Too Good To Go launches the national campaign “SOS Patat : save the potatoes, eat fries”
l The international NGO Too Good To Go, working on food losses prevention, has launched a national campaign to urge Belgians to buy and consume an extra portion of frozen potato products. As such they could contribute to make some free place available in the frozen companies’ freezers to enable them to process extra tonnes of potatoes of the old crop while waiting for the global food service and hotels to reopen.
The pandemic had a devastating impact on the global potato processing industry as the largest part of the potato products is consumed out of home.
Belgium is proud of its national Belgian fries and has become the world’s largest exporter of frozen potato products.
Too Good To Go has set up this campaign in collaboration with Belpotato.be, Belgapom, Comeos and a number of retailers, Unizo, the Belgian potato processing industry and the promotion boards VLAM and APAQ-w.
At this moment a surplus of 750.000 tonnes of old crop potatoes has been estimated.
The industry is working intensively on a sustainable solution in a three step approach : food (the campaign SOS patat, distribution through food banks, exports), (animal) feed and finally green energy (bio methanization).
Contrary to certain rumors the Belgian potato farmers have not received any financial aid yet to deal with this problematic situation.
More information on www.sospatat.be and the promotion movie youtu.be/78jn0voZ2a8 (only available in Dutch and French).
