Singapore greenlights law to facilitate surplus food donation to reduce waste

Donors will be protected by the law, given they comply with safety and hygiene rules.

Singapore passed a law that facilitates the donation of surplus food to beneficiaries to help reduce food waste.

Under the Good Samaritan Food Donation Bill, donors will be protected from criminal and civil liability in cases of death or personal injury resulting from consuming donated food, provided they meet the four conditions set out by the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE) and Singapore Food Agency (SFA) to ensure food safety and hygiene.

The conditions include:

The food should not have been unsafe and not unsuitable at the time it left possession or control of the food donor.
The food donor should have informed the recipient of any food handling requirements to ensure that the donated food remained safe and suitable.
The food donor should have informed the recipient of any time limit beyond which the food would no longer have remained safe and suitable.
The food donor should have taken all reasonably practicable measures to comply with any applicable requirement under any written law related to food safety and hygiene when handling the food to be donated.

These guidelines are available online and will be refreshed periodically to ensure their continued relevance to food donors and food distribution organisations.

However, the bill will not impede the SFA's ability to investigate food safety lapses and enforce compliance. In the event of such incidents, the SFA will investigate and take measures to manage risks to recipients.

In addition, the government is considering additional measures to ensure that food donors maintain proper safety standards, such as staff and volunteer training, record-keeping for accountability, and regular inspections.

Follow the link for more news on

Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia