Brussels, Biotech & The Food Future: Inside EIT Food’s Next Bite and Europe’s Push to Build a Coherent Agrifood Bioeconomy

Brussels has long been the political heart of Europe. This week, it becomes the centre of something more, a testbed for the continent’s food future. On 15–16 October, the city’s Gare Maritime hosts Next Bite 2025, the flagship event of EIT Food, bringing together innovators, investors, researchers, and policymakers determined to reshape how Europe feeds itself.

At stake is far more than a new wave of startups. Next Bite represents Europe’s most visible step yet toward building a coherent, competitive agrifood biotechnology ecosystem, one capable of balancing sustainability, food security, and citizen trust in an era defined by climate disruption and geopolitical uncertainty.

Supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, EIT Food’s mission has always been clear: to make Europe’s food system healthy, sustainable, and resilient. But through Next Bite, that mission is being reframed around one of the EU’s top four “critical technologies”, biotechnology, and its potential to drive the next phase of agrifood transformation.

From Fragmentation to Framework: The European Agrifood Biotech Alliance

This year’s edition of Next Bite marks the launch of the European Agrifood Biotech Alliance, a major initiative designed to link the dots across Europe’s fragmented innovation landscape.

For years, European biotech excellence has been distributed across national boundaries, thriving in research labs but struggling to reach commercial scale. Regulatory fragmentation, investment gaps, and uneven consumer acceptance have slowed progress. The new Alliance aims to change that.

“The Alliance will help build a competitive, sustainable and resilient European biotech future, uniting the stakeholders of the agrifood biotech ecosystem,” said Lorena Savani, Director of Thematic Leadership, Biotech and Protein at EIT Food. “We’re connecting the full value chain, from science to citizens, to make sure biotechnology contributes meaningfully to health, sustainability, and food security.”

Set to officially launch in January 2026, the Alliance will act as both a convening platform and policy engine. Its fourfold strategy includes:

• Building a leading ecosystem: Connecting research institutions, industry leaders, policymakers, and startups to accelerate collaboration.

• Advocacy and influence: Working with EU institutions and industry bodies to shape coherent biotech policy and drive regulatory alignment.

• Driving innovation and growth: Supporting education, entrepreneurship, and funding mechanisms for biotech ventures.

• Developing a Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda: Establishing a unified public–private roadmap to guide long-term investment and industrial development.

By creating this collaborative infrastructure, EIT Food hopes to solve one of Europe’s most persistent paradoxes: world-class research that often fails to reach the market. “Europe has the science,” added Savani, “but to translate discovery into delivery, we need scale, skills, and supportive policy. The Alliance will help Europe move from islands of excellence to a connected ecosystem.”

A Bioeconomy on the Rise

The potential prize is enormous. The EU bioeconomy already accounts for 8.5% of total employment, a figure expected to nearly triple to 24% by 2030 as new technologies drive the shift toward biomanufacturing, advanced fermentation, and sustainable materials.

EIT Food sees this as an opportunity not only to modernize industry but to redefine what work in the food sector looks like, integrating biotechnologists, data scientists, and sustainability experts into what was once a purely agricultural domain.

Next Bite’s lineup showcases this transition in motion. Startups such as Change Bio, Koppie, and Biodairy Labs are reimagining the future of protein diversification and functional ingredients. Change Bio is developing precision-fermented fats for better-tasting alternative proteins, Koppie is building microbial coffee analogues, and Biodairy Labs is producing animal-free dairy proteins. Together, they represent a new industrial paradigm for circular, low-impact food production, exactly the kind of innovation the Alliance aims to scale across Europe.

Policy in Motion: The European Biotech Act

The idea of an overarching EU Biotech Act is increasingly viewed as essential if Europe is to compete in biology-driven innovation. Under current conditions, biotechnology, agriculture, environmental and genetic legislation are split across a patchwork of laws, often divergent across member states.

In March 2024, the European Commission issued its Communication on Boosting Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing, diagnosing these bottlenecks and proposing actions to streamline the regulatory environment and catalyse investment. In June 2025, the European Parliament followed with a resolution urging a coherent biotech regime, simplified approvals, and regulatory sandboxes to test innovation safely. By mid-2025, the Commission had launched a public call for evidence to inform the Act’s impact assessment, with a full legislative proposal expected in late 2026.

Designing a Biotech Act that is both enabling and responsible will require balancing a set of structural tensions:

• Innovation vs. precaution: Encouraging adaptive regulation while maintaining strong biosafety and ethical safeguards.

• Harmonization vs. subsidiarity: Balancing EU-wide alignment with national prerogatives and local contexts.

• Data governance and biosecurity: Integrating life sciences innovation with privacy and dual-use oversight.

• Access to capital and scaling: Ensuring regulation is matched with funding mechanisms that de-risk investment and enable industrial capacity.

• Public legitimacy: Building societal trust through transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability.

Courtesy: Gourmay

Building the Architecture of a Bioeconomy

The Alliance’s launch aligns with a broader European industrial policy shift: to formalize biotechnology as a pillar of the Green Deal and the European Industrial Strategy.

