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Taiwan Hosts the APEC 2015 Expert Consultation on Assessment Methodology of Fishery and Livestock Losses

2015-07-16

  The Council of Agriculture (COA) organized the APEC 2015 Expert Consultation on Assessment Methodology of Fishery and Livestock Losses at Chong Guang Lecture Hall, College of Management, National Taiwan University from July 16 to 17. This particular seminar is one of the events which are part of the multi-year APEC Strengthening Public-Private Partnership to Reduce Food Losses in the Supply Chain project that Taiwan had successfully applied to. A total of 50 participants including 7 agricultural economics and statistics experts from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan as well as representatives from 14 APEC economies discussed about the establishment of assessment methodology offishery and livestock losses in Asia-Pacific region to further determine critical factors influencing food loss in the supply chain.   

  Minister of the COA Dr. Chen, Bao-ji pointed out in the opening ceremonythat food loss and waste have caused negative impact on global economy and environment. Based on the studies of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), up to one third of world production foods (approximately 1.3 billion tons) suffer loss and waste.Since food loss is a crucial issue to food security, Taiwan therefore initiated the proposal to reduce the loss and ensure food security in the Asia-Pacific region in 2012. The proposed project Strengthening Public-Private Partnership to Reduce Food Losses in the Supply Chain waspassed by APEC and had become the first multi-year agricultural projectplan funded by the organization. The project aims to systematically identify the problems and solutions of grain, vegetable, fruit, fishery and livestock products loss in supply chains through 3 phases within 5 years. The seminar is one of the events fighting this loss in its third year. 

   Minister Chen stated that fishery and livestock products are a major source of animal protein. According to recent FAO studies, there is an estimated 20% to 75% loss in fishery products and 33% to 50% in livestock products. For this event, Taiwan invited international expertsto establish assessment methodology of fishery and livestock product losses in order to define all stages of food loss. In the future, an APEC multinational expert research team will take over the assessment ofAPEC economies' fishery and livestock food losses based on a consistentfood loss assessment method, and further control food loss data at different stages of the supply chain while pointing out the ones that each industry needs to improve in order to reduce these products' loss. All the above measures are implemented to achieve the ultimate goal of bringing down regional food loss to 10% which was passed during the APECFood Security Roadmap Towards 2020 ministerial meeting.

  Minister Chen proceeded to share various measures and efforts that Taiwan took to minimize the loss of fishery and livestock products, including technological aquaculture, utilization of entire fish, selection of outstanding supply system for livestock & poultry breeding, humane transportation of animals and so on. All the above mentioned methods aim to decrease loss and waste so that food security could be assured and production cost would be effectively reduced, as a result, benefiting both farmers and consumers.

  The COA further explained that in order to expand Taiwan's achievements in reducing fishery and livestock products loss, the conclusion and follow-up research result would be announced at the APEC Seminar on Reducing Food Losses in the Supply Chain of Fishery & Livestock in the Philippines in September, striving to be included in the High Level Policy Dialogue on Food Security and Blue Economy as a reference for allAPEC economies, thus making constructive contribution to food security for the Asia-Pacific region.