Food Loss & Waste Prevention

Best practices in the dairy chain

The dairy sector is interlinked with other sectors, as dairy cows can eat some of the by-products from other sectors, upgrading inedible resources (e.g., by-products from the production of grains, sugar, rapeseed-oil, beer, juice, biofuels etc.), and our by-products are used as feed and biomaterials for other sectors.

We are doing our part in preventing food wastage along the value chain through actions and initiatives targeted at promoting innovation and optimisation in close cooperation with other partners in the supply chain, NGOs, and governmental bodies.

Food wastage along the value chain is reduced through improving efficiency at dairy sites and in logistics. Finally, moving volumes from incineration and biogas to biomaterial reprocessing and feed is also a mitigation option.

Dairy products contribute essentially to high value nutrition for humans – and the dairy industry wants to further improve this value to consumers and contribute to food security worldwide.
With almost one-third of all food produced globally being lost – food loss and waste continues to be an essential component of the EU’s sustainability objectives. This has also translated into the dairy sector’s continuous efforts and achievements in reducing food losses and waste, not only during the production cycles but also at consumer level, to accelerate progress toward halving food waste by 2030.
50%

reduction in food waste by 2030

Whey: a successful story of product revalorisation
The dairy sector succeeded in transforming a previous food waste product – whey— into a nutritious and highly valuable food product. Whey is a co-product of the cheese-making process that in the past was mainly reused as feed for animals despite being very nutrient rich. Today, whey protein is being used as high-value protein concentrate for specific human nutrition (sports, infants, the elderly, pregnant women, people with special needs, etc.) in a growing market, and in special cases, for young animal feed.
Examples of actions and initiatives aimed at reducing food waste across the dairy supply chain:

Dairy operators maintain a constant dialogue with farmers to:

1

Further improve their animal health performance, minimising antibiotic use by preventive action.

2

Ensure that more raw materials meet regulatory, commercial and food safety standards, thus helping them to reduce food losses.

3

Or alternatively review standards to identify those that contribute to increasing food loss and waste while a less restrictive standard could reach the same goal.

4

Improving production efficiency and creating innovative solutions to halve the food waste in the dairies’ own operations.

5

Strive to achieve zero waste for disposal in our manufacturing sites.

6

Reduction of losses along the supply chain, e.g., companies are also taking initiatives to improve delivery route efficiencies to reduce damaged products.

7

Collaboration with customers to reduce waste by improving efficiency in the system.

With a signifitant part of food waste taking place at the end of the chain, decreasing waste of dairy products not only requires initiative on the manufacturing side, but also innovative solutions to help consumers reduce waste.

Giving consumers anti-waste tips and tricks, offering different package sizes to enable consumers to match their purchase with their needs, providing clearer storage, freezing, and preparation instructions, designing packaging that is easy to fold and fully empty, supporting consumer campaigns, addressing how to maximize the freshness and shelf life of dairy products, making date labels better understandable to consumers.