Разработка Кодекса поведения (КП) по предотвращению формирования продовольственных потерь и пищевых отходов (ППиПО)
Мир сталкивается с беспрецедентными глобальными проблемами, которые влияют на устойчивость сельскохозяйственных и продовольственных систем. Эти проблемы включают: истощение природных ресурсов и неблагоприятные последствия деградации окружающей среды, такие как опустынивание, засуха, деградация земель, нехватка воды и утрата биоразнообразия, быстрая урбанизация и рост населения и связанные с этим изменения в образе жизни и привычках питания, трансграничные вредители и болезни, и изменение климата. Широко признано, что одним из ключевых практических действий для решения этих проблем является сокращение потерь продовольствия и пищевых отходов (ППиПО). Это особенно верно, когда обращение с ППиПО осуществляется с использованием подхода продовольственной системы, поскольку это может значительно увеличить устойчивое использование природных ресурсов и повысить климатоустойчивость и продовольственную безопасность. Индекс потерь продовольствия измеряет степень, в которой мир добивается прогресса в сокращении ППиПО в рамках усилий по достижению Повестки дня на период до 2030 года.
На своей 26-й сессии в октябре 2018 года Комитет ФАО по сельскому хозяйству (КСХ) просил ФАО в сотрудничестве с соответствующими участниками взять на себя инициативу по разработке Добровольных кодексов поведения (КП) по сокращению потерь продовольствия и пищевых отходов для представления на следующей сессии КСХ (КСХ 27) в октябре 2020 года. В ответ на эту просьбу ФАО планирует возглавить глобальный процесс, который привлечет различные заинтересованные стороны к разработке КП.
Описание КП по предотвращению ППиПО
КП представит набор добровольных, глобальных, согласованных на международном уровне, руководящих принципов и методов, которые различные заинтересованные стороны могут адаптировать и применять для достижения сокращения ППиПО при достижении положительных результатов в отношении окружающей среды, природных ресурсов, средств к существованию, продовольственной безопасности и питания в соответствии с повесткой дня 2030 года.
Более конкретно, предполагается, что КП будет:
- Предоставить ориентир и рамки, в соответствии с которыми страны могут разрабатывать стратегии, политику, институты, законодательство и программы.
- Предоставить набор глобальных, согласованных на международном уровне, адаптируемых на местном уровне добровольных практик, которые могут быть приняты различными заинтересованными сторонами, прямо или косвенно связанными с ППиПО.
- Предоставить руководство относительно того, что представляет собой приемлемую практику, в отношении которой различные заинтересованные стороны могут оценить свои предлагаемые действия.
- Содействовать гармонизации применяемых подходов и оценке прогресса в сокращении ППиПО.
Целевая аудитория в качестве потенциальных пользователей КП включает в себя все различные заинтересованные стороны, которые прямо или косвенно имеют дело с ППиПО, а именно:
- Правительственные учреждения, включая соответствующие министерства и национальные и субнациональные учреждения;
- Участников цепочки поставок продуктов питания (в том числе: мелких семейных фермеров, скотоводов и рыбаков; перерабатывающие предприятия; МСП и другие агробизнесы, работающие в частном секторе; и потребителей)
- Организации гражданского общества (ОГО);
- Академические и исследовательские учреждения;
- Двусторонние и многосторонние агентства развития, включая международные финансовые институты;
- Благотворительные организации;
- Агентства ООН, межправительственные и региональные организации, имеющие мандат, связанный с ППиПО;
Основные разделы аннотированного описания КП по предотвращению ППиПО
В прилагаемом документе представлены основные части КП, которые будут состоять из следующих разделов:
- вводный раздел, представляющий основную информацию, обоснование, природу, охват, целевую аудиторию и цели КП
- основная часть, содержащая руководящие принципы и практики для решения ППиПО.
Этот раздел разбит на:
- Общие руководящие принципы
- Конкретные принципы и практики, реализуемые с помощью иерархического подхода, который отдает приоритет предотвращению и сокращению на различных этапах цепочки поставок, за которыми следует перераспределение продуктов питания для потребления человеком, потеря продовольствия и использование пищевых отходов для других целей, их переработка и, в конечном итоге, утилизация, как показано ниже в диаграмме:
- Сквозные (всеобъемлющие) вопросы.
