A transition towards sustainable food systems in Europe

A growing number of voices – among others the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC, 2017) - have highlighted the need to change the overarching infrastructure of food-related policies. They claim that the European Union does not have a food policy . For example, the General Food Law addresses food safety issues, but not nutrition. Regulations aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of food production are not built in connection with how food is consumed. There are regulations that encourage production systems to improve product quality, but the link to sustainability is not clear. There are rules that regulate information and communication to consumers, but a reference to sustainability is missing. Common Agricultural Policy grants subsidies to 'green' production processes, but most of them concern primarily production actors. Distribution of financial resources over these instruments is largely disproportionate. Often these payments are not linked to clear outcomes and impacts. How could a food policy contribute to shaping sustainable food systems in Europe? It is time for policy makers, academics, and civil society to take a step back and reflect upon appropriate policies infrastructures for transition toward food sustainability. This challenge implies a pervasive process that addresses in a consistent and coherent way the multidimensionality of food – environmental, social, economic, health, ethical and resilience implications - and takes into consideration the reciprocal influences between production, distribution and consumption and their links with broader socio-ecological and socio-technical systems. This process should reorganize food-related policy instruments around societal goals and put in place the necessary instruments to enable the social and institutional change, overcoming barriers. This report proposes a conceptual framework and carries out an assessment of the existing policy infrastructure with the purpose of suggesting points of entry for policy-led transition towards food sustainability in Europe. The system perspective adopted allows us to apply one of the key principles of sustainable development as well as sustainable consumption and implies that policies aiming at sustainability should address consumption issues as well as production patterns. The challenge for a new policy approach is to put in place coordinated policy tools that can affect directly or indirectly this process of alignment, linking together self-responsibility with freedom to act. Rather than pursuing an ambitious program of redesign of the agricultural policy into a broader food policy, we suggest a ‘bottom up’ process of construction of a food policy mix around strategic goals aimed at the integration and coherence between policies, together with the reorganization of existing tools and the introduction of new tools to fill existing gaps. The introduction of strategic tools - such as the EU Sustainable Food Assessment and Action Plan, proposed by the EESC (2017) at the EU level, or urban food strategies at the local level - can contribute to develop new representations of the food system, update policy objectives, verify the adequacy of existing policy instruments with respect to new objectives, identify missing policy instruments and mobilize all stakeholders to build a coherent set of policies. This report lays down some criteria on which this process should be activated

The contribution of the PLM to firms internationalization: A case in the footwear industry

As the globalization of markets in the footwear industry became more evident, several restrictions have been imposed by international directives, standards and regulations, and market requirements. Such external needs are progressively pushing the footwear manufacturers to introduce continuous improvements in their production processes and in general in the firm management. This working paper represents the first step of a research with the aim of evaluating the impact of PLM on a firm internazionalization in the fashion industry. The investigation is at the level of PLM as a business strategy as well as set of technical tools. The research approach mainly includes a survey on footwear industries located in the district of the \u201cRiviera del Brenta\u201d of the Veneto Region in Italy

Product Lifecycle Management as a tool to create value in the fashion system

The aim of this paper is to present the fashion system as a \u201ccluster\u201d and to evaluate the characteristics of Product Lifecycle Management considering various factors, especially the different approaches in dealing the market needs. In particular, the \u201cready-to-wear fashion\u201d and the \u201cfast fashion\u201d models will be presented and compared. The paper, takes the Italian fashion system as the unit of analysis and it also assumes that consumer behavioral factors act in a non predictable way (randomly) under the constantly changing social and cultural environment. Considering the inner complexity of a whole market system, a simplified System Dynamics modeling is proposed

Seismic site response in Siracusa

In the frame of the Italo–Maltese research project (Costituzione di un Sistema Integrato di Protezione Civile Transfrontaliero Italo–Maltese, SIMIT), researches financially supported by the European Community were performed in the area between the south–eastern Sicilian coast and the islands of Lampedusa and Malta. Aim of these stud- ies is to mitigate natural hazards and to develop the geological and geophysical information in the investigated region. The damage to buildings further to a seismic input is tightly linked, besides their vulnerability, to both the characteristics of the maximum acceleration and frequency of the ground motion, as well as to the features of surface geology. From this point of view, the geophysical and geotechnical characterization of the soil conditions, down to the bedrock, is very important in order to identify the site effects, in terms of fundamental frequencies, for a correct planning of earthquake resistant structures.peer-reviewe

