Happy World Food Day! This year, we celebrate the “Right to food for a better life and a better future”.

With the world population expected to grow to up to 10.3 billion this century, and increasing uncertainty around the availability of food sources due to climate change and geopolitical unrest, it is vital to rethink our food systems. A key part of ensuring food for all is making the most of innovative solutions from biotechnology that help produce better food while reducing the impact on the environment.  

The right to food goes beyond just eating the right amount of calories: it encompasses the ability to afford and access nutritious, varied and cultural food. With almost 800 million people still suffering from hunger today, we are far from ensuring no one goes hungry. But as we tackle food security, it’s vital to remember that what we consume should also be healthy, sustainable, and affordable, which is where biotechnology can play a transformative role by helping to produce food with greater efficiency and less environmental impact. 

Biotechnology’s impact on our Food Systems 

Biotechnology is reshaping how we produce our food, working to increase the quantity and quality of our foods while reducing the impact on our resources, such as land and water use, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  

Microbial alternatives to synthetic pesticides or fertilisers can help producers take care of agricultural land. Biocontrol solutions that protect our crops with minimal impact on human and environmental health can ensure access to safe food, support food production, and preserve land resources. 

While taking care of our agricultural land, biotechnology also contributes to the health and sustainability of the livestock sector. The use of feed additives such as microorganisms and enzymes can increase nutrient content to ensure animal health and quality of feed while reducing land use. 

The right to safe and nutritious food  

We eat not only because we are hungry, but also to ensure that we receive the essential nutrients our organisms cannot produce themselves, such as vitamins that play an important role in keeping us healthy and energetic. Using biotechnology, we can produce these essential nutrients in a more sustainable way: for example, Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) can be produced through fermentation, moving from chemical synthesis to a biomanufacturing process requiring fewer resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  

Biotechnology supports the right to food from the very first moments of our lives, for example through the production of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). These are key components of human breast milk that support the development of a healthy immune system, improve gut health and reduce the risk of infection in infants. Though they are integral to the health of newborns, they are not typically included in baby formula as only produced by humans. However, biotechnology innovations now allow us to microbially produce HMOs at a larger scale, and therefore improve the nutrition of future generations from the very first food they consume. 

We often overlook that the right to food also encompasses the certainty that what sits on our shelves and what we feed our friends and family, is safe for consumption. In the European Union, we benefit from the safest food system in the world. A rigorous risk assessment process through the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) ensures that food products placed on the market are safe, so citizens can buy and eat without concern. 

The right to variety: the role of alternative proteins 

Modern biotechnology can not only improve the efficiency of our existing food production systems, but also bring forth new technologies which can add new sources of nutrition. 

For example, cultivated meat—grown from animal cells in bioreactors—has the potential to reduce the environmental footprint of meat production while maintaining the taste and texture that many consumers crave. Fermentation-derived dairy allows us to produce milk, cheese and other dairy products without animals and with a reduced environmental footprint. We can ensure variety and access to proteins across Europe by enabling better production, awareness of, and access to, all types of protein, from traditional livestock production to microbial fermentation and cultivated meat. 

As we celebrate World Food Day this year, it is important to remember that food security requires us to make best use of innovation. Biotechnology can help reduce costs and increase yields of our fields and livestock, ensure everyone receives the nutrients they need, and take better care of our planet to safeguard future generations’ access to safe, balanced, and delicious food.