Policies & Programs

For the fourth consecutive year, the French Directorate General of Maritime and Aquaculture Fishing has launched a call for proposals, operated by the French agency FranceAgriMer. Open from April 1 until the end of May, this call for projects’ goal is to encourage the aquaculture industry in France to innovate and is open to businesses, […]

The Committee on General Principles of the Codex Alimentarius, the organization responsible for setting international food standards, is chaired by France (all committees of Codex are chaired by a representative of a country, elected by the others: for instance, the Codex Committee on Food Hygiene is chaired by an American). The 31st session of this […]

Since 2016, the city of Paris launches an annual call for project called “Parisculteurs” (a portmanteau combining the name of the city with a French word for farmer, which can be translated, roughly, as “Paris Farmers”). It identifies all spaces that could be planted in the city and proposes to install urban farms and gardening […]

In order to implement international commitments made by France regarding the avoidance of accidental capture of small cetaceans (dolphins and porpoises) by fishing boats France put in place a national Working Group. This working group has three primary objectives: Improve knowledge: The Pelagis Observatory is currently leading a scientific study based on cetacean beaching incidents […]

France’s Directorate General for Food, the DGAL, recently published its annual activity report for 2018. For the DGAL, the year 2018 was marked by pursuing the goals of the Estates General of Food with the preparation of the new law that came out of this major food summit in order to balance trade relations in […]

A new Director General for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will be elected in June by the nearly 200 countries, including the United States, which are members of this organization. While the UN’s World Food Programme is concentrated on the logistics of providing food urgently to those in need, the […]

Didier Guillaume, French Minister for Agriculture and Food, and François de Rugy, French Minister for Environment, recently announced that they were putting in place a working group to strengthen the measures taken to protect bees and other pollinating insects from the negative impacts of Varroa mites and phytopharmaceutical products. In June of last year, the […]

In February 2016, France become the first country in the world to establish a strong law against food waste. Adopted unanimously by both chambers of French Congress, the law strengthens the commitment of public policy makers to reduce by half loss and waste of food by 2025. Its principle measure consists of requiring each supermarket […]

On Dec. 13, 2018, the 4 per 1000 Initiative held its annual meeting in Katowice, on the sidelines of the COP24 (24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).The discussions among participants were fruitful and marked the entry of a dynamic phase and the need to start demonstrating the […]

How can we reduce our dependence on plastic? In Brittany, in the town of Saint Malo, two entrepreneurs had the idea of tapping into an abundant natural resource: algae. In 2010, they created the company Algopack that today has several employees working on the project. Each second, 500 kilograms of plastics are dumped into the […]