in your bowl. 

“Customers who do not finish must give a donation.”

A while ago, I’m not sure exactly when, a report was published that said up to half the world’s food gets wasted, well clearly the proprietors of The Hachikyo saw that because this is quite an ingenious way of trying to solve the wastage problem.

This system may work well in Japan given that a large part of the diet is made up of fish, but I can’t see this working quite so well in Britain, I don’t think the providers of our mostly meat diet have it quite as tough.

Fishing in swirling winds and torrential rain on wavy seas in the middle of a winters night is, I imagine, very dangerous, but here in Britain there’s very little risk of a farmer dying while grazing his cattle, I think we would need to come up with a different system.    

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