The Industry Futures Forum, hosted by the NZ Food Safety Science & Research Centre (NZFSSRC) at Massey University on Tuesday 18th November, brought together regulators, researchers, industry and Māori experts to explore how Aotearoa New Zealand can maintain high food safety standards while adapting to climate change, emerging technologies and shifting global markets. The event highlighted New Zealand’s positioning as a premium, high-trust agrifood exporter and examined how regulatory science, intelligence, and innovation can support safe deployment of novel foods and cell-cultured products alongside traditional agriculture. Dr Ned Treacher from Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland attended the forum, and a brief summary of his notes is included below.
Intelligence, innovation and food standards (Matt O’Mullane, FSANZ)
[High-level session on how regulatory science and intelligence are used to design proportionate, future‑proof food standards, with a case study on cell‑cultured foods in the FSANZ system.]
Matt O’Mullane, General Manager of the Food Safety Branch at FSANZ, has over 25 years’ experience across Australian government agencies, including a decade at FSANZ and roles covering human health risk analysis, food, chemicals, pesticides, veterinary medicines, GMOs, Codex work, and chairing FSANZ’s Advisory Committee on Novel Foods. His session explained FSANZ’s statutory role under the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991, its risk-analysis-based decision-making, and how “minimum effective regulation” is used to protect public health while enabling innovation in areas such as novel and cell‑cultured foods.
Key insights:
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FSANZ’s role in novel food regulation: FSANZ focuses on public health protection, information provision and preventing misleading conduct, and is not legally required to consider economic, environmental or social factors, which keeps its assessments tightly centred on food safety risk analysis for novel foods and cultivated products.
- Intelligence-gathering: VIBE (Vigilance & Intelligence Before food issues Emerge) complements formal data by scanning early signals from networks, categorising them (trending, emerged, or established) and deciding whether to monitor, advise, research or review, which is particularly important for rapidly evolving areas like cellular agriculture. Early intelligence from 2018 prompted FSANZ to initially plan to use the generic novel foods pathway, but delays before the first application created space to understand unique risks across the full cultivated meat production chain (cell line, culture, biomass and finished food).
New foods case study: cell‑cultured/cultivated foods (within FSANZ session)
[Focused case study on how FSANZ developed dedicated standards for cell‑cultured foods, illustrating a risk‑based, staged regulatory response to an emerging category of novel foods.]
Within his main talk, Matt O’Mullane detailed the regulatory trajectory for cultivated foods, beginning with informal intelligence in 2018 through to the first full pre‑market assessment for cultured quail (Vow) in 2023, subsequent consultation rounds, and final board approval in 2025. Recognising that cell‑cultured products have distinctive hazard profiles and production systems compared with other novel foods, FSANZ chose to build a unique end‑to‑end regulatory framework rather than simply adjusting existing novel food provisions. This approach led to dedicated standards that cover cell line, tissue culture, biomass and final food products, an approach more closely aligned with primary production meat safety frameworks.
Key insights:
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New standards for cell‑cultured foods: Standard 1.5.4 for definitions, Standard 3.4.1 for food safety requirements, and Schedule 25A for permitted products. Development of these standards required a lengthy, data-driven process (including multiple public submission rounds), but this work is expected to significantly accelerate future applications while providing clear regulatory expectations for developers. These end-to-end controls align cell-cultured foods more closely with primary production than with generic novel foods.
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Future-proofing regulation: The session stressed that taking time to design robust, future‑proof standards at the outset reduces long‑term regulatory friction and gives clearer expectations to innovators, ultimately speeding future approvals and supporting safe scaling of cell‑based foods.
Panel discussion on standards, innovation and cellular agriculture
[Multi-speaker panel linking trade, standards alignment, misinformation and cellular agriculture to the resilience of food safety systems and public trust.]
The panel brought together economist Shamubeel Eaqub, agritech strategist Kelly Newton, food safety scientist Nigel French, FSANZ regulator Matt O’Mullane, and industry representative Catherine Richardson, integrating perspectives from markets, science, regulation and industry practice. Their discussion emphasised that multinational companies and cross-jurisdictional standards (including Codex and trans‑Tasman harmonisation) shape how high food safety bars are set globally, and explored how cultivated foods intersect with social licence, Te Ao Māori values, and public engagement.
Key insights:
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Adopt consistent international standards: Multinationals often adopt the highest applicable international standards, which tends to raise food safety baselines across markets. In turn, when jurisdictions like Australia and New Zealand adopt high-quality aligned standards, this reduces the costs involved with with the localisation of industry.
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Regulation and misinformation: The panel highlighted that regulators follow markets but must also proactively address misinformation and disinformation about new technologies (including cellular agriculture) before crises arise, as eroding state capacity and social cohesion can undermine trust in risk-based standards.
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Public opinion and regulation: FSANZ’s mandate excludes explicit economic, environmental or social benefit tests, but public opinion (e.g. concerns about labelling, GMOs and values) is still gathered and shared with other agencies, underscoring that food safety assessments sit within a wider governance ecosystem.
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Māori stakeholders and cell-based agriculture: Perspectives within Te Ao Māori may view some forms of cellular agriculture as harmful to the natural world, and it was noted that engagement must go beyond procedural “consultation” and instead grapple with underlying value frameworks, critical for social licence in relation to novel and cell‑based foods.
The summary above was generated from manually transcribed notes using Perplexity AI. The generated output was then proofread and lightly edited to ensure accuracy and clarity.