The Agriculture Committee approved a resolution which asks for EU and national measures to improve the efficiency of the food supply and consumption chains, sector by sector, e.g. by promoting direct relations between producers and consumers and to tackle food wastage as a matter of urgency. The Committee added that a better education is need to avoid excessive waste.

The Agriculture Committee at the European Parliament called in a resolution for urgent measures to halve food waste by 2025 and to improve access to food for needy EU citizens. However the Food for the Deprived scheme is still blocked at the Council. MEPs propose, in order to achieve this aim, to carry on new awareness campaigns at both EU and national levels to inform the public how to avoid excessive wastage of food. Member States should introduce food education courses in schools and colleges explaining how to store, cook and dispose the food and exchange best practices to this end.

The text approved also asks that rules for public procurement on catering and hospitality will be updated to ensure that where possible, contracts are awarded to catering companies that use local produce and give away or redistribute leftover food to poorer people or food banks free of charge rather than disposing of it. On the other hand, MEPs also welcomed existing initiatives in some Member States to recover unsold food and offer it to needy citizens and called on retailers to take part in such programmes.

In addition, the resolution recommends to introduce dual-date labelling to show until when food may be sold (sell-by date) and until when it may consumed (use-by date) in order to avoid situations in which foods are being offered by retailers too close to their expiry date, thus increasing the potential for wastage.