CIBUS

Europe must reduce loss and waste across food production and supply chains. Food is lost or wasted on the farm, in processing, manufacturing, shops, restaurants, canteens and homes.
Nearly 57M tones of food waste are generated annually in the EU, costing 130B€. 36.2M people cannot afford a good meal every 2nd day. Food loss/waste accounts for 5% of GHG in the EU food consumption footprint.

While much work has addressed citizen behavioral change, policy can and must also help reduce loss/waste in each stage of the production/supply chain.

The EU Platform on Food Losses/Waste notes the role of local and regional authorities in regulation of food systems, but also in encouraging and implementing innovation. They should create policy environments to stimulate prevention/reduction, provide economic incentives and encourage uptake of innovative, cross-sector technologies.

Conscious of this policy role, 8 EU territories (9 partners & 2 Associated Policy Authorities) cooperate in CIBUS to reduce food loss/waste across the production and supply chain. They do so thanks to increased public capacity to design, implement and monitor integrated, cross-sector and innovation-based policies.

All CIBUS partners have a territorial role in managing food waste and have noted challenges in their task. Thus, they undertake regional and interregional learning activities to update and modernize policies that can implement EU Platform on Food Losses/Waste recommendations.

CIBUS supports policy improvements that:
- Create multi-stakeholder platforms (digital/physical) to engage public and private sector, spread knowledge and identify impactful measures.
- Strengthen capacity for innovation among food chain actors, promoting circularity, cross-sector approaches and new market opportunities.
- Increase data availability, consistency and transparency and create suitable evaluation frameworks.
- Define overall strategies to prevent and reduce food loss and waste, in line with SDG Target 12.3.