Regional blackout: Mass food loss as regions remain without power

Thousands of dollars worth of fresh produce has been dumped from supermarket shelves in the wake of Victoria’s blackout.

Supermarkets and suppliers have been forced to dump tens of thousands of dollars worth of food in the wake of the power outage that plunged regions of Victoria into darkness this week.

And with many parts of the state still offline, how and when fresh produce could be supplied to some supermarkets remains unknown.

Gippsland Jersey founder Sallie Jones said the Lakes Entrance-based factory was affected by the outage, and many parts of town were still without power as of Thursday morning.

She said about $40,000 worth of milk was lost due to Tuesday’s outage.

“The storm caused a bit of a fire in the factory … we ended up having to throw away about 20,000 litres of milk … it’s been crazy,” Ms Jones said.

“The toughest thing was not having that communication either, that was lost for a while.”

Supermarket shelves were emptied of fresh meat at the Wonthaggi Woolworths on Wednesday, February 14. Picture: Supplied

More than 60 supermarkets across the state have dumped fresh meat, frozen goods, and dairy products in the bin in keeping with food safety regulations.

A Woolworths spokesperson said more than 30 stores were affected by power outages in the 24 hours since Tuesday’s storms.

While the supermarket would not comment on food waste data or the financial cost of food loss, it was expected a number of products such as dairy, poultry, milk, and frozen food would be discarded, “in keeping with strict food safety protocols”.

“Given the evolving situation, we’re currently operating six other stores by generators,” the spokesperson said.

Stores in the worst affected areas of Gippsland and Dandenong were able to trade with restricted hours “due to limited generator capacity”.

It is understood stores not connected to mains power won’t receive refrigerated deliveries until they’re back online, with Woolworths stores using backup generators to power registers and store lights.

At the Woolworths store in Wonthaggi, southeast of Melbourne, Telstra outages on Wednesday coupled with a lack of power to the town saw a reduction in produce on offer to consumers, with limited register capacity for EFTPOS transactions.

No fresh meat was available, with deli fridges off-limits to customers due to “stock over temperature”.

Fresh fruit and vegetables were still available.

Coles Camberwell, where power was out from 2-9pm. Picture: Supplied

Meanwhile, a Coles spokesperson confirmed about 30 stores across Victoria lost power at different periods this week.

“While most of our stores were quickly back online, some of our stores were without power for longer which has meant there is some food that needs to be discarded,” the spokesperson said.

“At Coles, food safety is paramount, and unfortunately, the food we are disposing of is unsafe for sale or to be donated to food rescue charities.”

Gippsland Jersey co-founder Steve Ronalds said two of the five farms supplying milk to the factory were still without power, operating via generator only.

“All the little things, like the electric fences aren’t working and the cows are starting to figure that out,” Mr Ronalds said.

“One of our farmers missed two milkings, and he’s a little upset (and) hoping they don’t have health issues, as they’re in the midst of calving.

“We’ve never experienced this before, it’s quite unusual.”

Mr Ronalds said it was unclear how long it would take for properties to be reconnected to power.

“The fact some supermarkets don’t have cold or fresh food, they’ve got to get it going pretty quick. We’re trying to treat it as business as usual, and have our fingers and toes crossed.”