Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION BELOW

Bonjour!

C'est bon d'avoir réfléchi à la surconsommation et le gaspillage des produits agroalimentaire. De ma part je crois que la stratégie prise touche à tous les niveaux du problème. Sauf qu’au niveau du consommateur c'est pas bien spécifié.

Je voudrais ajouter qu'on peut faire des sensibilisations aux consommateurs en les invitants à une consommation utilitaire et pas acheter des choses qui finirons dans la poubelle. Et insiste aussi sur le fait d'avoir des animaux domestique comme les monogastrique (poules, porc,...), pour la valorisation des déchets.

Merci

Hello!

It is great to have thought about the over-consumption and waste of agri-food products. Personally, I believe that the strategy adopted concerns all levels of the problem. But it is not well specified at the consumer level.

I would like to add that we can raise consumers' awareness by inviting them to buy utilitarian consumption and not buy things that will end up in the garbage. It is also important to insist on having domestic animals such as monogastric animals (chickens, pigs,...) for waste recycling.

Thank you

Dear Dr. Silvia Gaiani,

Dear Ms. Maryam Rezaei,

Congratulations for the work done so far. I wish to submit some remarks regarding the serious issue of food waste, prevalent in particular in the developed countries.

I have not seen comments related to the main drivers of food waste. If we want a significant improvement, it would be essential to address all these drivers. These are rather complex and would need a holistic approach and would require structural changes in our current food systems.

Let me mention just two of these drivers.

1. The impacts of low food prices on the consumers' behaviour, including their buying preferences. In particular, I wish to refer to the food prices which are kept artificially low. The situation of “low food prices” seem to be the result of competition among retailers and as such they are apparently positive and useful. In reality, the prices are frequently kept artificially low; they do not reflect the real costs of production. Food industry suppliers are often under serious pressure by the retailers, and consequently, many times they are constrained to bring their costs further down, also by lowering the quality of the food they produce.

These low food prices seem to favour the poor people, but in reality, the poor suffer the consequences of this low food price policy, because low food prices regularly linked to low quality of food. These low quality, ultra-processed (frequently junk) food have serious consequences on the nutrition status of the poor populations, many times leading to obesity and overweight.

The artificially low food prices do not reflect the actual costs of production, due to our broken food system. The indirect or “hidden cost” are not paid by those who produce the food, they are paid by the wide public, the consumers. These are the so-called environmental and social externalities and there are many studies available related to this issue. Among these studies, I can mention the one prepared by the KPMG international audit company: https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2014/10/a-new-vision-of-value-v1.pdf. The KPMG study itself is much broader than food systems. On page 10 there is a graph, showing that the cost of environmental externalities is about 224 (!!!) % of the profit of industrial food production. It is only the industrial food production where the value is higher than 100%... The social, and in particular the public health externalities mean an even more serious and much higher “hidden” costs, including costs of treating malnutrition, obesity, and diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular and other non-communicable diseases. In this regard the TEEB AgriFood (a UNEP institute) has prepared some studies, including a report here: http://teebweb.org/agrifood/home/scientific-and-economic-foundations-report/. Another article related to the topic: https://futureoffood.org/cheap-food-aide-memoir/. These studies confirm the need to involve health and finance ministers in shaping the national food policies...

It should also be mentioned that IPES Food has interesting and relevant studies on the industrial vs agroecological farming and food production: http://ow.ly/V4O730lBbmW or http://www.ipes-food.org/images/Reports/UniformityToDiversity_FullReport.pdf?platform=hootsuite.

FAO had some papers as well related to true cost accounting: http://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/436356/. Unfortunately, more recently I have not seen any similar documents from FAO.

The general conclusions of these studies clearly demonstrate that true cost accounting does provide appropriate scientific evidence and guidance and this guidance should be duly taken into consideration while transforming our broken food system.

Finally, and most importantly, artificially distorted, low food prices have a strong impact on the consumers. If food is cheap, it conveys the message that it does not represent a real value. Therefore, consumers will care much less about throwing food away. Higher food prices (reflecting the true costs of food) would discourage consumers to buy more than they effectively need. Realistic prices of food do not imply generally high food prices. Only those (ultraprocessed, junk) food prices would go up which do not internalize the environmental and public health externalities. Prices of locally produced, fresh, healthy, unprocessed (whole) food would become more competitive. For the benefit of all the population. Obviously, necessary measures would include decent wage level as well, but the costs of these measures are much less than the benefits of saving great amounts of health care expenditure.

As Pope Francis said, “Wasting food shows a lack of concern for others”. He also said: “When financial speculation manipulates the price of food, treating it as just another commodity, millions of people suffer and die from hunger.”

