The France food waste law is a stack of three statutes — the 2016 Garot Law, the 2018 EGalim Law, and the 2020 AGEC Law — that together prohibit large food businesses from destroying edible surplus, require them to sign donation agreements with charities, and back the rules with fines that can reach 0.1% of annual turnover. France was the first country in the world to make this kind of ban binding at the retail level.
What the Garot Law Bans
The 2016 Garot Law (Loi n°2016-138) targets supermarkets with a sales floor larger than 400 square meters. These stores are prohibited from intentionally rendering unsold food unfit for consumption. Before the law, some managers poured bleach into dumpsters or padlocked bins to keep foragers away. Those practices are now expressly illegal, and the ban covers any deliberate act that spoils food still safe to eat, not just chemical contamination.1OECD. A Stocktaking of Food Loss and Waste Policies: France
The Mandatory Food Recovery Hierarchy
Covered businesses cannot choose freely what to do with surplus. The law sets a priority order and requires them to work down it:
- Prevention through better inventory management, discounting items near their sell-by dates, and consumer awareness.
- Donation of edible surplus to authorized charitable organizations.
- Redirection to animal feed for food that cannot be donated for human consumption.
- Composting or anaerobic digestion for remaining organic waste.
- Landfill or incineration only as a last resort.
A retailer cannot skip donation and send edible food straight to composting because it is more convenient. Businesses must be able to show they followed the steps in order.1OECD. A Stocktaking of Food Loss and Waste Policies: France
Written Agreements With Charities
Donation is not left to goodwill. Covered retailers must sign formal written contracts, known in French law as conventions, with authorized food aid organizations. These agreements set collection frequency, quality standards for the food handed over, and the point at which responsibility transfers to the charity.2Légifrance. Code de l’environnement – Article L541-15-4
The convention is also the proof of compliance. Inspectors can ask to see it, and a store without a valid agreement is treated as non-compliant regardless of how much food it donates informally.
Who Else Is Covered: EGalim, AGEC, and Restaurants
The Garot Law was deliberately narrow, aimed at large supermarkets first. Two later laws widened the net.
The 2018 EGalim Law extended the donation partnership requirement and the ban on destroying edible food to collective catering — school canteens, hospital cafeterias, corporate dining — and to food processing companies. The 2020 AGEC Law brought food wholesalers under the same regime, required processors to run waste diagnostics and set up prevention action plans, and tightened quality monitoring for retail donations.1OECD. A Stocktaking of Food Loss and Waste Policies: France
AGEC also reached the dining room. Since 2021, restaurants and other commercial food-service establishments must offer take-home containers to customers who do not finish their meals. The containers have to be reusable or made from recyclable materials. Instead of leaving diners to ask for a doggy bag, the law puts the offer on the restaurant.1OECD. A Stocktaking of Food Loss and Waste Policies: France
The 400-square-meter threshold still triggers the retail rules, but EGalim and AGEC use different criteria to capture businesses that never sell directly to consumers.
The 60% Tax Credit for Donations
Companies that donate food to authorized charitable organizations can claim a tax credit equal to 60% of the net book value of the donated items against their corporate tax liability.3European Commission. Financial Rules on Food Donation For a supermarket writing off products approaching their sell-by date, the government effectively absorbs more than half the cost of giving those items away. The credit makes following the donation hierarchy financially rational rather than a pure loss.
Penalties for Non-Compliance
Penalties operate at two levels. A retailer that fails to sign a required donation convention with a charity faces per-violation fines. For more serious or systemic violations, particularly the intentional destruction of edible food, the law allows fines of up to 0.1% of the company’s annual turnover, so penalties scale with business size. A court can also order the company to publicize the ruling, which adds a reputational cost.
Multiple sources from the law’s passage also reported maximum penalties of €75,000 and up to two years of imprisonment for the most egregious offenses, though no company has been publicly reported as receiving those penalties to date.
National Reduction Targets and the Anti-Food Waste Label
Using 2015 as a baseline, France aims to cut food waste in retail and collective catering by 50% by 2025, with agriculture, food processing, and households required to reach the same 50% reduction by 2030.1OECD. A Stocktaking of Food Loss and Waste Policies: France
Alongside the mandatory rules, the government created an “Anti-Food Waste” label to recognize businesses going beyond minimum compliance. As of mid-2024, 85 businesses had earned the label across four tiers, with 55 receiving the highest distinction of three stars with special recognition.1OECD. A Stocktaking of Food Loss and Waste Policies: France