During the past year, FAO's office in Egypt has been studying the fish loss and waste (FLW) overall situation in Egypt. An Inception National Stakeholders’ Workshop was organized at the start of the year where FLW challenges and opportunities were discussed among all the actors of the national fisheries and aquaculture value chain and a clear National Action Plan was adopted. Succeeding the outputs of the workshop, an analysis of the FLW situation in the field was carried out by a trained national field team. The FLW situation of three value chains, namely: semi-industrial fisheries in the Mediterranean, small-scale fisheries in the lagoons and Tilapia aquaculture, were assessed and analyzed.

Based on the results of this analysis, FAO Egypt is organizing a Training of Trainers (ToT) event on best practices and strategies for minimizing Fish Loss and Waste in Alexandria, Egypt from 27 to 30 November 2017. The ToT aims to train suitable active and passionate actors from all the national fisheries and aquaculture value chain on different sustainable ways to reduce FLW in the country and to capacitate them to organize trainings with other stakeholders on the matter.

Large amounts of food are lost day by day due to inadequate handling, preservation, processing, storage, and distribution in Egypt. FAO Egypt project objective is to reduce pre- and post-harvest losses and waste in the fisheries and aquaculture sector in the country by analyzing the fish loss and waste situation; strengthening the strategic, policy and regulatory framework; and reinforcing the local capacity of the various actors of the value chain.