The STEP platform (Strategic Technologies for Europe) now unifies eleven EU programmes to direct investment toward biotech and other strategic fields. The forthcoming European Competitiveness Fund, part of the next EU budget (2028–2034), will channel billions into biotechnology, AI, and clean industry. Meanwhile, the new EU Biotech & Biomanufacturing Hub, launched in 2025, provides a one-stop interface for innovators scaling production.

Funding instruments are already expanding. In July 2025, the European Commission announced an additional €350 million for biomanufacturing and fermentation, part of a summer drive to make Europe a “food innovation powerhouse.” This follows €250 million allocated earlier in the year for cross-sector life sciences technologies, underscoring a shift from research excellence to industrial execution.

Together, these measures form the backbone of a cohesive, continent-wide bioeconomy — one that matches innovation with infrastructure.

Citizens at the Crossroads of Change

If the Biotech Act is Europe’s blueprint, the Consumer Observatory’s new report provides the human lens.

Europeans are divided but curious about biotechnology’s role in food. Nearly 43% of respondents are open to precision-fermented dairy, and 35% to cultivated meat. Yet acceptance drops sharply for genetically altered (26%) or 3D-printed foods (23%). Younger and more educated citizens show greater openness, while scepticism remains strongest in France (52%) and Greece (56%), reflecting the weight of cultural and agricultural identity.

Consumers, the report reveals, are not rejecting biotechnology itself but the perception of inequity and misuse. Concerns include corporate dominance, lack of transparency, and a fear that lab-based production will detach food from nature. As the report notes:

“Consumers are not rejecting biotechnology itself, but the uncertainty and potential for misuse. The challenge lies in ensuring that innovation is fair, transparent, and accountable.”

Interestingly, citizens placed the greatest responsibility for change on governments, not corporations, signalling strong public expectation for EU leadership.

“This report provides vital insights into how consumers perceive the EU Biotech Act and what it means for the future of our food system,” said Savani. “At EIT Food, we believe biotechnology can play a transformative role in driving food innovation, strengthening climate resilience, and improving global health outcomes. Public trust and engagement are essential to unlocking this potential.”

The Global Race for Biomanufacturing

Europe’s renewed momentum comes amid a reordering of global biotech priorities.

In the United States, the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative launched in 2022 set an ambitious plan to scale domestic bioproduction. However, in 2025, the program’s trajectory shifted following political changes in Washington, marked by federal research funding cuts and a renewed emphasis on biosecurity over innovation. The U.S. remains a leader in private investment and technical capacity but faces growing uncertainty in long-term public support.

Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific is surging ahead. Singapore, through its Future Ready Food Systems programme and national biomanufacturing roadmap, continues to attract global players in precision fermentation and cell-based food, supported by the Singapore Food Agency’s clear regulatory pathway. In Australia, a government-backed National Biomanufacturing Strategy outlines over A$1 billion in investment toward scaling sustainable materials and alternative protein production. Japan, too, has expanded funding for microbial and enzyme-based innovation, linking biotech to decarbonisation goals.

In the Middle East, countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are investing in bio-based industries as part of their economic diversification agendas. Food Tech Vallies initiatives and the UAE’s BioEconomy 2031 Strategy both aim to position the region as a hub for synthetic biology and precision fermentation for food and materials.

In this shifting landscape, Europe’s differentiator may be governance. Its integration of innovation, ethics, and citizen participation could become its competitive advantage, a model for responsible biotech where transparency and trust are built into growth.

Trust as the Currency of Transformation

For Next Bite to be more than a showcase, several conditions must align. Funding mechanisms must expand beyond pilots; the Agrifood Biotech Alliance must quickly operationalize; and the Biotech Act must strike a balance between agility and oversight. Just as importantly, education and citizen participation must evolve alongside innovation, not trail behind it.

EIT Food is already moving in that direction. Its Biotech Innovation Call, open through November 2025, targets downstream processing and real-time monitoring projects to accelerate industrial readiness. These demand-driven initiatives, paired with European-scale policy alignment, could form the backbone of a resilient and equitable biotech future.

But ultimately, success will hinge on trust. Citizens must view biotech not as a disruption, but as a partnership, a tool for food sovereignty and sustainability, not corporate dominance. “Europe can lead the next generation of food innovation if it builds bridges between science, citizens, and systems,” says Savani.

A Blueprint for a Shared Future

As Next Bite 2025 unfolds, Europe’s food biotech ambitions are crystallizing into structure. The European Agrifood Biotech Alliance provides the ecosystem. The Biotech Act delivers the legal framework. And the Consumer Observatory captures the social pulse. Together, they form a new triangle of alignment, innovation, regulation, and participation.

The question now is one of implementation: how to turn coherence into capability, and capability into impact. If Europe succeeds, biotech won’t just reinvent how food is made; it will redefine how innovation is governed by trust, collaboration, and the belief that technology must serve both people and the planet.

Next Bite 2025 may be remembered as the moment Europe stopped asking whether it could lead the global food biotech revolution, and began proving how.