Against this background, it is important to address existing problems related to research funding in order to move Europe forward, particularly in the area of Food Safety, and to strengthen public confidence and public health on a sustained level.

FSOLab 2 applies a “Social Lab” approach and targets a specific Food Safety issue, as described above. In general, Social Labs are aimed at addressing complex societal challenges with the involvement of various experts and stakeholders. FSOLabs provide space for practical experimentation in a real-world setting without following standardized planning guidelines and without knowing exactly how to proceed. Social Labs can be understood as a continuous process and a living system that habitually operates in learning cycles. In other words, based on the data collected during the execution of an experiment, called a “pilot action”, pilot ideas are tested, refined, and constantly progressed, to be tested over and over again.

Under the umbrella theme “Alignment of European Food Safety Research by simplification of funding processes”, the following three pilot actions have been identified:

Pilot Action No. 1:

Development of an approach for matching the needs of different/two specific actors such as researchers & industry/funders (in a country or region) for selected Food Safety funding call topics.

Pilot Action No. 2:

Development of a set of recommendations (e.g., policy paper) based on a best practice analysis for more effective Food Safety research funding. As a baseline, countries with a “less mature” Food Safety funding system shall be compared to “more” developed countries allowing beneficial practices to be communicated and transferred from one country (or region) to another.

Pilot Action No. 3:

Drafting a hybrid public/private funding program, with the intention of setting up a new & innovative Food Safety funding program (e.g. crowdfunding) with multi-stakeholder interaction in selected countries.