Цель обсуждения
Электронная консультация запускается и поддерживается Программой продовольственных систем ФАО (SP4), чтобы получить отзывы и предложения относительно (i) схемы КП и (ii) содержания различных разделов. Рекомендации электронной консультации будут способствовать подготовке нулевого проекта КП, который будет дополнительно обсуждаться и уточняться в ходе внутренних и внешних консультаций с участием многих заинтересованных сторон. Предполагается, что окончательный вариант КП будет представлен для одобрения на 27-й сессии КСХ в октябре 2020 года.
Вопросы
1) В отношении предлагаемого плана и структуры КП:
- a) Рассматривает ли предлагаемый план КП эти проблемы исчерпывающим и всеобъемлющим образом?
- b) Есть ли какие-либо конкретные вопросы и важные аспекты, которые, по вашему мнению, не рассматриваются в предлагаемой структуре?
- c) Есть ли какие-либо недостатки или пробелы, которые вы видите в текущей структуре?
2) В отношении содержания различных разделов КП:
- a) Каковы общие руководящие принципы, которые вы считаете важными для раздела 2.1?
- b) Какие конкретные руководящие принципы и практики, по вашему мнению, важны для разделов 2.2.1(a, b и c), 2.2.2 и 2.2.3?
- c) Принимая во внимание необходимость обеспечения согласованности политики ППиПО, какие сквозные вопросы имеют отношение к теме ППиПО, как указано в разделе 2.2.4?
3) Можете ли вы привести конкретные примеры политики, вмешательств, инициатив, альянсов и институциональных механизмов, которые следует рассматривать в качестве передовой практики в области предотвращения, сокращения, восстановления, повторного использования и переработки пищевых отходов?
4) Как этот Кодекс поведения по предотвращению и сокращению ППиПО может быть наиболее полезным для различных заинтересованных сторон, особенно на национальном и региональном уровнях?
Спасибо Вам за Ваш вклад!
Дивине Нджие (Divine Njie)
Заместитель руководителя стратегической программы
Программа продовольственных систем (SP4)
Продовольственная и сельскохозяйственная организация
- Прочитано 66 комментарии
Thank you very much for your contribution and for pointing out the relationship among food waste, the efficiency of food system and food emergency systems. We will let you know how the CoC develops!
Thank you very much for your comprehensive contribution. All the aspects you mention (i.e. support for initiatives of cooperation between different stakeholders, food redistribution, fiscal incentives, etc..) are all fundamental to reduce food waste and will be included in the CoC.
Thank you also for providing information about the Federation of Polish Food Banks and the Act of July 19, 2019 which looks like a very important step to reduce and prevent food waste at distribution/retailers’ level.
Thank you for illustrating what Nestlè does to reduce food loss and waste. Very interesting initiatives!
1. With respect to the proposed outline and structure of the CoC:
a. Does the proposed outline of the CoC address the issues in an exhaustive and comprehensive way?
b. Are there any particular issues and aspects of importance that you think are not be addressed in the proposed structure?
c. Are there any disadvantages or gaps you see in the current structure?
Feedback recommends that the structure needs to recognize that different sectors of the supply chain affect each other – for instance, as noted below, retailer policy can have significant effects on both their suppliers and their customers’ food waste levels. Therefore, Feedback suggests that each section in 2.2.1 includes recommended measures not just that States and businesses in the sector can take, but that actors in other stages of the supply chain can take which affect that sector.
2. With respect to the content of the different sections of the CoC:
a. What are the general guiding principles that you think are important for section 2.1?
One of the most important guiding principles should be the recommended scope of SDG 12.3. The Champions 12.3 document Guidance on Interpreting Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 (Hanson, 2017) includes the vital recommendation that “one should apply the “halve per capita” in practice to food losses [i.e. pre-retail food waste], as well, not just to food waste” – and that this should cover “from the point that crops and livestock are ready for harvest or slaughter through to the point that they are ready to be ingested by people”. Thus, nation states should set targets to reduce food waste by 50% from farm to fork by 2030, including edible food left unharvested in the fields. Food left unharvested in the fields is currently excluded from compulsory measurement under the Food Loss Index, despite studies (including the FAO’s) revealing that in both richer and poorer countries some of the highest levels of waste occur at this stage. To facilitate its measurement, the FAO should urgently develop a recommended methodology for nation states to measure this food waste, as a means of creating baselines to enable targeted reduction of 50% by 2030.
