SENSE - HarmoniSed ENvironmental Sustainability in the European Food and Drink Chain

SENSE will deliver a harmonised system for the environmental impact assessment of food&drink products. The research will evaluate existing relevant environmental impact assessment methodologies, and consider socio-economical, quality and safety aspects, to deliver a new integral system that can be linked to monitoring and traceability data. The system will integrate: (a) (regionalised) data gathering system; (b) matrix of key environmental performance indicators; (c) methodology for environmental impact assessment; and (d) a certification scheme. The methodology will be transferred to food&drink sectors and stakeholders by means of specific communications strategies. SENSE will validate the new harmonised system in the juice, meat&dairy and aquaculture chains. However, the methodology and its associated software will be modular allowing its implementation in any food product.
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The sustainability information collected along the production cycle of any food stuff and reflected into the EID (Environmental Identification Document) will be accessible by the EID-Communication Platform, contributing to make the environmental sustainability part of the usual purchasing behaviour of consumers and provide a competitive advantage to those products which choose to use the EID.
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Main results of SENSE will be: (i) Standard key environmental performance indicators (KEPI); (ii) Harmonised methodology for environmental impact assessment; (iii) SENSE-tool for environmental data collection; (iv) EID and EID-Communication Platform; (v) Certification Scheme Concept (CSC) for sustainability; (vi) Roadmap for policy and governance implementation.
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SENSE consortium is formed by a multidisciplinary team involving 23 partners from 13 countries made up by a combination of complementary profiles: research organisations, food and drink SMEs, environmental and LCA experts, SMEs for dissemination and communication and European food Associations.