FOLOU investigates EU regulations, directives, and legally binding acts concerning food loss and waste. Despite the absence of a specific EU-wide regulation, pivotal documents like the Waste Framework Directive of 2018 and soft law policies, notably the Farm to Fork Strategy, wield influence. However, a significant challenge emerges from the lack of a consistent definition of "food loss" across policies, amplifying uncertainties, particularly regarding pre-harvest losses. Analysis of EU policy underscores stakeholder consultations as integral. Yet, the absence of legally binding targets and consequences for non-compliance stands as a critical gap. 

Country-specific soft law policies exist in Catalonia, France, and Austria to prevent food loss. While Catalonia and Austria have detailed programs, France enforces a 50% reduction target in processing-level food loss. However, a clear methodology for achievement is lacking. Notably, the obligation to measure food waste remains confined to producers and major retailers, failing to extend to the primary level. In Catalonia, restaurants and caterers are required to create their own action plans and report on their impact through monitoring. While financial incentives are available, the budget is limited. 

A harmonized approach to definitions and targets across policies emerges as imperative, spanning the entire value chain from production to consumption. Qualitative and quantitative targets, supported by transparent methodologies, hold promise for effective mitigation. More public funding is crucial to enable stakeholders to monitor and report on the impact of their food loss action plan. 

The impacts of primary production food losses include resource consumption, field operations, food degradation (for plant-based foods), and on-farm FL treatment. Current food products impacts do not consider all the impacts associated with FL at primary production stage, namely: impacts resulting in degradation of food products left on the ground besides the impacts due to the FL treatments taking place in-farm are not considered the current life cycle of food products. Regarding the impacts associated with resource consumptions and field operations, the reported results are aggregated and do not distinguish the contribution of impacts associated with FL from the overall impact of the commercialised food product. 

FOLOU aims to propose a starting point to fulfil this normative gap by proposing a PEF-compliant methodology in a form of Product Category Rules (PCR) for the assessment of food losses burdens at primary production stage. These impacts are calculated by using different models, LCA methodological choices and inputs from PEF-compliance sources by the means of the proposed PCR and using inputs from FOLOU's case studies complemented by literature. 

Employing the PCR, the anticipated findings of FOLOU want to deliver an understanding of how the magnitude of each FL impact influences the overall sustainability of the food system. The anticipated outcomes are encouraging for refining sustainability assessments and methodologies, clarifying the specific contributions of each impact to the overall sustainability of the food system. The innovative approach of extracting resource consumption impacts from food product allocation rather than food losses reflects a commitment to precision and accuracy in sustainability evaluations.

Problem 

Quantification is a crucial first step to address a problem. There is no European definition of food loss right now and different studies and national initiatives use divergent definitions rendering them incomparable. To understand Food Loss and take appropriate measures, a clear definition must be developed to quantify it in a comparable way through different studies and avoid utilization of different definitions or double counting other streams.

Solution

The FOLOU project has reviewed the current European legislation and international definitions to develop a proposal of a definitional framework for food loss. This definition aims to shed light on the complexity surrounding food loss. 

Benefits

This clear guideline can unify the definitions of food loss used by researchers or public administrations undertaking quantification tasks. In this way the results of different studies become more comparable allowing administration to define more informed policies to tackle food loss. 

Practical recommendation

As the definitional framework can be difficult to apply in a specific context, an additional chart has been developed to assess whether something qualifies as food loss when quantifying. This graph delineates the different boundaries that constitute the limits of food loss. The most important boundaries are at which stage the food is discarded and the destination of that discards. Also, it is important to highlight that avoidability and edibility are not relevant and that only what is produced for human consumption can be considered food loss. To use this graph, you should verify the boundaries of the loss you are analysing are included within the green boxes at all five boundaries of the chart.