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2017
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2018 HOTREC ANNUAL REPORT
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Driving thought-leadership while taking
responsibility for food policy
HOTREC coordinates the many
efforts led by its Members to
meet public health objectives,
while sustaining the sector’s
benefits to society.
Food is a key aspect of any hospitality business’ activities. Therefore, HOTREC has always acted both as a
pragmatic and responsible player in matter of EU food policy, therefore helping achieving important public policy
goals such as a food safety and public health, also including the reduction of food waste.
Sharing Members’ knowledge and best practice to foster healthy nutrition
In 2017, HOTREC joined the EU platform for action on diet, physical activity and health, with a twofold commitment:
•
Share with its Members the best-practices developed by platform members which are relevant to help the
hospitality sector stepping-up its activities in favour of a balanced diet and the fight against obesity;
•
Make available a yearly panorama of the actions undertaken by its Members which contribute to achieve a
healthier nutrition.
With this pledge, HOTREC shows the sector’s engagement through promoting the development of pragmatic and
responsible actions that benefit both consumers and hospitality businesses alike.
Taking responsibility in reducing food waste
While being a small food waster (12% of the total food waste are generated by hospitality, canteens and catering
businesses all together), the hospitality industry has been engaging in the reduction of food waste for many
years. This excellent track-record allowed HOTREC to convince EU policy makers to set-up in the newly adopted
(18 April 2018) revision of the waste framework Directive flexible aspirational food waste reduction targets,
instead of one-size-fits-all binding targets. This shall allow hospitality businesses to further reduce food waste,
while avoiding red-tape.
Promoting responsible and pragmatic policy solutions tackling trans-fats.
The European Commission’s recent inceptive impact assessment on trans-fats (TFAs) showed that, overall TFAs
intakes remain a source of public health concerns in some population groups, leading to several diseases. The
Commission is therefore considering a policy initiative to tackle the issue. Taking into account this legitimate
public health concern, and that the specificity of the hospitality sector is mostly composed of micro-enterprises
producing meals from fresh products, HOTREC decided to advocate for a pragmatic and ambitious EU policy
initiative. As TFAs can naturally be present in some typical ingredients of the European diet (e.g. ruminants)
and that industrial TFAs are mostly present in sophisticated food prepared by the processing industry, HOTREC
advocated in favour of a policy initiative focusing exclusively on industrial TFAs and setting a maximum limit to
the industrial TFA content in food. HOTREC also warned against mandatory sampling/analysis in the hospitality
sector, since the sector does not produce much TFAs. This responsible stance, if followed by EU institutions,
would result in a policy initiative that tackle the prime source of industrial trans-fats in all dishes consumed by
citizens, without unnecessarily burdening the restaurant sector and its numerous micro-enterprises.