The total amount of food produced worldwide each year amounted to about 4 billion tonnes, of which an estimated 30% is lost before consumption. When the weight of the food waste is converted into calories, global food loss reaches 24% of the total production.

The causes of waste can be found in a combination of effects, which belong both to the world of production, and to that of consumption: from the analysis of the causes, several initiatives aimed at reducing waste were born, with particular attention to people’s education.

Without loosing sight on the ultimate goal of reducing waste, an in-depth analysis of the available information makes it clear that we should avoid trivial errors, such as that of including in the waste both the actually wasted food and the inevitable non edible waste.

A correct interpretation of the concept of waste and its data should take into account the social value of food, separating what is recovered for purposes of human consumption from what instead is recovered as a resource. In order to try to shed light on these aspects, the data available in the publication “Feed the hungry” of the Polytechnic of Milan and the Foundation for Subsidiarity in Italy was analysed, being considered among the most up to date from a scientific point of view.

The agri-food chain is divided into several stages which include agricultural and/or industrial operations characterised by different degrees of efficiency and types of losses and waste. Starting with the losses of the primary sector and the food processing industry, it continues with waste that occurs during distribution, both in collective and commercial catering, up to those of domestic consumption.

The elaboration of the available data shows how the meat sector is amongst those less subject to the phenomenon of waste, both from the production side and from that of consumption. Despite the inherently degradable nature of the marketed product, in fact, meat is the sector with the least social waste.

The reasons for this virtuosity are due to the structure and organisation of the supply chain, which allows the processing of by-products in secondary processes, but also the economic, cultural and social value attributed by consumers to these foods.

The Sustainable Meat Project