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Special Report
Stimulating Research and Innovation for the Food Industry

http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/63530.htm

That is the goal of Food For Life, the European platform and its French chapter Food For Life France. Launched by ANIA and ACTIA, Food For Life France is tasked to strengthen innovation in the food industry nationwide. Chaired by Patrice Robichon, Scientific Advisor to Pernod Ricard CEO and the group's sustainable development delegate, the French platform has set five challenges to meet, which will be tackled by working parties that are being put together.

The European food industry platform Food For Life was set up in 2005. "It is a European initiative stemming from the large R & D framework programs. Each industry was urged to organize so that it could discuss the content of the programs with the European Commission," Patrice Robichon explained. Food For Life, which has no legal structure, brings together international experts from all EU Member States that have close ties with the European food industry, represented by the Confederation of the Food and Drinks Industry of the EU (CIAA), which is the backbone for the informal platform. Drafting a document called 'Strategic Research Agenda' was Food for Life's first undertaking. This advanced form of brainstorming for the medium term led to the definition of several major challenges that European research will have to meet over the next ten years, so that it can back the development of food industry businesses facing international competition.

Virtually All the Industry Stakeholders

If the forward-planning exercise were to be 100% effective, each EU Member State had to have a local platform. Thus in the wake of, Italy, the first country to embark on this adventure, France, backed by ANIA and ACTIA, began to define its own platform in 2007 and set it up in the autumn of 2008. Today the platform brings together representatives of the industry, industry technical centers, the four major public research organizations (INRA,CNRS, CEMAGREF and CIRAD), three ministries (Research, Industry, and Food-Agriculture-Fisheries), funding agencies OSEO and ANR, consumer organizations, large retailing group representatives, and 12 of the 13 food industry competitive clusters. Since then, based on the Food For Life Strategic Research Agenda, Food for Life France has defined its own agenda with five challenges,"taking into account our national features and incorporating France's food values," explained Patrice Robichon.

The first challenge involves a consumer study. "The object is to gain a firmer grasp on consumer behavior so that consumers become more involved in promoting and adopting special food diets that will keep them healthy," said the Food For Life President. The second challenge will be to gain a better understanding of the ties between food and health, in other words, the diet and the person following the diet. "We lack tools in this field, specifically large cohorts such as the ones the pharmaceutical industry uses." The third challenge focuses on innovation. The goal is to develop food products that meet consumer expectations, i.e., healthy, safe, tasty, easy-to-use and environmentally safe products. "The goal is to clear the way for the emergence of a concept for the control of food quality engineering," he said. The fourth challenge addresses food safety that must be ensured and strengthened to buttress consumers' trust in French products, thus an integrated approach was adopted. The fifth and last challenge has set a goal of attaining a sustainable system of food production, in other words ensuring the durability of food production.

Three Challenges Detailed in Programs

Food For Life France is already tackling three out of the five agenda challenges, i.e., 'Health, Well-being and Longevity', 'Consumer trust in the food chain', 'Sustainable and ethical production'. "We have decided to put together working parties on the three topics, but this absolutely does not mean that we are not going to work on the other topics. Simply put, we had to make choices," stated Patrice Robichon. The different working parties that are now being put together will have the task of turning the three challenges into programs, prefiguring European calls for tenders and of building the consortiums required to meet the challenges. The first step will be to identify the most efficient, French or European, research teams.

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Food For Life France - Patrice Robichon - email: patrice.robichon@pernod-ricard.com

Code brève
ADIT : 63530

ADIT - Jean-François Desessard - email: jfd@adit.fr

eTech France numéro 242 (2/06/2010) - ADIT / ADIT - http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/63530.htm