Sustainable Food Systems Framework – SAFE’s contribution

27 October 2021

On 26 October 2021, SAFE submitted a reply to the EC Public Consultation on the Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) Framework to be developped by the European Commission as part of the 27 action points described in the Farm to Fork Strategy.

Read SAFE’s full contribution here.

SAFE strongly welcomes the European Commission’s recognition of the need of a horizontal framework able to facilitate the transition towards a sustainable food system and support the EU intention to establish new foundations for future food policies by introducing sustainability objectives and principles on the basis of an integrated food system approach.

SAFE agrees with the regulatory issues highlighted in the Inception Impact Assessment (IIA), however, we believe that the following considerations are overlooked in the current IIA, and should therefore be further developed:

• Lack of consideration for nutritional related diseases and lack of clear commitment and objectives to improve consumers food habits.
• Too much focus on a product-based approach.
• Attention on the sustainability assessment and on the “EU wide monitoring framework”.

These three issues are reflected in the absence of specific targets set in the IIA whose lack would prevent to conduct fair and coherent assessments and monitoring of the Initiative. In this regards, SAFE wants to specify the need to include the following binding targets:

• Setting of both production and consumption targets to allow measuring progress towards healthy and sustainable diets.
• The need to set a target for reducing obesity levels of a certain percentage by 2030.
• Strong binding reduction targets (50%) for both food waste and food losses by 2030, across the whole food chain (from the farm all the way to the fork).