The landscape of food production is changing. This change, driven by the desire for a more sustainable food supply and accelerated by advances in cellular biology, fermentation methods, and food science, has led to the development of novel protein sources. Emerging novel food products from these sources challenge producers and regulators to ensure their safety through accurate and fit-for-purpose analysis. Join us as we bring together various stakeholders – regulators, scientists, industry experts, and innovators – in a dynamic webinar designed to foster collaboration and achieve a common goal of establishing harmonized standards bolstering consumers’ confidence and supporting innovation.
Our panel of experts will share their knowledge, experiences, and best practices to address this industry's challenges, followed by an open forum discussion. We want your thoughts, suggestions, challenges, and pain points and identify solutions.
Jay Alappat, Ph. D (Regional Technical Director, NA) Jay Alappat will present the current landscape on Novel foods - naming, production, regulations, testing, and testing challenges – across the globe. The presentation will conclude with the challenges, opportunities, and the path ahead when novel foods become normal.
Todor Todorov, Ph. D (Chemist, FDA) will focus on the safety evaluation of food ingredients in the United States and multiple pathways for the pre-market evaluation of food ingredients in the US, including food and color additive petitions, notifications for generally recognized as safe (GRAS) ingredients, and pre-market consultations for human foods made from cell cultured animal cells. In addition, the presentation will briefly touch on FDA guidelines for method validation for food ingredient analysis.
Kate Mastovska, Ph. D (Deputy Executive Director and Chief Science Office, AOAC International) Recently, there has been a significant focus on the introduction of novel foods from alternative protein sources, such as cell-, fermentation-, insect-, plant-, fungi- or algae-based alternatives to traditional food ingredients and products. This has brought new challenges in terms of new matrices and/or analytes that need to be tested to assess the quality and safety of these novel foods. In addition, they also challenge traditional analytical approaches, such as the analysis of protein content. However, this challenge presents an opportunity to improve the current methodology and approaches for all food types, not just the novel ones. Kate will address the need for consensus on method requirements, the development of guidelines, and the introduction of new standardized methods and approaches essential to address these challenges.
Brian Furey, Ph. D (Senior Director, Regulatory Affairs, Nature’s Fynd) Nature’s Fynd is an innovative food company creating versatile alternative proteins to nourish the world’s growing population while nurturing the planet. Born out of research conducted for NASA on microbes in Yellowstone National Park, the company’s breakthrough technology produces Fy™. Fy is a new-to-the-world, nutritional fungi protein that only uses a fraction of the resources required by traditional agriculture. With any new ingredient, compositional testing brings its challenges, and Nature's Fynd would share learnings from protein methodology.
Stephane Vidry, Ph. D (Global Executive Director, International Life Sciences Institute, ILSI) will address the knowledge gaps relevant to the safety and risk to consumers in developing and commercializing cultivated meat, which is progressing at unprecedented speed[1].
References
[1] Ong, K.J., et al. (2021) Food safety considerations and research priorities for the cultured meat and seafood industry. Compr Rev Food Sci Food Saf 20(6): 5421-5448