Food marketing standards (FMS) are a set of rules and regulations designed to ensure that the market is supplied with standardized, high-quality agricultural products that meet consumer expectations in terms of appearance, quality, and safety. While these standards aim to guarantee product consistency and market transparency, they often impose rigid requirements - particularly concerning size, shape, colour, and uniformity. This rigidity can create unintended consequences, especially for farmers, processors, and distributors working across diverse commodity groups.

In practice, the need to comply with multiple, sometimes overlapping, FMS results in financial and administrative burdens for farmers and processors and distributors. For perishable products such as fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, eggs, and cereals, the impact is evident. For example, misshapen fruits (e.g. small apple or discoloured spots) and vegetables (e.g. twisted, forked or multiple ‘legs’ carrot ) may be discarded despite being safe and nutritious. In the meat and fish sectors, minor deviations from weight or appearance specifications can lead to the downgrading or rejection of entire batches. Eggs that do not meet shell uniformity or size standards, and cereal grains that fail to meet strict sorting criteria, are similarly subject to food waste.

To mitigate food waste  across these key commodity groups and move toward a more sustainable certification framework, the following actions are recommended:

1. Promoting societal acceptance of imperfect produce, encouraging both consumers and retailers to embrace non-standard products.

2. Establishing robust networks that facilitate collaboration from producers to retailers

• BREADCRUMB Food commodities

The problem

Europe’s food market follows many different rules set by both governments and private companies and organisations. The rules from the EU and national governments mostly focus on keeping food safe. Private rules add more things, like tracking where food comes from, caring for the environment, and treating animals well. For small suppliers, it can be hard to follow all these rules because they may not have enough money, time, or influence to keep up.

The Tool

To help people understand a complex set of standards, the BREADCRUMB project brought together specialists in food, agriculture, production, and distribution, and created an Inventory of Food Marketing Standards. This tool consolidates the main standards for fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, cereals, and fish into a single document, making them easier to understand in relation to one another.

Benefits

• Easier to find information: The Inventory puts many different food rules into one document. This helps farmers and small businesses quickly find what they need to know, without having to look through lots of places.

• Understanding market chances: The Inventory shows which rules are already out there. This helps people see if a product that doesn’t meet every rule can still be sold or used in other ways.

• Helps with business choices: The tool shows where a product might not meet some rules. This helps businesses decide what changes to make, which markets to focus on, and how to plan better.

• Start for future improvements: The Inventory is the first step in a bigger plan by the BREADCRUMB project. It will help future work that tries to reduce food waste and make food systems fairer and more sustainable.

Next Steps:

To download the Inventory of Food Marketing Standards, click on the link.

• Inventory of Food Marketing Standards