2. The other issue I wish to mention comes from the question of “cui prodest”? We need to understand who are interested to prevent food waste and who benefit from wasting food. In our world where “money makes the world go round”, all stakeholders along the food supply chain are clearly interested to decrease food waste, with one exception. The big multinational food retail chains can maximize their profit through increasing their sales volumes. This is why these retail chains regularly apply large-scale sales promotions (discounts, pay 2 – get 3, etc.) strongly encouraging consumers to buy food products (because prices are attractive...) even if they do not really need those products, and buy big quantities, much more than they really need. Big retailers do not care about food waste. On the contrary, the more food is wasted by consumers, the higher of their volume of sale will be…

At the same time, we need to acknowledge that there are efforts by some of the big retail chains to exercise for example “corporate social responsibility” (although it is considered another form of promoting image to increase sales…). Some of the retailers are even involved in actions of donations of unsold food to the poor through food banks. Some others are making real efforts to decrease the quantities of unsold food, in collaboration with the national legislators, through the development of markets for substandard products, amending food labelling regulations and establishing policies and legislation to facilitate food donation. Some others again, as also suggested by the proposed outline, do capacity building in inventory management and waste audits and measurement, and use differentiated pricing for products near the use-by date.

By putting all the above in evidence I had no intention to point fingers on the retail chains as the only player responsible for the problems. I am just proposing to do appropriate analysis of the role of all involved stakeholders, including the retail chains.

Regarding the measures above I consider them extremely important, but I think they do not address the root causes of the problem. For real improvements, we would need deeper, more targeted measures. Including the Development of a Code of Conduct on Food Loss and Food Waste Prevention.

As far as the transformation of the food system is concerned, structural, systemic changes are required, based on the scientific evidence provided by true cost accounting. Respecting the principles of sustainability is essential, paying due attention to the (so far neglected) environmental and social dimensions. Obviously, the economic dimension should be considered as well. However, we should also keep in mind that economic sustainability is nothing else but the result of the national and international "economic environment", in particular the financial policy incentives. In this regard, national legislators have enormous responsibility in providing the appropriate policy incentives to those food systems which are really sustainable.

Best regards,

Zoltan Kalman

Permanent Representative of Hungary

to the Food and Agriculture UN Agencies in Rome

Question 2c

2.2.4. Cross-cutting Issues:

In addition to the one's already mentioned, the FLW CoC should also address vulnerability status of populations. This is inline with food redistribution to food banks given that most beneficiaries from these banks are vulnerable, especailly persons living with a disability. 

Question 2a.

2.1. General Guiding Principles: 

Another principle that can be relevant here is that of international solidarity among states. This guiding principle servces to encourage states with suplus (even after carefully reducing production at source) production to redistribute to states with low food sufficiency. 

Question 1a

It would also be interesting if the guideline can provide cases of how strategies/approaches that have been applied by governments at local or national level to either encourage or enforce the application of FLW policies, CoCs or laws.

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

@Adil Daniel

Thank you very much for your contribution. Logistics is a central issue in reducing food loss and waste, as well as raising awareness. As you mention, the fight against food loss and waste should involve everyone along the food supply chain.

@Roderick Valones

There are definitely a number of challenges in developing, launching and implementing a code of conduct for food loss and waste reduction.

We are aware it is not an easy task but we will do our best to develop it step by step and by creating global consensus around it.

Greeting from Pakistan.

Thank you for this initiative on Food Loss and Waste. I would like to share few points related to FLW. In my region, food loss is the most prevailing issue due to bad logistics structure which drives from farmers to the market. A notable percentage to food is being lost which could be saved with slight changes in current logistics approach such as better storage during the transportation of food commodities. Moreover, lack awareness among the common masses also goes side by side in contrast to food wastage in hotels, restaurants, households, etc. during preparation and leftover handling. In continuation to that we should take the lead in saving the food by creating awareness among consumers, suppliers, farmers and other major stakeholders.

Thank you for initiating this. For now, I will only provide comment. Most often, a voluntary code is very difficult to enforce unless there is a change in the heart of (individual) people--that is be accountable to the Giver. Only by then they will do their responsibility to reduce food loss and food waste starting from themselves even without legal pressure.

@ Mhammad Asef Ghyasi

Thank you for your contribution. Yes, food recovery and redistribution is important to reduce food loss and waste. When possible, food that is still edible and safe should be used for human consumption. Overweight and obesity are indeed critical issues not only with reference to food loss and waste but to the entire food system.

Dear Moderator.

Greeting from Afghanistan,

I would like to suggest in order to prevent food loss,

1-The near to expire food have to be donate to poor people inside or outside the country , I remember one of my colleagues from France, was explained, in France one of the organizations was responsible to collect the near to expire food from market and distribute to needy people before expiration. Like this we can prevent food loss, any marker owner or supplier who are not informing their near to expire food they need to be under sanction. Based on low, or the near to expire food price have to be lower for consumers.

2- As according to researches over weight/ obese people are increasing in developed countries , and that is a public health problem and individual problem for human being, and a lot of money is spending on the prevention of obesity and overweight , and overweight population  health care cost is very high, for each individual their need to be a low if gaining weight ,tax have to be increase based on their weight.

3- Good planning for food production is need for each country based on the consumption,  

4- Those countries who are using food as a control  or for political reasons of other poor countries, it need to recognize a international crime, and sanction have to be put on them.

Best regards

Dr. M .Asef Ghyasi

MD , nutrition diploma

CAF Senior Nutrition manager

@ Aliyu Idris Muhammad

Thank you very much. Processing and handling of food are indeed central with regards to food loss reduction. Drying and size reduction can be good strategies to preserve food.

@ Cephas Taruvinga

Thank for your insight! We can consider to refer to the role of service providers in the CoC. The provision of information and appropriate pesticides, equipment and tools  to producers/farmers is of great importance.