Hanson (2017) also makes the vital recommendation that food is still counted as waste towards SDG 12.3 if it is used below the point of animal feed on the food waste hierarchy – the FAO should make it clear in their recommendations that sending food to AD, compost or below on the hierarchy does not count as reduced towards SDG 12.3. Ideally, Feedback would recommend that countries are even more ambitious than this for food that is edible to humans – only counting this as reduced if it is prevented or sent to human consumption. However, efforts to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030 should be complemented by efforts to move food waste up the food up the food waste hierarchy.
Feedback recommends that the distinction between food “loss” and “waste” is removed, in favour of the term “waste” being used regardless of which stage of the supply chain food is wasted at. The loss vs. waste distinction implies that developing countries experience primarily food loss in their supply chains as a result of poor technical infrastructure and developed countries primarily experience food waste at retail and consumer level because of wasteful consumer habits. However, retail food waste is generally small, and pre-retail food waste e.g. in agriculture is usually high – in both the Global North and South, as is revealed by the FAO’s own data (FAO, 2011). Moreover, “food loss” implies a technical cause unrelated to human agency. However, Feedback has found evidence that food is often
waste in both the Global North and South due to factors related to unequal power balances in supply chains – particularly within rich countries where the retail sector is concentrated compared with their suppliers, or where farmers in the Global South export to the Global North. Factors such as cosmetic outgrading, overproduction as a result of power relations, and Unfair Trading Practices like last minute order cancellations, often result in large levels of food waste in suppliers. See, for instance (Colbert and Stuart, 2015; Colbert, 2017; Bowman, 2018).
b. What are the specific guiding principles and practices do you think are important for sections 2.2.1(a, b& c), 2.2.2 and 2.2.3?
Section 2.2.1(a)
It is vital to recognize that retailer policy (and the policies of intermediaries) often has a considerable impact in causing food waste in their suppliers, and therefore to provide suggestions for improvements in retailer policy which can reduce food waste between primary production and retail
Examples of measure States could take to minimize the effects retailers have on their suppliers’ food waste are:
· Introduce robust Unfair Trading Practices legislation, to protect suppliers from practices like last minute order cancellations or tightening of specifications which lead to waste. A regulator should be established for this which has adequate powers of enforcement.
· Set up some form of cross-supply chain mediation to explore problems and find solutions.
Examples of measures retails could take to reduce their suppliers’ food waste are:
· Recognise their shared responsibility for the food waste in their suppliers.
· Relax cosmetic standards on core product lines to ensure that no/minimal edible food is rejected on the basis of cosmetic qualities like size, colour or shape. Actively promote diverse produce sizes to customers to reduce fussiness. Do change cosmetic standards at the last minute as an excuse to cancel or reduce an order.
· Do not punish cases of undersupply in suppliers where this has stemmed from natural variation in the weather – as this leads suppliers to routinely overplant to avoid being fined or delisted, leading to gluts and price crashes in good years and much produce being ploughed back in.
· Make efforts to flexibly market gluts of produce when weather leads to unexpected gluts.
· Minimize their practice of Unfair Trading Practices, in compliance with and cooperation with the State regulator
Section 2.2.1(b)
It is vital to recognize that retailer policy often has a considerable impact in causing food waste in their suppliers, and therefore to provide suggestions for improvements in retailer policy which can reduce food waste between primary production and retail
Examples of measures retails could take to reduce their suppliers’ food waste are:
· Recognise their shared responsibility for the food waste in their customers, since their policies usually have a large effect on these.
· Extend Best Before Dates where it is possible to do so within a safe level, to prevent edible food being discarded by consumers while it is still safe to eat.
· Sell produce loose where selling it in bags is liable to cause consumers to overbuy and waste the excess
· Sell perishable foods which are likely to be eaten across multiple meals such as salads in resealable packaging where appropriate.
