The Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) have recently released a report which identifies the innovative food technologies most likely to reach UK consumers within 10 years.

The Thematic Report on Emerging Food Innovations identifies technological areas likely to have the greatest impact on the food system, including:

• Controlled environment agriculture (CEA), or vertical farming, growing crops in climate controlled indoor spaces where conditions are heavily monitored and nutrients are administered precisely.
• Precision and biomass fermentation – exploiting rapid microbial growth to produce protein rich biomass for food
• Cellular agriculture, including cell-cultivated foods – new foods that don’t involve traditional farming such as rearing livestock or growing plants and grains
• Edible insects – which may be sold as whole insects or used as ingredients (for example, powders added to familiar foods)
• Molecular farming – using plants or plant cells as tiny factories to make specific food ingredients, such as proteins and enzymes
• Gas fermentation – using microbes to convert captured carbon dioxide, hydrogen or other industrial gases into single cell proteins and other useful food ingredients
• 3D food printing – building foods like chocolate or mashed potato out of layering edible ingredients from a printer
• Reverse food manufacturing – taking nutrients back out of food by-products and turning them into new ingredients

Emerging technologies such as molecular farming remain at an early stage, while reverse food manufacturing and 3D food printing are conceptual and are a longer-term watchlist area.

The report provides the clearest picture to date of how cutting-edge food production systems are evolving, and what this means for proportionate, future ready regulation. By setting out the regulatory implications in advance, the report enables companies to plan long term research, manufacturing and investment strategies with greater certainty.  For regulators, it provides a strategic blueprint for where scientific capability, guidance development and risk assessment approaches will need to evolve to keep pace with innovation.