Regulating Food Innovation – Technical Innovation requires Regulatory Innovation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Kai Purnhagen
• Subject Area: Private Law
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465588286

Innovation is critical to enable the UN World Food Programme to deliver on its mandate to reach Zero Hunger. Innovations occur along the food value chain. Various dietary trends trigger product developments such as meatless products, plant-based drinks and supplements or new categories of food such as insects. Consumers’ demand for functional food along with their choice of healthier and “greener” products has boosted the offer of food innovations, which promise beneficial health and environmental effects. The potential of plants, their compounds and derivatives in food production and preservation has been rapidly explored and led to applications such as the mimicking of hemoglobin proteins in plant-based products or the extraction of triterpenic acids from apples and other traditional plants. Scientific progress in molecular genetics is stimulating the development of more efficient and precise plant breeding. Starting with transgenesis in the 1980s, later developments have greatly expanded the toolbox available for plant breeders to work with genetic material to optimise trait management and develop elite cultivars of high nutritional quality. The 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to researchers that developed the CRISPR/Cas technology, emphasizing that technical progress in molecular biology and genetics is being rapidly incorporated in practical applications. These developments are interlinked with regulatory challenges. In the EU, novel foods require the positive completion of an authorisation procedure prior to being placed on the market. As for GMOs, heavy requirements are imposed not only as regards their placing on the market, but also their use, labelling, traceability and co-existence. Both novel foods and GMOs are subject to risk assessment under the auspices of EFSA, and to a Committee procedure. This is costly in terms of time and money. Little has been written on how a regulatory regime can be designed to both enable innovations that deliver on existential societal challenges as well as protect human health, safety and the environment. Research must therefore address the question of linkages between different regulatory objectives. It must also address the question of regulatory effectiveness. It must equally address numerous assumptions behind the regulatory design – why certain innovations are regulated and on which scientific criteria to decide whether an innovation should fall within the remit of a regulation. Different regulatory objectives represent analytical accounts of various disciplines, requiring research from a number of angles: This project will provide a clear and tangible analysis whether, and how, the current legal regimes strike a balance between the protection of health, safety and the environment and innovation in the food sector. It will suggest new and innovative regulatory solutions, which enable innovations and protect the society from potential risks from those innovations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Detlef Bartsch; Professor Dr. Stephan Clemens; Professorin Dr. Laura König; Professor Dr. Markus Möstl; Professor Dr. Martin Schmidt-Kessel; Dr. Julia von Thienen
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Samuel Becher; Professor Dr. Hans-W. Micklitz; Professor Dr. Justus Wesseler