Research project BRinging Evidence-bAseD food Chain solutions to prevent and RedUce food waste related to Marketing standards, and deliver climate and circularity co-Benefits
General introduction
BREADCRUMB is a leading ILVO-coordinated European research project with 20 EU research partners to study the impact of food trade standards on food losses. The central question is to what extent trade- or government-imposed minimum requirements for food products play a role in increasing food losses in different value chains. The objective is on the one hand (1) to get a broad view of existing food marketing standards in the EU (e.g., requirements in specifications), their interrelationship and their contribution to food losses, and on the other hand (2) to make a quantitative and qualitative assessment of food losses in five product groups: fruits and vegetables, meat, eggs, cereals and fish. These estimates will be made by combining existing data with new data collected within the project.
Research approach
ILVO contributes its expertise in management, data collection, analysis and modeling. There are 16 case studies within the five food groups. For these, ILVO does the raw data collection and analysis. Together with other partners, advanced modeling techniques are then applied to clarify the relationship between food trade standards and food loss. In a third step, solutions and recommendations are developed to reduce and prevent food loss based on (improved) food trade standards. The researchers are also developing plans to promote market access for suboptimal food products. The research tasks within the BREADCRUMB project are divided into six work packages, with ILVO leading two of them and actively participating in the other four.
Relevance/Valorization
The innovative, actionable insights are expected to contribute significantly to reducing or avoiding food loss. The insights may be directly applicable to the actors involved. Actors in the food chain gain more efficient market access and see increased commercial potential of sub-optimal foods.
