The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has published a summary of the findings of a recent foresight technical meeting on new food sources and production systems, which took place November 13–17, 2023 in Rome, Italy. The objective of the meeting was to evaluate the food safety issues associated with plant-based food products, new applications of precision fermentation, and 3D food printing, as well as to illustrate, through a foresight exercise, the possible future landscape of new foods and production systems.
As explained by experts from FAO’s Food Systems and Food Safety Division in an article written for Food Safety Magazine’s December 2022/January 2023 issue, “Foresight is an approach that comprises forward-looking methodologies that allow taking structured, medium- to long-term views of the future to appropriately guide present-day decision-making. Foresight does not predict the future, however. The fundamental thought process behind foresight is acknowledging that the roots of multiple plausible future scenarios exist today in the form of early signs.”