shootthebandit said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8548653/Woman-in-court-for-taking-waste-food-from-Tesco-bins.html
Basically tesco (UK supermarket) had a power cut and was forced to throw out a load of food. This woman lives in the flat above the store and she decides she would take said food rather than let it go to waste. She got £200 ($300) worth of mostly ham. She was then charged with theft for stealing what the supermarket had deemed 'waste'. How on earth do they justify that?
I agree the fine was utterly riddiculous. Without delving more deeply i suspect this is rooted in the fact that the food had not been removed from the premesis. The items had been designated as waste stock, and presumably stored on site in commercial bins. As such at this point tesco had not relinquished ownership of stock in the same way that you do when you dispose of something in a public bin. Therefore by taking the items the woman in question was technically stealing.
Now you could make the case that the waste wasn't technically devoid of all value as waste food can be comercially reprocessed, usually into compost. However, to my knowledge none of the major supermarkets in the UK currently engage in this practice.
In terms of Tesco's motivation for persuing this lady, i suspect it has to do with deterant more than anything else. Unfortunatley we come back to Health and Safety law, where, you are responsible for someones health and safety on your premesis unless you have taken all reasonable steps to ensure they can't engage in an activity that would potentially cause them harm and they then do it anyway. This means they are obliged to go to fairly extreme lengths to stop people from aquiring out of date or other non-compliant stock from their bins, as were they to turn a blind eye and someone was to get sick then they would be held accountable, regardless of the fact the person in question made a concious decision to feast on waste food. Along the sames lines there was probably a concern about someone physically injuring themself riffling through the bins.
So, what i guess I am saying is: This whole situation just smacks of a complete lack of application of common sense. However, as much as i dislike Tesco I do have to suggest their blame in this instance is somewhat limited and if you want get to the real root of the problem you need to look to the OTT Health + Safety and Food Safety regulations.