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Reducing food waste over the next decade is critical for addressing global food insecurity, minimizing environmental harm, and promoting more sustainable food systems. Through my daily work I know that a lot of research is going on within this field, says Senior forskare/Rättslig expert Kristina Andersson at RISE.

We have asked her to tell us briefly about herself, what makes her think MICROORC is so important, what work is to be done in the work package she leads and what impact she imagines the project will have.

Kristina Andersson is leading Work Package 6: Regulation and policy recommendations, which investigates the legal space relevant for MICROORC solutions and prototypes for shelf life extension and evaluate these in a regulatory perspective.

Can you present yourself and your company?

Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE) is owned by the Swedish state and has more than 3 000 employees. Our purpose is to help sustainable innovation thrive. We work closely with academia, industry and the public sector to make this happen, both national and international. To find the sweet spot of innovation you need three legs. One is feasibility (technology), next one is desirability (happy customers), and the last one is viability. Viability is about the business model, but it also includes policy and regulation. If you invent something that is forbidden to sell, your innovation will not survive. My work at RISE is in this third leg. My colleagues and I investigate the legal space for the innovation.  Maybe we can use existing legislation but think about it differently, maybe we need new legislation to make the innovation going? To my help I have a Policy Lab where we use design thinking to figure out what is needed.

How and why did you join the MICROORC adventure?

RISE is involved in many activities connected to Farm to Fork. This research project fits well into our daily business.      I have a law degree but also an agronomy degree. I’m extra thrilled if a project can involve both my areas of expertise. I was very happy then Nofima reached out to me.

Can you explain the work that will be carried out in your Work Package?

In MicroOrc we will explore three different streams what in the end will merge into one. The first one is about food culture and fermentates. So far food culture and fermentates have no legislation of their own. Instead, they are regulated by the general food law regulation. But what will happen if they get a legislation of their own? The second one is about dynamic date marking. Today the regulation states that all date marks are static with a printed date on the packaging. What if we instead use smart sensors what can measure how suitable the food is for consumption and tell the consumer?  To make this happen you need to change the regulation. The third one is about packaging and labelling. A lot of new regulation is coming down the pipeline regarding packaging and labelling. How will this new legislations affects our project? It includes for example sustainable food labelling.

What is your vision on reducing food waste for the next 10 years?

Reducing food waste over the next decade is critical for adressing global food insecurity, minimizing environmental harm, and promoting more sustainable food systems. Through my daily work I know that a lot of research is going on within this field. It is i.e. about using data better and smarter to monitor food production and food consumption, predict demands more accurately and optimize storage conditions. It is also about consumer education and behavioral change. In my research field regulation I see many new regulation coming what will enter into forece within this decade. It will be very interesting to follow the implementation into daily life of all this new regulations and hopefully we will have a more sustainable food system in the end.

What is your ambitions for MICROORC?

RISE core competence is to help innovation thrives. I hope that my colleagues and I can contribute to this by participating in this project.