The first part of the EU’s Biotech Act has been released. While the act was mainly concerned with health, it didn’t entirely neglect food. In fact, the word “food” is mentioned 109 times in the document.
However, just because it didn’t ignore food, doesn’t necessarily mean it provides good news for the industry. Instead of simply declining to mention novel foods, for instance, the act singled them out for restrictions that will stymie their potential.
Specifically, it ruled that novel foods would be explicitly excluded from the introduction of regulatory sandboxes, programmes where regulations are partially lifted to allow experimentation and boost the application process.
This is because novel foods “trigger ethical or cultural concerns among various consumer segments regarding their acceptability”.
It is, of course, easy to overestimate the utility of regulatory sandboxes. They are far from the silver bullet in fast-tracking safety assessments. However, they do provide freedom for applicants to experiment, which can help to iron out the difficulties in new, untested food products before they get to market.
By preventing novel foods from accessing these benefits, the Biotech Act is stifling innovation. Novel foods have the potential to solve many of the food industry’s biggest problems.
This is not the point of regulations
Firstly, food regulations are not there to assess for consumer acceptability; they are there to assess safety. There’s a reason why risk assessments are overseen by the European Food Safety Authority.
The job of making food acceptable to consumers belongs to the company selling that food. If it goes to market and no consumers buy it, that’s entirely on the company. It’s not the role of regulation to advise companies on whether or not their products are likely to sell, but ensure food does not harm consumers.
Secondly, novel foods are not a blanket category. They include chia seeds and monk fruit as well as cell-cultivated meat and precision fermentation-derived ingredients. How can the EU say that consumers have “ethical and cultural concerns” over all novel foods, simply on the basis that they are novel?
The response to this may be that the EU shouldn’t invest in additional resources for products which they don’t think consumers will accept. However, there are some clear arguments that many novel foods have strong benefits.
The restriction is stifling innovation
Take a technology like precision fermentation. Products derived from this can have a multitude of benefits. The technology can not only be used to produce meat alternatives, but sweeteners, functional ingredients, and even space food.
The technology, as the name suggests, is highly precise, meaning its potential is significant and varies widely. It can produce ingredients for many different functions, and may even be able to help in cost-cutting.
Cultivated meat, meanwhile, has the potential to provide animal protein to consumers without the use of large tracts of land or the slaughter of animals. While it is far from perfect in terms of sustainability, if produced at scale it could radically reduce the carbon footprint of meat production.
These technologies even have the potential to address the commodity crisis. Commodities like cocoa and palm oil have for a long time been facing strain from weather conditions. Cell-cultivated cocoa or precision fermentation-derived palm oil can develop alternatives to these under-threat ingredients.
Yet without sandboxes, they may take longer to reach regulatory approval and longer to get to the consumer. It would be a shame if all these benefits were missed out on because of the “ethical and cultural concerns” of some consumers who could simply choose not to buy these products.
The EU should invest in these novel foods by giving them access to regulatory sandboxes. If consumers don’t want them after that, well, it’s none of the regulator’s concern.
