Food Protection Trends - July/August 2019 - 348

GeNeral iNtereSt paper

Meeting review: food Waste and Sustainability-
Strategies to improve food Safety, food Security
Wendy bedale*
Food Research Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 3159 Microbial Sciences Building, 1550 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA

OVERVIEW
The Institute for Food Safety and Health (IFSH) and the
Food Research Institute (FRI) of the University of WisconsinMadison hosted regulators, academics, and industry experts
for a symposium entitled "Meeting Review: Food Waste
and Sustainability-Strategies to Improve Food Safety, Food
Security" on September 27, 2018, near Chicago, Illinois. The
meeting discussed the difficulty of feeding a rapidly increasing
global population without compromising food safety or the
environmental health of the planet. Food waste intertwines with
sustainability: in the words of meeting speaker David McInnes
(DMci Strategies), food waste is a by-product of an increasingly
unsustainable global food system. Reducing or redirecting food
waste can increase food supplies while also decreasing the total
resources used in food production and food waste disposal.
Meeting speakers discussed reasons why food companies are
concerned about sustainability and presented case studies of
ways in which the food industry and others are reducing or
reusing food waste.
Why should we be concerned about food waste?
The world's population is projected to increase to more
than 9 billion by 2050. In order to feed these people, agricultural
production will need to increase by 60% (2). How can this be
achieved?
Globally, about 1/3 (roughly 1.3 billion tons) of food
intended for human consumption is wasted (not used for human
consumption) each year (3). In North America, consumers
generate most (39%) food waste, with agricultural (pre-harvest)
losses accounting for an additional 33% (8). Post-agricultural,
processing, and retail operations together contribute to the
remaining ~30% of food waste.
Global demands for water will also increase in the coming
decades. According to Scott Burnett (Ecolab), a perception
exists that water is cheap and accessible, with only a limited
awareness of water's full value. Troublingly, worldwide water
demand is expected to exceed supply by 40% in 2030, which
will significantly increase water costs for the food industry (11).
As discussed by Elisabetta Lambertini (RTI International),
agricultural water currently accounts for 70% of global water
withdrawals and 92% of the total global water footprint (which
accounts for the use of surface and groundwater, rain, and
pollution of fresh water) (Hoekstra and Mekonnen, 2012).
Most of the water spent in agricultural food production is used
preharvest. Meat, especially beef, has the largest water footprint,
largely because of the water need for animal feed production.
Postharvest water use in agriculture can also be significant,
especially for some of the value-added products that consumers
*Author for correspondence: Phone: +1 608.263.6934; E-mail: bedale@wisc.edu

348

Food Protection Trends July/August

Figure 1. Food waste: both a global food system catalyst
and by-product (courtesy of David Mcinnes, DMci Strategies).

are increasingly demanding. For an example, pre-washed readyto-eat (RTE) salads require 1.5 gallons of water to produce 1 lb.
of washed product, per Will Daniels (IEH Laboratories).
Food waste also impacts the environment. When factoring
in resources used to produce the food as well as its disposal,
wasted or lost food has a huge carbon footprint: 3.3 billion tons
of carbon dioxide equivalents each year (4). Put in other terms:
if food waste were a country, it would generate more greenhouse
gas emissions than any other country except China and the U.S.
Reducing food waste, therefore, has the potential to significantly
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
As a result of all of these factors and more, the United
Nations 2015 Sustainable Development Goals targets a
reduction in global food waste by 50% by 2030 (10), a goal
endorsed by the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
according to meeting panelist Kevin Smith (U.S. Food and Drug
Administration).
What drives a company or organization to reduce food
waste?
As David McInnes pointed out, reducing waste can be a
catalyst for transforming the food system, as it is good for people
and the planet but also (importantly for food companies) for
profits. Both carrots (incentives) and sticks (penalties) may
steer a company towards food waste reduction efforts.

http://www.foodprotection.org/files/food-protection-trends/jul-aug-19-bedale.pdf

Food Protection Trends - July/August 2019

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