M.Mouse, I hear what you say. I myself have been guilty of pilfering the food that is going to be thrown away myself. And one of the things I was told the first day in the hangar was , don't take anything off of the planes. So they did a bit of creative twisting of the words and basically said that eating it on the plane doesnt consititute taking it off the plane. Thing is the caterers themselves don't seem to mind either. Never ate anything when the orange overalls were in abundance though.
But M.Mouse, please explain to me two things.
1) If the cabin staff gave it to the ground crew member, why discipline the ground crew and not the cabin staff?
2) How is pilfering this food, that is going to be thrown away, costing the airline money? Do the waster companies pay BA per ton of food?
Unless of course you are mentioning duty frees etc, which happen to be locked, or things found in seats (such as cameras etc).