Dear Silvia,
Very good to see you here, hops all is well. I have input about the Code of Conduct on Food Loss and Food Waste Prevention:
It’s important to separate PREVENTION from REDUCTION.
The Prevention of food waste is for example the prevention of overproduction of food.
As for Reduction, it’s for example giving suplus food to charities.
Improving forecasting accuracy and planning process they actively increase the efficient utilization of food is Prevention.
It is good and important to donate the surplus food to the charities, but its dosen’t prevent the root cause: the overproduction of food. And it’s even more important to work on preventing the overproduction of food to begin with.
However sympathetic it is when a food producer donates five pallets of cookies to the local refugee center, it does nothing about the root of the problem - overproduction. Systematic symptom treatment has become a green sleeping pad.
Nevertheless, our ingenuity is primarily for symptom treatment in all kinds. Even with the gradually free food waste prevention tools that can be implemented in the country's canteens, you sometimes hear from the canteens that it is too difficult and time-consuming to initiate the actual transformation process to prevent the waste. Then it is easier and faster to convert the canteen food waste to biogas.
When a food manufacturer distributes five pallets of cookies that it cannot sell to the local refugee center, it creates far larger headlines in the local newspaper than if the company had optimized its production to completely prevent the waste.
It creates good images on local TV and sympathy on social media, where happy people praise the initiatives - because now the food waste, according to the media mention, has stopped. Yes, maybe it's stopped on the short lane. But the problem is not solved at the root. There is still overproduction and thus waste.
Massive prevention is the way forward to achieve UN SDG 12.3 by 2030, and I think that there should be focus on Prevention vs. Reduction in the Code of Conduct on Food Loss and Food Waste Prevention.
Sincerely yours,
Selina Juul
Chairman of the Board and Founder of Stop Wasting Food movement
Sra. Selina Juul