Food research programmes need to think small

European food research programmes need to be far more relevant to smaller companies to reverse the EU’s declining share of world exports, a leading academic has claimed.

Brian McKenna, emeritus professor of food science at University College Dublin, criticised research programmes for paying lip service to small manufacturing enterprise (SME) involvement in projects, which tended to be “nominal” at best. He was speaking at last week’s Confederation of Food Industries of the EU (CIAA) congress in Brussels.

“This is one of the very big problems we face in Europe,” said McKenna. “We really do need a radical change in our policies.” However, he welcomed the European Technology Platform’s Food for Life programme for being “industry driven” in its objectives.

McKenna called for future projects to focus more on the types of near market food products relevant to SMEs, rather than primarily on pre-competitive research of little interest to many small firms. “We need to move to more near market research in our public programmes,” he said. “We are all going to have to be innovative in the way we involve SMEs in our research programmes … If we can then we have a bright future for the European food industry.”

He reminded his audience that the EU’s food manufacturing sector was highly fragmented and made up of many SMEs. He also hit out at the “abysmally low level” of research and development (R&D) spending by food businesses in the EU compared with other sectors such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

Much of the investment in R&D is health focused rather than industry focused, McKenna complained. While this was understandable, he added, it did not always help the food industry to develop.