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Today, the European Commission adopted its proposal for a regulation on plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques (targeted mutagenesis and cisgenesis) (‘NGTs’) and derived food and feed products.

NGTs permit more targeted genetic changes than conventional breeding or traditional genomic techniques involving the introduction of genetic material from a non-crossable species, permitting rapid development

The European Commission has officially launched the EU Code of Conduct on Responsible Food Business and Marketing Practices, under its Farm to Fork Strategy.

The Code plays a crucial part in increasing the availability and affordability of healthy and sustainable food. The Code is one of the first deliverables of the EU Farm to Fork

Having voted 7 months earlier in favour of banning descriptive terms as ‘buttery’ and ‘creamy’ for purely plant-based products, the European Parliament withdrew draft legislation (the famous Amendment 171).

Implications of Amendment 171 were that the following would be prohibited:

  • Familiar packaging formats like a carton for plant-based milk alternatives, or a block of plant

Recently growing concerns about the environmental effects of food production has led to an interest in the possibility of using insects as a viable nutrient source in both human diets and animal feed (due to the low carbon, water and ecological footprints associated with insect farming and edible insects can be a good source of