Section 2.2.1(c)
· Food waste prevention should always be prioritized over charitable food waste redistribution, so the two should be listed in different categories.
· Voluntary food redistribution is ultimately a superficial solution to both food waste and food poverty, and ultimately the aim should be to design both out of the system in the first place. As many food poverty academics have observed, some problematic aspects of voluntary food redistribution which have been identified include them being under-resourced, socially stigmatising, patchy in coverage, and vulnerable to fluctuating food stocks according to the availability of food surplus. Most importantly, food redistribution charities do not have the power to guarantee universal access to affordable nutritious food – as embodied in the Human Right to Food enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – and is sometimes used by governments to plug gaps in welfare and employment systems, potentially easing pressure on government to guarantee safety nets.
Section 2.2.2
· There should be a very clear distinction drawn between sending food to animal feed, and sending it to AD and compost. Sending food to AD or compost should not be counted as reduced towards SDG 12.3 under any circumstances, since it is too far down the food waste hierarchy. Sending food waste to animal feed is generally considered as no longer food waste under SDG 12.3 – however, countries should be encouraged to prevent food waste as a priority or send food to human consumption if it is edible. Animal feed and AD/compost should therefore be split into two clearly distinct categories.
Examples of measures to be taken by States include:
· Scale up the amount of unavoidable surplus food which is sent to animal feed. Ensure that it is legal to feed all safely-treated surplus food containing meat to omnivorous non-ruminants like pigs and chickens, once it has been subjected to a safe heat-treatment complemented with acidification in rigorously regulated off-farm processing facilities. For more info, see (Luyckx et al., 2019)
c. Taking into account the need to foster FLW policy coherence, which cross-cutting issues are relevant to the FLW topic, as addressed in section 2.2.4?
National governments:
· Adopt binding statutory targets to reduce food waste by 50% from farm to fork by 2030 (not just to reduce consumer and retail waste by 50% and more vaguely reduce food “loss”). Binding measures should be taken in preference to voluntary agreements.
· Integrate food waste reduction efforts into Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and emissions reduction plans.
· Measure food waste annually at all stages of the supply chain, from the point food is mature enough to harvest through to consumer level – to create baselines for targeted reduction.
· Introduce legal requirement for businesses over a certain size to measure and report their company’s food waste figures, on an individual company basis
· Adequately fund the above measures.
3. Can you provide specific examples of policies, interventions, initiatives, alliances and institutional arrangements which should be considered as best practices in FLW prevention, reduction, food recovery, repurposing and recycling?
· EU Directive 2019/633 introduced an obligation on EU member states to ban 16 Unfair Trading Practices, and to set up regulators to ensure this code is followed. It protects all suppliers in smaller size categories than their buyers, and protects both suppliers within the EU and suppliers exporting to the EU. Other States should move to introduce such legislation, and ensure that the regulatory authority is given sufficient power and funding to effectively enforce the law.
· WRAP’s Food Waste Roadmap provides a good example of ambitious interpretation of SDG 12.3 – targeting a 50% reduction of food waste from farm to fork by 2030. Signatories to the voluntary commitment also individually report their food waste, rather than at an aggregate sectoral level, providing a greater level of transparency, and to reduce their own food waste by 50% by 2030. However, WRAP do not expect 100% participation in this agreement until 2026. Strengthening the voluntary agreement by upgrading it to a regulatory requirement to ensure 100% participation in measurement, reporting and targets would significantly speed progress.
· Japan produces “eco-feed” for pigs by taking surplus food and subjecting it to a safe treatment process (heat-treatment combined with acidification), in specialist well-regulated treatment facilities. EU REFRESH outlines how, with some regulatory strengthening, this system could be adapted to Europe – and to other countries (Luyckx et al., 2019).
· Retailers in the UK have launched a variety of wonky fruit and vegetable ranges. For instance, Tesco report that since launching their “Perfectly Imperfect” line, the proportion of their producer’s apples they can take rose from 87% to 97% (Gilbert, 2016). Morrisons launched a wonky fruit and veg range (Pullman, 2015) – a move which was immensely popular and led to increased sales (Butler, 2018). However, ideally supermarkets should use wonky fruit and vegetable ranges to test their customer’s levels of acceptance of cosmetic variety, with a view to eventually relaxing cosmetic standards on core product ranges.
