Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department is taking steps to ensure that the UK is able to compete effectively in the international alternative protein market.

The Government has no formal plans to assess the merits of increasing investment into the UK alternative protein sector, or the merits of providing research and development on plant-based and cultivated meat alternatives. However, we do recognise that developing this sector could support UK growth and are making significant investment to unlock innovation and use our world-leading research across agriculture and food innovation to improve productivity, environmental sustainability and resilience, to move towards net zero emission farming systems.

We have several funding programmes open to industry as well as our own farming and food science research. These funding streams address key areas such as soil systems and land management, regenerative agriculture, sustainable feed and pest management, automation, alternative proteins, and precision farming.

As stated in the Government’s Food Strategy, through funding we will support progress on a wide range of issues, including alternative proteins and progress on gene editing. We will also work with the Food Standards Agency to develop dedicated guidance materials for approval of new alternative protein products while reviewing our novel food regulations. This will ensure they are transparent for innovators and investors, whilst maintaining world-leading consumer safety standards.