October 8, 2025

CREDA’s Key Contributions to BREADCRUMB: Refining Models and Understanding Consumers

As a partner in the BREADCRUMB project, CREDA continues to deepen our understanding of the economic and behavioural factors behind food loss and waste across the supply chain.

Advancing BREADCRUMB’s Economic Model

Within Work Package 3 CREDA is refining the project’s Economic Model to better reflect how food waste is generated and managed from farm to market. The model was presented during the project’s General Assembly in Porto (May 2025), where partners provided valuable insights that are now shaping its further development.

One of the key priorities is to ensure that the definition of food waste used in the model is fully aligned with with the European Union’s definition of food waste . This alignment not only supports consistency with policy discussions but also enables comparisons with other European studies.

CREDA is also reassessing how market structures are represented in the model — exploring whether farming and marketing stages should be treated under perfect competition or if market power from intermediaries and retailers should be explicitly considered. These refinements are crucial to understanding how value is distributed, how incentives to reduce waste are formed, and how cooperation emerges along the chain.

Finally, the team is evaluating whether a dynamic modelling approach may be more suitable than a static one to capture how shifts in consumer demand affect upstream decisions, such as product rejection at the farm level.

Exploring Consumer Perceptions and New Business Strategies

Under Work Package 4, CREDA is working closely with OPPPB and PNO Innovation Spain to define both revalued products and new business strategies aimed at promoting more circular and sustainable practices.

In collaboration with AINIA and Case Study partners, CREDA is also analysing how consumers and external stakeholders perceive the introduction of these new products to the market. Beyond assessing interest, this work seeks to identify potential barriers to acceptance and explore practical actions to overcome them, paving the way for innovations that can make a real impact on reducing food waste.

Stay tuned for more updates on CREDA’s work and other BREADCRUMB initiatives!