4. How could this Code of Conduct on FLW prevention and reduction be most useful for different stakeholders, especially at national and regional levels?
Feedback recommend that the Code of Conduct on FLW prevention and reduction be used primarily as a means of encouraging States around the world to adopt ambitious food waste reduction legislation and regulation, to ensure they reduce food waste by 50% from farm to fork by 2030, in line with SDG 12.3. Clearly recommending the scope of SDG 12.3 should also be a priority.
Bibliography:
Bowman, M. (2018) Farmers Talk Food Waste. Feedback. Available at: https://feedbackglobal.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Farm_waste_rep….
Butler, S. (2018) ‘“Wonky” fruit and veg sales put Morrisons on straight path to growth’, The Guardian, 26 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/26/wonky-fruit-veg-sales-… (Accessed: 9 July 2019).
Colbert, E. (2017) Causes of food waste in international supply chains. Feedback. Available at: https://feedbackglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Causes-of-food-wa….
Colbert, E. and Stuart, T. (2015) Food Waste in Kenya - Uncovering Food Waste in the Horticultural Export Supply Chain, p. 28. Available at: https://feedbackglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Causes-of-food-wa….
FAO (2011) Global food losses and food waste: extent, causes and prevention. Rome: FAO. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i2697e.pdf.
Gilbert, H. (2016) Tesco adds apples & strawberries to Perfectly Imperfect range, The Grocer. Available at: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/tesco-adds-apples-and-strawberries-to-perfe… (Accessed: 9 July 2019).
Hanson, C. (2017) Guidance on Interpreting Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3. Champions 12.3. Available at: https://champs123blog.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/champions-12-3-guidan….
Luyckx, K., Bowman, M., Broeze, J., Taillard, D. and Woroniecka, K. (2019) Technical guidelines animal feed: The safety, environmental and economic aspects of feeding treated surplus food to omnivorous livestock. REFRESH Deliverable 6.7. Available at: https://eu-refresh.org/results.
Pullman, N. (2015) Morrisons to launch permanent wonky veg range, Fresh Produce Journal. Available at: http://www.fruitnet.com/fpj/article/167039/morrisons-to-launch-permanen… (Accessed: 9 July 2019).
Dear Divine Njie,
Please find attached Freshfel Europe's contribution to this online consulation on the development of FAO's Code of Conduct on Food Loss and Food Waste Prevention.
Kind regards,
Nicola Pisano
Freshfel Europe Policy Advisor & Communications Manager
I contribute this to the FAO realizing the idea may be oriented for a more technical type, but it seems most effective still from my position to harp on food waist inside of the individual sustainability model because it is this model that work in the end (in many ways), long after thousands of words and protocols and booklets. I think the nature model concept, is really the importance moving forward in all of these many issues the forum addresses primarily, proper food waist handling.
Nature is self sustainable.
The individual nature of today's culture is not sustainable. It does not have to be that way. Individual sustainability should be our very priority, and the re-education of sustaineable and natural importance will rectify most that is wrong today, and provide that we can survive as a large population. The possibility of what kind of people culture we can be is very dynamic, and it is very much up to us at an individual level.
Should we take our examples to live from nature rather than from ourselves, these techno-monkeys that know better; whala ! self sustainable culture of people.
Individual sustainability has a secondary importance and that is the individual's causation of death, or suffering and the footprint left by the life of the individual. Our footprint in the world and our waist management. Part of becoming a dynamic population that supports or ecology rather than destroys it will be learning dynamic principles in the importance of individual sustainability.
We even find that natural selections (plant life of ecology) are even more than self sustaining but actually pull more than just their own weight. Permaculture observed this, and stresses the repetition of it. Individual sustainability for future generations can be achieved by the modern worker too, using rotational re-visit farms, method.
Culture Conflict
Culture among humans is an interesting, dynamic thing. We can have all sorts of wild things in culture that are as unnatural as can be. Stay natural as can be, and take your model from nature should be our motto moving forward.
