(ANSA) Brussels, November 6 - The Milan Protocol designed to slash global food waste by 50 % within five years was presented to the European Parliament this week ahead of the food-themed Expo 2015 Milan trade fair.
The Protocol, a high point of Italy's rotating chairmanship of the European Union, features an awareness campaign aimed at cutting by as much as one half the estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food wasted around the globe, Paolo De Castro, coordinator of the S and D (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats) group of the EU Agriculture Commission who is also a member of the board of directors of the Barilla Foundation Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) that is sponsoring the campaign.
The final version of the Protocol is to be unveiled at a Forum on Food and Nutrition at the Bocconi University of Milan December 3-4.
Also present at the European Parliament presentation of the Protocol was Riccardo Valentini, a member of the BCFN advisory board and director of the Climate Impacts Division at the EuroMediterranean Centre on climatic changes who won the 20078 Nobel Prize for his work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also part of the protocol are agrarian reforms and the struggles against financial speculation and obesity with an emphasis on the importance of food education from childhood, the promotion of healthy lifestyles as well as long term agreements involving entire food chains starting with farm networks.
"Food is the real big challenge of the future," said De Castro, "a global action plan on the themes of the Protocol is urgent".
"The European Parliament has long been involved in forging fairer agriculture policy the struggle against waste and food education for EU citizens," De Castro added.
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