The Scientific Advisory Board on Agricultural Policy, Food and Consumer Health Protection to the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture has just released an English version of a report on promoting more sustainable food consumption. The report, originally published in 2020 in German, defines policies that integrate consideration of four areas: human health, social aspects, the environment (including climate) and animal welfare. It focuses on designing food environments to support consumers in choosing healthy, sustainable diets.

In this book, epidemiologist Tim Spector sets out his approach to nutrition. He describes the importance of the microbiome, explores which foods are really “healthy” and “unhealthy” and discusses the impacts of food consumption on the environment. The book also contains many short chapters dedicated to specific food types, including fruit, legumes, fungi, meat and fermented dairy.

This book explores policies on food waste and loss from around the world, including France, Italy, Romania, Japan, China and the United States. It is aimed at students, academics and policymakers.

The United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has completed its first pre-market consultation for a food product made from cultivated animal cells. The cultivated chicken product, made by UPSIDE Foods, still has to pass further approval stages before it can be sold to consumers in the US, including inspection of the manufacturing facilities by the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service. The process described in the consultation documents uses genetic engineering, antibiotics and bovine serum at various stages, although antibiotics are not used in the main cell growth and differentiation phases.

A group of campaigners known as Reboot Food has published a manifesto calling for open-source precision fermentation technology to be used widely to transform the food system away from reliance on animal agriculture and free up land for nature restoration. Precision fermentation technology, which is already used to produce insulin and rennet as well as some new food products, could in theory produce all of the world’s protein on an area of land smaller than Greater London, says the manifesto.

This blog post from The Good Food Institute addresses the question of whether cultivated meat (and other lab-grown foods) can reduce the risk of antibiotic resistance compared to livestock production. Antibiotics are often added to cell culture media in laboratories to prevent infection, but over a dozen cultivated food companies claim to have antibiotic-free processes.

A recording of the event “No More Omissions: Real Policy Action on Land Use, Animal Agriculture & GHGs–with a Focus on Methane” is now available. The event was held on 11 November 2022 at the COP27 Food4Climate Pavilion, organised by Brighter Green and the Global Forest Coalition.