We can have a culture were abusing children is ok, but in reality this is not ok. Today (English speaking cultures) - we have a culture of using children for money, for control, and many are willing to abuse kids in order to abuse an an ex or gain monetarily, cause total life destruction and tell the worst lies to cause it. Millions of children are lied to, cut off from one parent, brainwashed, something the famous Dr. Phil has called the "Ultimate Form of Child Abuse," and is clinically known as " Parental Alienation," but really is parental kidnapping and child brainwashing. It is a deep rooted emotional molestation and this is all incentivized by the system. This is okay in current people culture, it's normal, there are millions of cases. In reality this is not okay. It does cause damage, it does cause suffering, it leaves huge lasting effects on the world and others.
Many worlds today see leadership that says one thing and does another. Many workers see their 'elected', or non-elected officials live the lives of kings making decisions for struggles they do not know. How this structural manifest became the true reality in so many places, under so many titles is beyond me. But natural I can tell you it is not.
I use these example above because it is one cultural model of many, like mono culture farming, that is just so insane, and so damaging that we have to now really take the idea of looking to nature for our advancement seriously.
At the end of the day we cultivate in the root of all evil, we get what is to be expected.
Nature exists in a perfect...... balance.
Coherent Culture
Intentional Community has been an idea for ages. It's hard to start over without the skills, and the experience to stand on. The 60's cats developed a good couple of shoulders to stand on though with Permaculture and the Permaculture Manual.
Today even the hippies are selfish, egotistical and fascist.
The difficulty I have seen in most intentional communities are concerns in what permaculture calls "fair share," ownership, work value mostly remains in the existing structure of the one with most money owning everything and being metaphysically, then physically unable to actually provide a completely fair opportunity. Where the reality is once they are done dragoning over that one farm, they may mind other farms, and it is possible to leave these farms with excellent natural food forrest management, management opportunities for others, production and vibe. See Guerilla Permaculture.
Nutritional Diversity Study in Panama has found a way to achieve, much more than before, optimal performance results from natural diet practice. This is information gathered over a better part of the last decade, they are compiling into a Human Optimizing, Nutritional Diversity Guide.
Self Sustainability
It's interesting. Sure it will be hard to change the world. We see more and more people who are thinking about these ideas, and here moving to Central America.
To simplify the coherent focus; is for each one of us, or each community of us, to be self sustainable, through technologies that don't drastically effect the earth with pollutants, or other possible negatives. The foot print of humans can be as harmful to the world as the footprint of any other animal should we choose to go off of a natural example rather than an unnatural one.
To Be Useful
If we are going to pull more than our own weight and take care of plenty of stuff we are going to need skills above all other thing. Thanks to modern culture (again), we need a focus point of skill learning in the community.
Energy production and waist management are both optimized when combined. For example the permaculturist's humanuer, or animal manure, work's well to produce plant life on the farm.
The simple realization that the farm, at this point likely is the most important component to success for a group of persons - and we are back to the new type of agriculture skills point again.
Organic Waist Management
At the smallest levels, seeds, beet and carrot tops, can be removed and replanted. Bulk food material should composted.
Small home composting is easy, and there are plenty of ideas and inventions to speed up timing and concentrate tees.
In urban areas, people have now converted shipping containing to solar powered sat composers, making them possibly some of the best things that could happen to an urban ghetto. I imagine given there due time needed, they can compost in human waist in areas where that is an immediate concern.
Human urine is highly potent foliar feeder by itself for plants, and the charger for bio-char.
Non -Organic Waist Management.
Plastics and metals need to be dealt with in alternative forms.
There are plastic fuel theories, and there is valid plastic bottle wall construction that has been done by groups all over the world now. This method could be a great answer, could be done well and could provide jobs fabricating bottle-made wall panels. We have a close model around the world now to this concept known as 'coventech' or 'M2'. I highly recommend the idea of local plastic bottle wall construction panels, straws and bags in the bottles -everything washed. This is a solid waist management protocol that can be exercised immediately.
When a business depends on the waist, it will clean up the waist.
Recycling as a business is not as wide spread as it should be, and that could be because of the effectiveness of it's process currently. Functional clean up technology could be a high demand idea if we had incredible plastic.
Metals are easy to figure out in a conscious coherent direction.
