FMI Comments on Proposed Food Waste National Strategy
FMI – The Food Industry Association has provided comments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics issued by EPA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In its comments, FMI emphasized the importance of tackling food loss and waste throughout the entire food supply chain and gave recommendations for consideration as the three agencies finalize the national strategy.
“As steps are taken to implement the National Strategy, FMI encourages the agencies to address capacity building and expanding the infrastructure needed to manage surges in demand for food donation,” said Andy Harig, VP, tax, trade, sustainability and policy development at Arlington, Va.-based FMI. “We would also encourage the three agencies to work with industry to explore areas of collaboration such as better transportation logistics and the ability to leverage existing relationships between farmers, ranchers, manufacturers and retailers.”
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FMI also expressed its support for the strategy’s inclusion of consumer education campaigns. According to Harig: “EPA and USDA have both created excellent toolkits and resources to address consumer-level food waste. However, many of these tools have limited awareness and adoption simply because of the challenges of ‘getting the message out.’ FMI is pleased that the agencies plan to expand these efforts and create options for customization at the community level.”
Finally, on the importance of improving metrics in regard to food waste measurement Harig noted: “FMI supports efforts to improve both measurement and reporting of food waste data. However, the measurement process can be challenging even for companies that have invested significant time and money to track waste in their operations; for many small and midsized operations, the obstacles to effectively capturing this data can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. We encourage the agencies to approach enhancing the measurement process with a focus on creating incentives-based opportunities and capacity building for the entire supply chain.”
