This policy brief outlines the environmental, economic and safety considerations of reforming EU law to enable surplus food containing meat to be fed to omnivorous non-ruminant livestock like pigs, in order to drive food waste valorisation through animal feed.

With the close of REFRESH in June 2019 the EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis congratulates to the success of an outstanding research project. In a video message, he says that with its concrete actions and tools developed, REFRESH results will continue to guide EU policy for food waste reduction. The Commissioner himself was involved in many events and activities of the project. In particular, Commissioner Andriukaitis underlines the value of REFRESH insights on how to better understand and reduce consumer food waste and the voluntary agreements that have been established in four EU countries and that will guide the way for more public private partnerships.

One aspect of REFRESH aimed to design and pilot food waste voluntary agreements (VAs) across EU member states and subsequently assess their potential for wider adoption. In the context of REFRESH, a piloted VA is described as a “Framework for Action” (FA). In total, four countries across Europe piloted FAs: Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Hungary. In this report the authors evaluate the piloted FAs to assess whether they had been successful, show their potential impact and highlight the circumstances in which they are likely to be more successful if replicated.

A suite of case studies from across the EU, demonstrating actions to reduce food losses and waste.

This report presents the results from the life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) of two food waste prevention and upgrading case studies. The first focused on the heat treatment of manufacturing, retail, and catering food surplus so that it could be used as pig feed in UK and France. The second focused on the prevention of peach and nectarine (PN) spoilage and overproduction along the supply chain, considering Italian and Spanish production sold by one UK wholesaler.

The first Chinese workshop focusing on catering lean management was launched in Beijing on May 13-14th, 2019. It was attended by 54 representatives from the domestic catering industry and the supply chain.

Food Waste is problem related to all the actors of the Food Value Chain: producers, retailers and consumers. In this context, retail sector plays an important role in tackling the food waste problem. Food waste at the retail level can be reduced through the adoption of food waste reducing innovations. The authors investigate the most relevant factors that promote the adoption of those innovations among retailers.

A Decision Support System (DSS) prototype monitoring tool, focused to facilitate effective decision-making leading to actions that will prevent and valorize waste, has been developed and tested. This involved building the prototype monitoring tool (software) to register food waste data and providing the right control information with respect to food waste prevention.

On May 9th, one day before the REFRESH final conference 2019 that was organized in cooperation with the Barcelona Design Centre, four on hands experience were offered, featuring food waste innovators from business and civil society in the Barcelona area. One of these was "Zero Waste Mission", a hands-on workshop on how to make bioplastics from food waste, organized by Ignacio de Juan-Creix and Irene Ródenas from PLAT Institute of Augmented Gastronomy.

On May 9th, one day before the REFRESH final conference 2019 that was organized in cooperation with the Barcelona Design Centre, four on hands experience were offered, featuring food waste innovators from business and civil society in the Barcelona area. One of these was a guided walking tour on food waste reduction at “Mercabarna”, the Mediterranean's biggest food hub, organized by Mercabarna Food Hub.

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