Closing the Food Innovation Gap

Atova
Nov 17
3 min read

🇪🇺 Framework Report Is Now Live! 🇪🇺

Last week marked an exciting milestone for European food innovation. Together with Anna Handschuh from the Ministry of Future Affairs and Karin Verzijden from Axon Lawyers, Atova CEO Hannah Lester collaborated in co-authoring the newly released report “Closing the Food Innovation Gap!”.

📘 Report Introduction

Being guided by the Competitive Compass, the European Commission plans to help boost Europe's economic power and prosperity by building on three strategic pillars:

Closing the innovative gap
Decarbonising the economy
Reducing dependencies

However, despite these objectives, regulation is failing to keep pace with advances in biotechnology and the biomanufacturing of emerging foods. This gap is undermining Europe’s competitiveness and increasing the EU’s exposure to geopolitical risks related to food and feed security. To close the innovation gap and reduce external dependency, companies in this sector must be able to scale biomanufacturing and commercialise their products in Europe first. Yet persistent delays in EU market approvals—often far exceeding the legally established timelines—are driving innovators to launch in the United States and other markets, leading them to deprioritise the EU. If Europe intends to remain competitive and protect its food system, it needs regulatory processes that are predictable, timely and easy to navigate while maintaining high safety standards.

Regulatory sandboxes offer a highly effective solution. They can streamline approval pathways, reduce costs, shorten timelines, relieve administrative burdens, reduce workloads and, crucially, improve dossier quality. By providing a safe, step-by-step testing environment that upholds scientific rigour and food safety, sandboxes enhance data quality and reduce regulatory uncertainty. This makes them a powerful tool for strengthening competitiveness and supporting Europe’s strategic autonomy. It is essential that Member States recognise the value of regulatory sandboxes and adopt a coordinated approach to unlocking their potential. This strategic report sets out an action-oriented framework for an EU-wide novel food sandbox for novel foods.

📊 What’s Inside the Report

A framework for a pan-European regulatory sandbox for emerging foods and complementary proteins
An opt-in mechanism for Member States eager to benefit from food innovation and biotech
Provides a comparison of the EU’s novel foods approval process with other global market approval processes, regarding timelines and costs.
Practical steps to increase regulatory efficiency without changing the legal process on an 18-month timeline rather than today's average of 30 months (which could be extended to up to five years)
Recommendations that lay out how fragmentation of sandbox approaches across Member States can be decreased
What Europe needs to ensure innovators scale first in Europe and restore industry and investor confidence
Designed for Member States that want to help accelerate safe, science-based regulatory processes while maintaining high food-safety standards

📅 12th November 2025 Meeting

Together with Anna Handschuh from Ministry of Future Affairs and Karin Verzijden from Axon Lawyers, Hannah presented the report at the European Parliament in Brussels. This included:

➡️ Key findings

➡️ Framework for a pan-European Regulatory Sandbox for Emerging Foods.

➡️ Analysis of key regulatory pain points experienced by applicants

➡️ Identify what is needed to scale food biomanufacturing in the EU

This meeting brought together 80 participants from across Europe's food manufacturing and biotech sectors to discuss the report at the European Parliament. This meeting led to valuable discussions and contributions, with particular thanks to Juha-Pekka Pitkänen (Solar Foods), Stéphane Mac Millan (Verley), Frederieke Reiners (GEA Group), Victor Meijer (Invest-NL), Marie Wennergren, Mélody Violton (CPT Capital), Linda Nielsen (Københavns Universitet - University of Copenhagen) and Tõnis Tänav (Ministry of Rural Affairs of Estonia / EIS | Enterprise Estonia).