I hope for a world with a more self sustaineable attitude, and I believe it will be at this level , and through this type of coherent mentality in culture that we will turn the page into a page of life. A concentration on Nutritional Diversity and it's principles as a doctrine will undoubtedly be a precise force of effective application in that direction.
Respectfully,
Food Loss and Waste Heroes at FAO,
It is great to see more important work in this area. The outline has covered important topics.
One thing that I thought may be missing, potentially a cross-cutting issue, is some kind of investigation of the unintended consequences of preventing and reducing food loss and waste. The emergency food system is one part of our food system that I can think of that already struggles when supply chain stakeholders improve their efficiency. Please let us know how the Code of Conduct develops.
Lisa Johnson
Dear Colleagues,
The paradox of the contemporary world is that, more than 820 million people do not have enough to eat and 1,3 billion tonnes of edible food per year, i.e. 1/3 of produced food is wasted. Food losses and waste are so high that they should be treated as a global problem prevalent throughout the agri-food chain, i.e. “from farm to table”, in both developed and developing countries. All participants in the agri-food chain are responsible for food losses and waste: producers, processors, suppliers, traders, sellers, restaurateurs and consumers. Therefore, everyone must also take action to prevent food waste and waste on both the supply and demand side, as well as to reduce it.
Therefore, development of a Code of Conduct on Food Loss and Food Waste Prevention is a great idea. The proposed structure of CoC is quite appropriate. Below I added a few suggestions to consideration.
All actions to reduce food losses and waste should be undertaken, including:
- Support for initiatives of cooperation between different stakeholders: food producers, retail chains, government representatives, NGOs, international organisations and scientific research institutes. The combination of knowledge and skills can contribute to a significant reduction in food losses and waste.
- Modification of requirements for food quality standards in terms of the size, shape and colour of fruit and vegetables to enable the sale of less aesthetic products. Food products, which are rejected by retail chains due to non-compliance with quality standards, should be sold at lower prices or forwarded through the Food Banks to those in need.
- The European Union should support actions to redistribute food to people in a difficult financial situation, and to support the provision of milk and milk products to pupils, and actions as part a programme promoting the consumption of fruit and vegetables in schools.
- Information campaigns in many countries to raise public awareness of food waste consequences. In Poland, the Federation of Polish Food Banks runs numerous information campaigns for both food producers and consumers. Established to prevent food waste and to reduce malnutrition areas, the Federation of Polish Food Banks brings together 32 Food Banks that operate throughout the country.
- Development of financial incentives for entrepreneurs that pursue policy to reduce food waste.
- Allowing for taking an uneaten meal home from a restaurant.
- Use of edible by-products as e.g. pet food.
- Introduction of educational programmes on nutrition at all levels of the education system to explain how to store and prepare food, and how to dispose of leftovers.
- It is necessary to educate consumers about food packaging information on the expiration date of food: (1) ‘use by’ for perishable food products and (2) ‘best before’ relating to the minimum durability of food products which are safe for the health of consumers. Consumers often do not distinguish between these terms and discard food with ‘best before’ information on its packaging. The ‘use by’ date refers to food security and the ‘best before’ date – to food quality.
- Interdisciplinary actions should be undertaken with respect to food production, food quality and security, nutrition rationalisation, health promotion and raising consumers’ awareness of nutrition and health.
- Implementation of food redistribution programmes that allow for reducing prices of food products with a close ‘use by’ date. It would prevent massive discarding of food and, at the same time, would enable low-income people to buy food.
- Developing a uniform methodological framework that would provide reliable estimates of food loss and waste, which would allow for more accurate tracking and detection of links in the agri-food chain where food loss and food waste arise. This would allow the introduction of appropriate strategies targeted at specific recipients that would be aimed at preventing and reducing food loss and waste.
- Constant monitoring of food losses and waste throughout the agri-food chain.
These actions will bring numerous economic, social, health and environmental benefits to not only the present world population, but also to future generations.
In Poland, the Act of July 19, 2019 on Counteracting Food Waste was adopted. This Act stipulates that stores over 250 sq. m., whose half of the revenues come from the sale of food, will have to conclude agreements with non-governmental organizations for the free transfer of unsold food. It is primarily about products that have been discontinued due to defects in their appearance or packaging.
