Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund: successful projects
Published 7 October 2024
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Round 1: successful projects
Selected projects from round 1 of the Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund that ran from 1 February 2024 to 19 April 2024.
Food Standards Agency Cell-Cultivated Product Regulatory Sandbox
- Funding amount:£1,600,000.00
- Partner: Food Standards Agency (FSA)
Project description
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) cell-cultivated product (CCP) sandbox will support innovation through safety. CCPs are foods created through the isolation of cells from meat, seafood, fat, offal or eggs which are grown in a controlled environment and harvested to create consumer food products.
Through the sandbox we will gather rigorous scientific evidence about cell-cultivated products and the technology used to make them. This information will enable us to make well-informed decisions about product safety. It will also allow us to better guide companies on how to make products in a safe way and how to demonstrate that these products are safe. As part of the sandbox, we’ll be able to offer pre-application support to CCP companies and address key questions that must be addressed before CCPs can enter the market, for example around labelling.
This work will mean we can process CCP applications more quickly and support businesses better in their applications, ultimately providing consumers with a better choice of safe foods. The work achieved by the sandbox will also allow the FSA and FSS to keep pace with emerging technologies and apply new insights when authorising other innovative foods.
The programme will reduce delays and costs associated with applying for regulatory approval- estimated at the date of publication to be £350,000-£500,000 per company per product- and will help CCP companies attract the investment they need to scale-up production.
Professor Robin May, Chief Scientific Advisor at the FSA said:
Ensuring consumers can trust the safety of new foods is one of our most crucial responsibilities. The CCP sandbox programme will enable safe innovation and allow us to keep pace with new technologies being used by the food industry to ultimately provide consumers with a wider choice of safe foods.