About the group
In order to consult in an open and transparent way all relevant stakeholders on issues relating to the implementation of the Farm to Fork Strategy and food systems’ sustainability, an Advisory Group on Sustainability of Food Systems (AGSFS) has been established.
The AGSFS expert group has replaced the "Advisory Group on the Food Chain and Animal and Plant Health" since 15 July 2022.
The AGSFS provides the European Commission with stakeholders' views on food systems’ sustainability, and related areas:
- food and feed safety
- food and feed labelling and presentation
- public health and human nutrition in relation to food legislation
- animal health and welfare
- food/feed production and international relations
- new technologies- including biotechnology
- crop protection, plant protection products and residues thereof
- conditions for the marketing of seed and propagation material
Food systems’ sustainability is to be understood as including all aspects relating to health/nutrition/marketing, environmental/climate, agriculture/ agronomy/fisheries/aquaculture, and social science areas as well as in digital transformation, and finance areas pertaining to food systems;
Activities
- Discussion of general policy issues at twice-yearly plenary sessions.
- Discussion on specific questions on the basis of the tasks assigned to the AGSFS in potential sub-groups.
- Consideration of specific/more technical issues in ad hoc meetings, to which experts with specific expertise may also be invited.
Membership
The Advisory Group is composed of 86 EU-level stakeholder organisations representing farmers, cooperatives, the food industry, retailers, consumers, professionals and civil society and 14 public entities.
The membership was established via a Call for applications, which was launched on 12 January 2022 for a period of 4 weeks, in compliance with horizontal rules for Commission Expert groups.