Food in the spotlight 2022-In crisis lies opportunities

I am happy to note the newsletter counts already around 4.200 subscribers from all over the world. Feedbacks were very positive on the first two issues and as usual, I feel blessed in having such an active community of readers. In each interaction, feedback, and new idea, lies the seed of a new venture, project, or cooperation.

This year started with a spike in COVID cases (sadly), but also an incredible amount of new updates and activities in the food sector. Once again, I think there’s no room for being gloomy: we cannot decide to live in troubled or peaceful times, we can only decide what to do with the time given to us (Note: I won’t stop annoying you with hidden quotes from movies/books unless someone in the comments recognizes them).

2020 and 2021 widely proved to me that in crisis lies opportunities. I hired 3 persons full-time and 1 part-time. Our overall turnover grew by a staggering 60%: 13% in 2021 and 47% in 2021 and since we were already used to working in “remote” mode from 2013 (fancy agile office, webinars, and conference call most of the time, a lot of travels in different time zones…) we did not suffer any organizational stepback. On the contrary, I invested a huge part of the time saved from traveling in reorganizing our internal workflow, our IT tools, and our organization. Therefore I see now well placed to do much more in 2022.

We will speak about this and about 2022 trends in the food regulatory arena tomorrow, 14th January 2022, 3 pm Rome time (UTC+1) during this live event streamed at the same time on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.

Coming to the most recent news, here are some interesting reads:

• This interesting report from Australia about food fraud prevalence evaluates that the damage for the local food systems deriving from such criminal activity could be quantified in 2–3 billion $/year. The most vulnerable products identified are beef and veal, wine, fish, and crustaceans/mollusks.
• Regarding the fight against food waste, another industry behemoth decided to do a bold move. Morrisons, in the UK, decided to scrap the “use by” date from certain milk, in favor of a “best before” date and an indication to consumers to sniff the milk and try to evaluate organoleptic characteristics of the product before consumption. From the press articles I cannot understand if this will be applied also to fresh milk, usually consumed within 3–4 days, or not, but indeed the move is bold because milk is the typical food that requires a “use by” date in EU according to Reg. EU 1169/2011. It is perishable and can create microbiological risks after a certain date…FSA UK did not close the door to this operation, but I am really eager to follow up on this (feedbacks from UK friends is welcome!).
• In December EFSA released a favorable opinion on a new novel food (see here: Safety of iron hydroxide adipate tartrate as a novel food pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 and as a source of iron in the context of Directive 2002/46/EC). The full content of the opinion would be too much for this newsletter, but what struck me is that the ingredient is an engineered nanomaterial having primary particles, of almost spherical morphology, with a diameter typically smaller than 5 nm. Very interesting development, since we do not see many nanomaterials in food at the moment!
• In his incredible newsletter, Prof. Scott Galloway touch on the topic of new business models in food and specifically analyzes the impact that a more capillary extension of the dark kitchen and super quick delivery service could have on problems like the inefficiency of the food distribution chain, increasing obesity and nutritional issues linked to the “food desert” problem.
• In this article, the “Food science babe” (the savvy answer to the scaremongering and petulant food blogger known as “Food babe”), debunks 10 popular misconceptions about food safety. That’s a fun read and brings back in my mind an idea that I am refining for ages now: the food industry shall be able to react to such attacks using the same communication techniques and with the support of credible experts and influencers. Social media can create monsters and misinformation, but such monsters can be destroyed leveraging the same algorithms. I am sure not everybody will agree with me on this pick, but for sure everybody who adopts a scientific approach to our matter will be!

Last but not least, on 10th February 2022, 10 am — 1 pm Rome time (UTC+1), we will go back to the basics and propose an “EU Food labeling masterclass” webinar, where I’ll weigh in all my 10 years of practical experience on the field to provide a good overview about horizontal labeling rules for freshmen and practical cases and Q&A that can answer to the most daunting doubts of the more seasoned regulatory experts. Let’s join us!

That’s all for now,

Cesare