Spain: The processing of the Draft Law on the Prevention of Food Loss and Waste is resumed

At its meeting on 9 January 2023, the Council of Ministers approved the Draft Law on the Prevention of Food Loss and Waste, a law whose parliamentary processing in the previous legislature lapsed due to the dissolution of the General Courts (comment available here).

The initiative, which will be sent again to the Congress for its parliamentary processing, aims to encourage the efficient use of food, the recovery, the reuse of by-products and the donation, as well as to contribute to meeting the food needs of the most vulnerable population.

It is established the obligation for all actors in the food chain to have a plan for the prevention of loss and waste that allows identifying where the losses occur and implementing measures to minimize them and assign alternative uses, following a hierarchy of priorities adapted to each case. The highest priority will always be human consumption, through the donation or redistribution of food, and, when not possible, other uses will be sought, such as transformation, animal feed, composting or biofuels.

The initiative also establishes measures of good practices, such as the incentive of the sale of products with low aesthetic value, as well as the consumption of seasonal, local or organic products, or the adjustment of the best before dates to the prevention of waste.