The Council of Agriculture (COA農委會) held the APEC “2019 Expert on Consultation on Reducing Food Loss and Waste (FLW) for Addressing Interlinked Challenge of Food Security and Climate Change” in Taipei on July 25-26. There were more than 60 public and private sector representatives from 14 APEC member countries including Australia, Chile and Indonesia joined the conference and shares the results of reduction food losses and waste recent year.
The COA stated that participants in the conference will review APEC members to achieve the possibility of reducing regional food loss and waste by 10% by 2020 and will target future food security and climate in the Asia-Pacific region in accordance with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3. The conference will propose for the future food security and climate change work objectives and action plans in the Asia-Pacific region as a reference in the 5th APEC Food Security Ministerial Meeting in Chile in August.
In the food supply chain, about two-thirds of food waste occurs at the retail. This type of food waste is treated as a major source of greenhouse gases. Nearly 40% of the world's population lives in the Asia-Pacific region. If it can effectively reduce food losses and waste, it will be of great help to mitigate the impact of climate change.
This year, Taiwan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam jointly proposed to reduce food losses and waste in response to APEC regional food security and climate change, and invited experts from Chile, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States to explore the benefits of reducing food losses to ensure food security and mitigate climate change and providing the latest research and development on quantitative indicators and tracking methods, hopes to help APEC members achieve the long-term goal of “halving food waste in 2030”.
