sutton044

In her last post on patentable food tech, this Kat considered recent innovations in the field of animal protein substitutes . Whilst the development of meat substitutes for meat lovers is a laudable aim, innovations such as the Impossible Burger are directed at the relatively affluent consumer. The theme of this year's World Food Day was #zerohunger. This is also  Goal 2 of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, according to whic h "[a] profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed if we are to nourish the 815 million people who are hungry today and the additional 2 billion people expected to be undernourished by 2050".  This Kat thus turns her attention to another type of meat substitute that has the potential to meet this challenge: edible insects. As highlighted in a  UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report in 2013 , insect eating (entophagy) has many potential benefits, both for the individual and society. Insects have a high pro...

In the first of her posts on food innovation in celebration  of  World Food Day   this Kat indulges her foodie tendencies and  mulls over the fascinating  field of food inventions.  It may come as a surprise  to some that it is possible to patent food products and methods of food manufacture.  Provided the product or method is new, non-obvious and has a technical effect, it is perfectly possible  that it is patentable subject matter.   Successfully  changing the characteristics of a food product can represent a significant technical achievement and years of investment in  research  and development.  However, protecting a product using trade secrets (in the manner of the KFC fried chicken recipe)   does not  prevent someone else independently  developing an equivalent food product or recipe .   M any food c ompanies have thus turned to patents for IP protection. EP3243392: Past...