Establishment of the European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Roundtable
From a Joint Press Release, 26th February 2009
Major stakeholders in the European food and drink chain set up a roundtable to promote environmental sustainability.
Food and drink products play a fundamental role in daily life. Every day, some 500 million EU citizens rely on high quality food for their nutrition, health and wellbeing. Food and drink products relate to their lifestyle and reflect their cultural identity.
At the same time, the production and consumption of food and drink products (from farm to fork and end-of-life) also triggers environmental implications, like for other products. The European food chain shares the responsibility and commitment to ensure that production and consumption of food not only meet consumers’ needs for food safety, nutrition, health, affordability and product choice and contribute to the generation of economic growth, but that they are also environmentally sustainable, respecting the carrying capacity of the Earth’s ecosystems in the long term.
While the concept of SCP generally applies to all products sold and bought on the market, food and drink products are different. Their specificities in terms of health, nutrition, wellbeing, cultural identity and lifestyle make them incomparable to any other product. It is for that reason that a dedicated Roundtable is being established to properly address the specific sustainability implications of the production and consumption of food and drink products.
The Roundtable will constitute a major food sector-wide contribution to the EU’s ambitions in the field of Sustainable Consumption and Production, bringing together farmers and their suppliers, agricultural traders, food and drink producers, packaging suppliers, recovery organisations and civil society representatives, and will be supported by the UN Environment Programme and the European Environment Agency.
Its outstanding features are its clear-cut focus on food and drink products and the involvement of all major food value chain players on an equal footing. The Roundtable will add significant value to initiatives outlined in the European Commission’s 2008 Action Plan.
The first priority of the “European Food SCP Roundtable” will be to facilitate agreement on uniform and scientifically reliable environmental assessment methodologies for food products.
The Roundtable will examine key sustainability challenges along the food value chain (e.g. climate change, water conservation, resource efficiency and waste reduction) and develop adequate strategies to address them. The Food SCP Roundtable will be formally launched in a public stakeholder event in April 2009. Participation is open to all food chain partners and other relevant stakeholders, including NGOs, with pertinent expertise and who are committed to engage themselves actively towards the objectives of the Roundtable.
Participation is open but conditional on relevant expertise, active engagement, and commitment to the objectives of the Roundtable. For further information regarding participation in the Roundtable, please contact Ms Catherine Stadion, CIAA Secretariat (e-mail: c.stadion@ciaa.eu).
To view the Joint Press Releaaze, click here: