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Ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to join you for this last meeting of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste under its current mandate.
This is an occasion to reflect on past achievements and your valuable contributions.
This Platform brought everyone together: public authorities, food business operators, research institutes and universities, and non-governmental organisations.
And it has has built momentum for change.
Your recommendations reflect this wealth of contributions. They offer valuable guidance for regulators and the general public, on what each and every one can and should do to prevent food losses and food waste.
Your know-how has helped pinpoint EU priorities, reflected in the Platform’s first sub-groups, on food donation, food waste measurement and date marking.
With your help, we have developed EU guidelines to facilitate food donation and food use as animal feed – while always ensuring food safety.
You have contributed to our common food waste measurement and its consistent monitoring at all levels – from farm to fork, across the EU.
And, thanks to your commitment to lasting change, you have defined a clear roadmap, showing the way forward and inspiring others to take concrete steps to remove food waste from our food systems.
Colleagues,
I have committed under the Farm to Fork Strategy, that we will step up action on food waste reduction. And the important milestones we have reached together set the standard for this.
So today’s meeting is also about looking at the future.
This important work will continue next year, under the Platform’s new mandate, including a clear focus on tackling consumer food waste.
You will support us in revising EU rules on date marking to avoid waste resulting from confusion around “use by” and “best before” dates.
Member States have also made substantial progress. But there is still much more we need to do to get on the sustainable track.
EU-level targets will give us a clear direction of travel and cement our commitment to reaching the Sustainable Development Goal: halving global food waste and reducing food losses along the production and supply chains by 2030.
This is just one way in which we can boost the EU’s contribution to global efforts to ensure a liveable, healthy planet in the future.
Your work has global significance.
The United Nations Food Systems Summit and the dedicated coalition for action on the reduction of food loss and waste have created the impetus for change; we will feed your work into the coalition, and leverage it.
You meet today right after COP26 in Glasgow has refocussed humanity on the existential climate crisis.
Food sustainability is a big part of this.
There is no time to waste.
We should all be ready to do our part.
