The scale of the waste has shocked farming experts, who are demanding the Government orders an urgent audit of food waste after the election to establish precise data and identify new uses for this surplus.

The figures were uncovered by researchers at the BBC using Government and food industry data for the Costing the Earth series on Radio 4.

The total value of the waste is £20 billion — more than six times higher than the £3 billion cost of farm handouts under the Common Agricultural Policy and enough to pay the council tax bill for the nation. There are no recent official figures on the amount of food waste.

The throwaway culture is being driven by changes in people’s eating habits and scares over food safety. Food prices have also come down and people no longer use leftovers. Thirty years ago 30 per cent of an average income was spent on food; today it is about 10 per cent. Farmers today discard a lot of produce, fearing that it is below the grade demanded by supermarkets — although it is used to good purpose as animal feed or compost.

Lord Haskins, a government adviser on food and farming, said last night that he was outraged by the scale of the waste. He said part of the problem was caused by the ban on pigswill as animal feed, which was imposed after the foot-and-mouth epidemic in 2001, and he called on ministers to review the decision.

He said: “There is nothing wrong with pigswill as feed if it is properly processed. I think it is the right thing to do to find a more sophisticated way to process this waste food for animals.” He also called for a change of behaviour from consumers: “We are very greedy when we go and shop. Our eyes are bigger than (our) stomachs in homes and in restaurants. We are pretty idle when we have food left over in our houses and can’t be bothered to deal with leftovers.

“Excess of affluence means we think food is cheap and therefore we can throw it away.”

The Labour peer said that ministers should ask the Environment Agency or an academic body to find out the real picture and then do something about it. He said: “I have been obsessed with food waste all my life. But unless we highlight it, no one will tackle it. I accept that there are food safety issues here too, but we are over-precious with the sell-by dates on food. The labels say, ‘best before’, not that the food will kill you after a date.”

Last Saturday he bought three pints of milk from Waitrose discounted from 62p a pint to 25p. “My wife Gilda and I finished the last one today, more than a week out of the code. Now I wouldn’t have drunk it if it had been kept in a hot car and I wouldn’t eat old chicken, but otherwise there is plenty of spare life in food products.”

The Government wants supermarkets to look at ways of reducing their waste, but so far the main emphasis has been on less packaging. The Waste and Resources Action Programme will encourage supermarkets to help shoppers with ideas for leftovers such as meals using older vegetables in curries, soups and casseroles. Waste from restaurants, hotels and food outlets has not yet been tackled.

JUNK FOOD

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