EU Food Loss and Waste Prevention Hub

The Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) establishes an annual reporting obligation for MS on food waste generation as of reference year 2020. The common methodology is defined in the Commission delegated decision (EU) 2019/1597 and the reporting format in the Commission implementing decision (EU) 2019/2000. Member States (MSs) will be obliged to report data on food waste quantification for the reference year 2020 by the 30th of June 2022.

However, EU countries are at different levels of development and implementation of national strategies for food waste quantification. Hence, there is the need to develop a harmonized modelling system that enables the estimation of food waste generated by MSs and to assess the amounts reported by each country. This report presents a model (version 1.0) that intends to fill this gap. The model quantifies food waste at each stage of the food supply chain: primary production, processing and manufacturing, retail and distribution, food services, and household consumption. The food groups for which food waste is accounted for are: sugar beet, cereals, fruit, vegetables, potatoes, oilseeds, meat, fish, eggs, and dairy.

Beyond estimating food waste generation, the model estimates: food losses (i.e. not harvested or ploughed in crops, and animal mortality during transport to slaughterhouse and rejected at slaughter), by-products (i.e. surplus food used as animal feed and for non-food uses), and food consumed, which is compared with the results of nutritional surveys to perform a plausibility check of the results of the model. Thanks to the model, food waste generated by each EU MS for the years 2000 to 2017 is estimated. Results per stage of the food supply chain are useful to identify hotspots across both stages of the food supply chain (FSC) and across food groups.