A Structured, Collaborative and Open Access Database of Food Policies in Europe: Introducing EU F-POD

This paper presents a new, open-access database of food policies, the European Food Policy Database (EU F-POD). It is a comprehensive and collaborative on-line resource, and goes beyond a mere list of food policies by offering a structured collection of food policies classified by goals, targets, and instruments, drawing from existing and validated taxonomies. It consists of an organized and cohesive body of national and international laws, regulations, and provisions related to the food area, to facilitate consultation, interpretation and policy analysis. More specifically, it may help identify normative gaps, contradictions or overlaps between existing rules, and regulatory differences between states, fostering discussions among various multi-sectoral actors. The EU F-POD database is comprehensive in scope, ensuring the inclusion of policies for all objectives, targets, and instruments within its framework. We describe the EU F-POD database, its structure, definition, and data collection strategy, including also some extraction examples to demonstrate the potential of such a tool to users. EU F-POD was designed as an open access tool, so that a supervised, collaborative effort among researchers and experts can guarantee its future sustainability and updating.