CA24132 - Accelerating Innovation and Development of European Microbial Foods (Mic2Food)

With the rapid population growth, demand for food is quickly increasing and meeting protein supply requirements is becoming a global problem. Plant proteins have been proposed as alternatives to animal proteins, but their production needs big extensions of arable land and demands huge volumes of freshwater which results in considerable environmental issues. A promising solution are microbial protein for food and feed applications.

This COST action, entitled Accelerating Innovation and Development of European Microbial Foods (Mic2Food), aims to facilitate the development of new microbial foods for the European market. Mic2Food will create a unique network with a balanced geographic distribution to tackle scientific and technological challenges to make microbial food substitutes a reality. Collectively, Mic2Food aims to:

(1) isolate and identify new, non-pathogenic microorganisms with desired properties for their application as microbial foods, including their protein content and lipid composition, and micronutrient content, and optimise their production properties in line with food regulations.
(2) develop and upscale their production processes from lab scale over pilot scale to industrial scale.
(3) establish downstream processing (DSP) (e.g. removal of RNA) and formulations to produce appealing products that can be commercialised.
(4) monitor regulatory changes for microbial food and facilitate commercialisation of microbial food products in Europe and worldwide.
(5) quantify the nutritional and mechanical properties of the microbial strains and food products in a standardised way throughout the development.
(6) accelerate the translation from academic research to tangible products through close collaboration with established industrial partners.