Drastic cuts to food aid

In Italy, 3 million poor people risk not having enough food following the European Union’s decision on June 10 to drastically reduce food aid from the European Food Aid Programme (PEAD).

“We share Minister Saverio Romano’s battle against the cuts to the PEAD” says Marco Lucchini, director of the Food Bank Foundation in Italy. “The Union’s help will have serious consequences for people in need both in Italy and in the rest of Europe”. Lucchini added that the reduction threatens to push the whole of the Italian welfare system to the brink of a crisis, calling it a “time bomb that could result in widespread social conflict that only the European Council of Agricultural Ministers would be able to bring an end to by suggesting alternative solutions to those decided with the resolution agreed upon on June 10”.

In Italy the Food Aid Programme has been running since 1995 and distributes food to over 3 million pople, half of whom receive the aid through the Italian Food Bank Foundation. In 2010 the PEAD sent 48 thousand tonnes of free food to the Foundation’s 8 thousand distribution points. Next year the Foundation is expecting one fifth this amount.

The Italian Food Bank Foundation shares the preoccupation of the other 21 member countries of the European Federation of Food Banks that help 5 million Europeans by donating 360 thousand tonnes of food a year, a lot of which thanks to the PEAD.