OPINION
How our food system will be pushed to the limit in 2018
Mahni Ghorashi, a co-founder of Clear Labs, said this will be "a watershed year" for the industry as new technologies, processes and regulatory requirements change how food is made.
Mahni Ghorashi is the co-founder and CCO of Clear Labs, where he leads product, sales and marketing.
The food industry will experience some big shifts in 2018. Adoption of new processes and techniques, new technologies and new regulatory requirements are all going to challenge our current methods of creating new products, marketing those products and ensuring the safety from farm to table. The food industry needs to be prepared to adapt quickly and efficiently, especially as these changes will accelerate rapidly.
The past year has already set the table for these advancements. New technologies such as industrial Internet of Things and sensor data that propelled precision agriculture are being increasingly introduced further downstream in the food system. Blockchain technology promises to make supply chains more transparent and traceable. Targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) has allowed us to adapt to changing definitions of food and better ensure quality and identify risks in a more efficient and thorough way than ever before.
Innovation is impacting nearly every aspect of the food industry, and it’s no longer just startups that are disrupting the landscape. From Walmart’s blockchain initiative with IBMand Nestle’s efforts to tackle food waste to the many repercussions of Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods, major brands and retailers are taking big calculated risks when it comes to how we distribute, manufacture and market food. These programs are indicative of the level of ambition we as an industry must embrace to take on some of these challenges.
Regulation across the industry will necessarily see major shifts in the next year. The entire industry, from food safety professionals to manufacturers and retailers, have to drive regulation forward and be in conversation with new food bills on the horizon and the latest implementation of FSMA. But we have to have more than just food industry heavyweights in the conversation — technologists, consumers and those who represent the changing face of food are increasingly important.
It’s easy to feel threatened by this barrage of new technologies, new food developments and new distribution mechanisms, but food brands have an opportunity to positively influence the future if only we embrace it. Advancements like CRISPR-edited foods, new forms of protein and vertical farming — though still in their infancy — are here to stay.
CRISPR Has Arrived
CRISPR simultaneously represents a great challenge and great opportunity for the food industry. The groundbreaking technology, combined with an open regulatory environment, means that CRISPR is well on its way to disrupting agriculture and food, and quickly. What previously took 10 years to develop a new species can now happen in a single crop cycle.
Already scientists are using CRISPR to improve food safety by knocking out antibiotic resistance, to dramatically increase the shelf life of perishable foods, and even to develop entirely new products that taste better and have other desirable traits for consumers.
Of course, bioengineering food isn’t a new idea. We’ve been doing it for centuries through agricultural and animal breeding. CRISPR-based technologies substantially accelerate that process. It’s important, however, that we also recognize and address the many questions that CRISPR also precipitates for the industry.
For example, if CRISPR counts as GMO, do we need to revise our definition? What does it become? Right now, it’s defined as taking genetic material from one organism and inserting into another. What about gene swapping contained within one organism? The food industry as a whole has an opportunity and a responsibility to help convey the benefits and challenges of CRISPR-edited foods to the public, and lead the way in education and understanding.
Credit: Mahni Ghorashi
We also need to address how best to regulate CRISPR-edited foods, especially since we may not even know when something has been edited. How should we label it? More importantly, what needs to happen so we can detect CRISPR-edited foods in food safety and quality testing? Right now, NGS is currently the only way to detect these edits at sufficient scale.
Brands everywhere, regardless of stance, must start thinking about how they will approach and publicly talk about these issues over the next year and position themselves in relation to these coming changes in food with broad cultural implications.
New Foods From Beyond the Farm
New food sources will also begin to question our very definition of food.
As we face an increasing population and decrease in arable land, a climate that is increasingly hostile to agriculture and an overall lack of nutritional quality in the food we do produce, new food sources and production techniques are going to increase speed to market.
Technology is also helping drive these initiatives. We’re reaching a point where new resources such as algae can be grown at scale. Cellular agriculture is advancing rapidly. Insects can now be harvested at scale, and despite cultural barriers to adoption, are gaining traction as an alternative nutrition source.
Again, the food industry must be willing to take charge on proactively addressing the new considerations these products will inevitably create. How we regulate these foods – even talk about them – will be an increasingly important issue over the next year. How are we going to adapt our food systems to accommodate these new sources, and perhaps most importantly, how are we going to ensure the safety and quality across a rapidly changing supply chain?
Right now, there is really no clear indication about where the food industry as a whole stands on these issues. Now is the time to decide — before others make the decisions for us.
The New Farm To Table
Farm to table used to mean a small urban farm or regional grower building relationships and supply chains directly with consumers. The CSA model, by its nature, faces challenges of scale.
Now, the new farm to table movement will be supported by vertical farming, which promises year-round production and highly controlled environments. Likewise, demand from online food shopping, and the rise of drone delivery, will dramatically disrupt distribution.
The decline of traditional grocery stores is already taking place, and projected to hit a tipping point in the next decade.
As an industry, these distribution changes will force us to rethink how food makes it to consumers’ tables. 2018 will be an important year of testing, adjusting and implementing these new movements. An increasingly decentralized and distributed food system will necessarily shift the model, including decentralized approaches to food safety and monitoring.
2018: Are we Ready?
2018 will be a definitive year for how we begin addressing these changes. As an industry, we must commit to staying vigilant about keeping up with the latest developments. It will be increasingly important to not just lament the latest food bill, but rather get ahead of the changes and advocate for intelligent regulatory conversations and frameworks.The ability to adapt to new technology and even the messaging and positioning around these advancements, will define the future of food.
The industry will need to give food-safety systems room to adapt quickly. Upgrading old infrastructure will help prepare for the coming wave of new technology, and the reality that we are generating more food data than ever before. Greater access to more technology like NGS at more points in the food system will ensure quality and safety.
The industry will still need factory workers, microbiologists and traditional positions, but there will be a hiring demand for technologists. Food is going increasingly digital, and data science, computer vision, robotics and bioinformaticians are going to be an increasingly big story in our food system.
2018 will be a watershed year for the food industry, and present a massive opportunity to optimize and scale how we feed the world’s populations. The future of food depends on it.
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