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Food, Farming, Fisheries
Food Safety

Action & implementation sub-group

About the group

Action taken by the EU countries, regions and cities as well as by farmers, industry and distribution, food banks and other redistribution organisations, consumer- and other NGOs is essential to prevent food waste all along the value chain and tackle varying situations across countries and regions.

The Action & implementation sub-group aims to help the different sector organisations (public/private) and actors in the food supply chain in identifying and implementing effective food waste prevention initiatives and facilitate the uptake of best practices. The sub-group supports work related to new and innovative packaging and technical solutions as these can extend the shelf life on food products, and therefore contribute to the reduction of food waste. Work also includes areas on the facilitation of inter cooperation (e.g. through voluntary agreements and other forms of collaborations) as well as governance and coordination at policy level (local, regional and national level). The sub-group aims to identify areas where further research is needed, and finally to assess how food loss and waste prevention can be strengthened through its integration with other relevant policy areas (e.g. agriculture, climate, feed, trade agreements etc.).

In the Platform’s first mandate (2016-2021), the subgroup contributed to key deliverables such as the Platform’s key recommendations for action in food waste prevention and the development of an evaluation framework allowing actors to quantify the economic, environmental and social impacts of food waste prevention actions. For the latter, the sub-group collaborated with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission to collect food waste prevention actions from Platform members, in order to assess their effectiveness and efficiency. The sub-group developed a template for reporting on food waste prevention initiatives in order to collect information in a consistent manner and facilitate both information exchange and impact analysis. Based on relevant work conducted by JRC, a common evaluation framework for food waste prevention actions was developed.

The results of this pilot exercise are described in the Assessment of food waste prevention actions report (2019), below. The report highlights the data gaps, as well as the need to set clear objectives when designing an action, and provides a common evaluation framework allowing actors to quantify the economic, environmental and social impacts of food waste prevention. JRC has also developed a calculator for the environmental and economic impacts of food waste prevention actions.

The JRC has produced reports and tools to support actors in evaluating the performance and impacts of food waste prevention actions:

In the Platform's second mandate (2022-2026), the Action & Implementation sub-group discussed the role of Voluntary agreements (VAs) on food loss and waste prevention in order to drive further action in this area and to progress faster towards the global SDG Target 12.3. Following discussions in the sub-group, and based on input from Platform members, the report on “Reducing food loss and waste: Examples of voluntary agreements and other forms of collaborations across Europe” was published in June 2024.

More information about the background and tasks of this sub-group can be found in its Terms of reference:

Full list of the subgroup members can be consulted on this page (under section "Members")

Meetings 2025

10 April 2025 – Hybrid

Meetings