Per Capita (PC) versus Per Adult Human Unit Method (PAHUM): A Net Assessment of EU28-Population, Family/Household, Food Consumption and Environmental Impact

Summary

Communication of Lisbon Strategy sets out an integrated package of measures to deliver more sustainable consumption
(including food), better environmental protection, correct population and production evaluations by using appropriate and
more meaningful methods. It lays ahead as one of the key challenges for EU28-PC, Adult Equivalent (AE) and conjoint evaluations
and implementation are not sufficiently dynamic and forward-looking to drive the performance of methods upwards. Those
evaluations do not serve the above purpose. On PC, AE method use overall, voluntary and regulatory instruments are not
sufficiently connected and potential synergies among the different instruments are not exploited. Divergent national, international
approaches send conflicting signals to producers and consumers. As a result, the full potential of the internal food market of EU28
and its impact on environment are not realized and evaluated on properly identified UNIT basis. Misidentified UNIT for
measurement would not give correct results and if one installs his correct assumptions on the wrong unit, the falls results will start
following each other. The developed PAHUM-(Copy-right©1989) and policy approach may integrate the potential of the different
policy instruments, helping implement them (gender, age, structure and household size) to food consumption and environmental
issues.