FoodDrinkEurope Reports Year of Engagement, Visibility & Adaptability

22 May 2013 --- FoodDrinkEurope’s ‘Annual Report 2012’ details a year of achievement and active engagement for FoodDrinkEurope, the trade body representing Europe’s food and drink industry - Europe’s largest manufacturing sector in terms of turnover and employment.

2012 saw FoodDrinkEurope celebrate its thirtieth anniversary and this milestone was marked at the organisation’s biennial Congress 2012, themed ‘Feeding the Recovery’, which featured a range of European and international guest speakers who discussed the big challenges facing Europe’s food and drink industry today and in the years to come.

Speaking at the launch of the ‘Annual Report 2012’, FoodDrinkEurope President Jesús Serafín Pérez said: “2012 was a busy and active year for FoodDrinkEurope. We faced new challenges and embraced new opportunities, engaging actively with other stakeholders, including our social partners, to ensure the highest standards of food safety and nutritious, enjoyable foods for Europe’s consumers, to encourage a move towards further environmental sustainability and to promote a competitive business environment where food and drink manufacturers can continue to grow and innovate. All of these efforts combined ensured that our industry continued to play a central role in growth within the EU economy over the past year, and, as a consequence, a helping hand on the road to EU recovery. The industry is also focussed on playing its part in helping to achieve the Europe 2020 Goals of smart, sustainable, inclusive growth.”
 
The Report, which has for the first time been published in an online format, outlines a number of FoodDrinkEurope’s key achievements in 2012, including:
- The launch of the ‘Food and Drink Industry Manifesto’ at the 2012 Congress(2);
- The official launch of a Social Dialogue for Europe’s food and drink industry with our trade union partners, EFFAT(3);
- The agreement of a voluntary framework for fairer B2B relations;
- The development of new tools to assist food manufacturers in regard to food safety such as the ‘Guidelines on Food Allergen Management for Food Manufacturers’ and the updated ‘Acrylamide Pamphlets’;
- And the publication of the ‘Environmental Sustainability Vision Towards 2030’ which was shortlisted for the European Public Affairs Report of the Year Award.