Seismic site response in Lampedusa

In the frame of a joint Italo–Maltese research project (Costituzione di un Sistema Integrato di Protezione Civile Transfrontaliero Italo– Maltese, SIMIT), financially supported by the European Community, a research plan was developed. Its final purpose is to mitigate natural hazards and to improve the geological and geophysical information in the area between the south–eastern Sicilian coast and the islands of Lampedusa and Malta. Although this region lies on the Sicily channel rift zone, a seismically active domain of the Central Mediterranean, knowledge about seismotectonic, seismic hazard and local seismic response is at present quite poor. In order to improve the awareness of problems linked to natural hazards and with the aim of toning down them, we investigated the island of Lampedusa (Pelagian archipelago). A multidisciplinary approach concerning tectonic, structural, morphologic and lithologic analyses was performed trying to contribute to fill up the information gap on the seismic features of this territory. The results of the geological–structural surveys were used to standardize the evaluation of the seismic hazard and, in particular, to understand the local seismic response of the distinct outcropping terrains and its influence on the dynamic behavior of existing buildings.peer-reviewe

Food Policy Processes in the City of Rome: A Perspective on Policy Integration and Governance Innovation

In the food policy arena, the topic of governance and how to create a governance system that would deal with cross-cutting issues, including new ways of perceiving the public sphere, the policymaking, and the involvement of the population, has become an important field of study. The research presented in this article focuses on the case study of Rome, comparing different paths that various groups of actors have taken toward the definition of urban food policy processes: the Agrifood Plan, Food Policy for Rome, and Community Gardens Movement. The aim of the research is to understand the state of the art about different paths toward food strategies and policies that are currently active in the Roman territory while investigating the relationship between policy integration and governance innovation structures. Indeed, this paper dives into the governance structure of the three food policy processes, the actors and sectors involved, and the goals and instruments selected to achieve a more sustainable food system for the city. In this context, their characteristics are analyzed according to an innovative conceptual framework, which, by crossing two recognized theoretical systems, on policy integration and governance innovation frameworks, allows to identify the capacity of policy integration and governance innovation. The analysis shows that every process performs a different form of governance, implemented according to the actor and backgrounds that compose the process itself. The study demonstrates that governance innovation and policy integration are strongly linked and that the conception and application of policy integration changes according to the governance vision that a process has

Prenatal education for congenital toxoplasmosis

Congenital toxoplasmosis is considered a rare but potentially severe infection. Prenatal education about congenital toxoplasmosis could be the most efficient and least harmful intervention, yet its effectiveness is uncertain

The energy sensor AMPK regulates Hedgehog signaling in human cells through a unique Gli1 metabolic checkpoint

Hedgehog signaling controls proliferation of cerebellar granule cell precursors (GCPs) and its aberrant activation is a leading cause of Medulloblastoma, the most frequent pediatric brain tumor. We show here that the energy sensor AMPK inhibits Hh signaling by phosphorylating a single residue of human Gli1 that is not conserved in other species.Studies with selective agonists and genetic deletion have revealed that AMPK activation inhibits canonical Hh signaling in human, but not in mouse cells. Indeed we show that AMPK phosphorylates Gli1 at the unique residue Ser408, which is conserved only in primates but not in other species. Once phosphorylated, Gli1 is targeted for proteasomal degradation. Notably, we show that selective AMPK activation inhibits Gli1-driven proliferation and that this effect is linked to Ser408 phosphorylation, which represents a key metabolic checkpoint for Hh signaling.Collectively, this data unveil a novel mechanism of inhibition of Gli1 function, which is exclusive for human cells and may be exploited for the treatment of Medulloblastoma or other Gli1 driven tumors

Case studies of the marketing of products from newly bred lines and underutilized crops

The overall aim of Task 5.1 of the Diversifood project is to produce recommendations and guidelines for the marketing and valorisation strategies of biodiverse food products, including products from underutilized crops and based on newly-bred lines from participatory plant breeding. The work presented here identifies success and critical factors of existing initiatives, analysing the whole process of value-adding and communication from the genetic resource to the food product. A common case study approach was used by national teams in eight countries, involving around 180 interviews with various actors of each initiative, including producers and a diversity of other supply chain actors and consumers. Results of the comparative analysis are presented into two separate sections, respectively focussing on eight case studies selling products from underutilized vegetables and grains, and on three cases of marketing of products from newly-bred lines from participatory plant breeding. The final chapter presents some common conclusions and recommendations. This study confirms that the systemic approach used here is able to contribute to the development of initiatives for the valorisation of biodiverse food products and supporting agrobiodiversity. This needs to consider both the internal coherence of the initiatives and external support, as well as all the different stages of the valorisation process