Professor Frank O'Mara:

Of our greenhouse gas emissions, about 37% or 38% of them come from agriculture. If one thinks of food loss or food waste, in a developed country like Ireland, most of that s after processing or at processing onwards and not much occurs at the farm level. In developing countries, most of the loss occurs at the farm level and not much at processing on to consumer level. In Ireland I do not think we have the figures as how much of our total emissions coming from agriculture would be attributable to food waste. I would say it is relatively small, because most of our agricultural emissions are from beef and dairy. There is not a huge amount of loss along the production chain there. It is not to say there is none but there is not a lot. Most of the loss is probably in the fruit and vegetable sector. Not a lot of our 38% emissions figure is coming from this.

We can make progress on food loss and waste and research can help. In beef and dairy, we have achieved great improvements in extending the shelf life of dairy and meat products over the last decade or two. In recent years, research done at the Meat Technology Ireland Centre has meant a lot of progress on the techniques to extend the shelf life of beef and lamb. That is one area where research can play a role. Packaging is very important in this regard. We have invested a lot in our centre in Ashtown in the last couple of years in the prepared consumer food centre.

We help many companies with their packaging systems and in deciding what is the best packaging. The key things with packaging are ensuring a long shelf life and that the product looks well. Most of that is not in the horticulture sector but we are very conscious of waste in the horticulture sector and we have a number of research projects looking at how we can minimise that loss. We are hoping to get European funding for another project in these area in the next the next few weeks. There is a role for research in reducing food waste and we probably need better data to be able to answer the specific question the Senator asked.