The law provides for symbolic fees – for 1 kilo of wasted food, the seller will pay 0,10 PLN. These funds are to support non-governmental organizations in further food distribution, including support the development of infrastructure necessary to provide food to those in need. Stores will also be required to run, together with non-governmental organizations, at least once a year, educational and information campaigns in the field of rational food management and prevention of food waste.
Best regards
Mariola Kwasek, PhD, Hab. Associate Professr
Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics
National Research Institute
Warsaw
Private Sector intiatives to address food waste : At Nestlé we have estimated our own losses along our entire value chain at 12%.This includes the losses upstream of the raw materials that we buy, and the losses in manufacturing, distribution and at the consumption stage. For example reducing milk losses .We are measuring the milk loss from farm to factory gate in 30 countries in our dairy supply chain. We have already implemented actions to reduce losses, including improved collection systems. As a result, milk losses from farm to factory in 2018 were measured at just 0.3% of production.
Examples of policies, interventions, initiatives, alliances and institutional arrangements which should be considered as best practices in FLW prevention, reduction, food recovery, repurposing and recycling :
Partnering to reduce waste :Nestlé Nordic has joined the Denmark Against Food Waste initiative, which brings together manufacturers and retailers to reduce waste in Denmark by 50% by 2030. The first step has seen participants commit to measuring and publishing progress on food waste annually.
In Latin America and the Caribbean we also partnered with the Inter-American Development Bank and supported by other major food and technology companies ,to support its #SinDesperdicio (‘without waste’) initiative where we used food date labels to help prevent food being discarded when it is still good to eat. Taking a holistic approach, it aims to fight back against the 127 million tons of food lost and wastedevery year in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 2018, Nestlé UK and Ireland worked with other members of the IGD and WRAP Food Waste Measurement Task and Finish Group to develop guidance on measuring and reporting food loss and waste.Nestlé UK and Irelandalso launched an initiative that aimsto redistribute meals across the UK. Delivered in partnership with Company Shop and WRAP, the Waste Not, Want Not methodology will assess the main causes of food waste within food operations and reduce them at source where possible. By 2019, any surplus food should be redistributed to commercial and charitable organizations rather than being used for animal feed or anaerobic digestion, and the project aims to redistribute 2 million extra meals. The approach has already been tested at several Nestlé factories.
We are also measuring the environmental and nutritional impact of food loss and waste, key measurements that are too often overlooked.
Reporting food loss and waste: Since 2016, we have been reporting the food loss and waste generated in our factories according to the World Resources Institute’s Food Loss and Waste Protocol.
@ Maria J.I. Briones
Thank you very much for your contribution. Retailers play an important role in food waste reduction and all the points you mention (food preservation, marketing strategies, food redistribution and separate collection) are relevant and will be mentioned in the CoC.
@ Patricia Mathabe
Thank you for your input which highlights the importance of innovation and technologies for food loss and waste prevention and reduction!
@ Murillo Freire Junior
Thank you so much! Our aim is to develop a practical and useful CoC for FLW reduction and prevention which, if adopted by States and by food chain actors, will have positive and direct outcomes in the next coming years.
I feel that there are additional issues to address in the outline:
1) Food processing: besides reducing packaging, retailers should seek for better ways to keep food fresher for longer periods without using more chemicals. One of the reasons why consumers waste food is that it goes off before they can eat it. When food are obtained directly from the farms it last longer!
2) Food distribution/retailing: Supermarkets and shops should stop advertising big savings for big buys.
3) Food redistribution: Some places have implemented an application for mobile phones so that restaurants offer reduced prices for food that is about to expire.
4) Food recycling: green bins for organic wastes should be allocated in schools, Universities, working places... Not only consumers eat at the bars and cantees in their working places but also bring food to work and the waste ends in the "general waste" bin.
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Д-р. Patricia Mathabe
2.2.4. CROSS CUTTING ISSUES
In this section, I believe that emphasis should be made on the need for the Agri Industry, Researchers and government to collaborate and recognize the need and the importance of innovations to prevent/reduce post harvest losses. Moreso the funding of these novel technologies. Technologies developed, should be applicable and affordable to both the commerical and small scale farmer.
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