The Italian government of conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will introduce food assistance for vulnerable families based on a proposal made by Democratic Party MPs.
Under the proposal, every low-income family will receive assistance, including food and drink selected from unsold goods in large food stores and collected in parcels. The proposal will also fight the issue of food waste in a country where the average person wastes some 37kg a year.
The proposal envisages earmarking resources to combat “food poverty and avoid throwing away 230,000 tonnes of unsold food”, explained MP Marco Furfaro (PD), who is among those who launched the initiative.
To cover the costs, the Italian government has budgeted to spend €1.5 million in 2023 to finance this measure, while another €2 million will be spent in 2024.
A Labour Ministry decree on the proposal is expected to arrive within the next 60 days. It will most likely determine how many would benefit from the initiative and which third-sector entities would be involved.
For now, only the guidelines of the proposal are known and it would only be rolled out in metropolitan cities in 2023.
Family parcels would be booked via the app and collected by those in need. For the elderly and dependent persons, there would be the possibility of receiving food at home.
Under the proposed mechanism, it is envisaged “that supermarkets communicate unsold food to municipalities and then it will be the local authorities themselves who will distribute or have the parcels taken by those who are entitled to them”, Furfaro explained.
According to the 2022 report of the Centro Studi Investimenti Sociali (Censis) on the social situation in Italy, 9.4% of the population lives in absolute poverty. There are 5.6 million Italians affected, 1 million more than in 2019, with more than one in four Italians at risk of poverty or exclusion.
As Coldiretti pointed out in the 2022 report of the Fund for European Aid to the Destitute (Fead), the new poor are often office workers who have lost their jobs or small traders and artisans who have had to close their businesses. Both categories have suffered greatly from the COVID-19 pandemic and now from the energy crisis.
“Now 600,000 children, 337,000 elderly people and 3 million Italians use soup kitchens or food parcels when it is going well because they cannot afford to go shopping. Now the unsold food will be given to those in need”, Furfaro said.
Critics hope the new measure will not just consist of giving ‘leftovers to the needy’, and Caritas complained: “Dignity should also be given to those who have nothing, not leftovers or waste”.
(Federica Pascale | EURACTIV.it)
Source: euractiv.com
