ROSETTA: Tackling Food Waste Linked to Marketing Standards

ROSETTA is an EU-funded Horizon Europe project working to reduce food waste linked to marketing standards and improve market access for safe-to-eat foods that might otherwise be discarded.

Bringing together 17 partners, the project investigates how public and private marketing standards influence food waste across food value chains. It tests practical solutions through five pilot cases in Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Poland and Spain, covering fruit and vegetables, cereals, dairy and meat.

Objectives and Vision

Marketing standards help ensure food quality, safety and consistency, but requirements related to appearance, size, labelling and marketability can also prevent edible food from reaching consumers.

ROSETTA aims to provide reliable evidence on how much food waste is generated because of these standards, why it occurs and how it can be prevented. Its wider vision is to support a more sustainable food system in which safe, nutritious food is valued rather than discarded because it does not meet conventional market expectations.

What Sets ROSETTA Apart

ROSETTA combines research, stakeholder participation and real-world experimentation. Five Multi-Actor Innovation Platforms bring together farmers, processors, manufacturers, retailers, food service businesses, consumers, researchers, policymakers and civil society organisations. These actors jointly identify challenges and co-create alternative marketing models and food waste reduction solutions adapted to different commodities and national contexts.

The project also examines the economic, environmental and social trade-offs between reducing food waste and maintaining the objectives of marketing standards.

How It Will Do It

ROSETTA will:

• Analyse international, European, national and private food marketing standards.
• Estimate the food waste associated with marketing standards across food value chains.
• Investigate how consumer expectations and market conditions influence private standards.
• Co-create and test alternative market channels for safe-to-eat suboptimal foods.
• Assess the economic, environmental and social performance of the tested solutions.
• Develop a Digital Toolkit, replication guidelines and practical resources.
• Provide evidence-based recommendations for food businesses, regulators and policymakers.
• Build a European Community of Practice supporting knowledge exchange and long-term cooperation.

White Research’s Role in ROSETTA

White Research leads ROSETTA’s dissemination and communication activities, ensuring that its research, pilot results, tools and recommendations reach relevant audiences at European, national and local levels.

Our team develops and coordinates the project’s communication strategy, website content, social media presence, newsletters, promotional materials, campaigns and public-facing resources. White Research also monitors communication performance and supports consortium partners in presenting project activities and results clearly and consistently.

White Research additionally leads the operation of the ROSETTA Community of Practice. Through stakeholder recruitment, dedicated meetings, interviews and engagement campaigns, the Community connects actors from across the food value chain and creates opportunities to exchange knowledge, provide feedback and contribute to the project’s solutions and recommendations.