In Europe, a vast diversity of high quality foods provide the carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals and vitamins needed in the everyday diet of consumers. At the heart of food production is biotechnology. One aspect of biotechnology which has been used for centuries is the selective breeding of crop plants and farm animals to produce improved food. Another is fermentation, in use for millennia to produce fermented foods like cheese, bread, beer, sauerkraut and sausages.

The first use of gene technology two decades ago opened up the potential for many additional advances in both selective breeding and fermentation. Each specific step forward might be relatively small, but together they could add up to further improvements in the nutritional quality, appearance, flavour, convenience, cost and safety of foods.

Better raw materials ...

In improving raw food materials, many plant breeding programmes have been directed towards boosting yield or allowing more environmentally compatible agriculture by increasing the resistance of crops to viruses, pests or herbicides. Increasing yield has clear benefits in helping to feed the world's ever-increasing population and could provide cheaper food. Plants which are resistant to attack by insect pests and diseases would need fewer pesticide applications; resistant crops such as maize, tomatoes and potatoes are already being developed. Crops have also been produced with tolerance to modern, more environmentally compatible herbicides, with the aim of achieving optimal weed control with reduced levels of herbicide.

Today, there is increasing interest in improving the nutritional value, flavour and texture of raw materials. This could help encourage greater fruit and vegetable consumption in line with government guidelines on healthy nutrition.

Research underway at present aims to allow the production of better food raw materials by crop plants. However, some processing steps remain essential to bridge the gap between currently-available raw materials and the desired end-product.

Traditional biotechnology has played a major role in producing fermented foods - where desirable changes are produced by the action of micro-organisms or enzymes - of which over 3,500 different types exist around the world. In Europe and North America, bread, yoghurt and cheese are perhaps most familiar. In Africa, foods made from fermented starch crops like yams and cassava are more important, whereas in Asia, products derived from fermented soya beans or fish predominate.

Fermentation can make the food more nutritious, tastier or easier to digest, and it can enhance food safety. It also helps to preserve food and to increase its shelf-life, reducing the need for additives. Genetically improved strains of microbes can make a major contribution to these desirable properties.

For many years, a wide range of additives, processing aids and supplements have been obtained from microbial sources by fermentation. Increasingly, modern biotechnology is being used here. Products include vitamins, citric acid, natural colourings, flavourings, gums and enzymes. Gums used as low-calorie thickening agents and low-calorie sweeteners from natural ingredients are also produced using modern biotechnology. Enzymes (see separate background paper) - the naturally-occurring catalysts responsible for literally all the biochemical processes of life - are used in applications such as bakery and cheese making to improve texture, appearance and nutritional value, and to generate desirable flavours and aromas.

A second area where biotechnology has advantages is in improving the processes by which food is produced. Here, it can be used to develop mild, highly specific processes using modified micro-organisms and purer, cheaper enzyme products. These can offer better productivity, cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency than existing processes. They can produce top-quality foods with a reduced need for additives such as flavourings, and can also reduce the environmental impact of food processing.

Biotechnology is any technique which uses living organisms or their components to make or modify products, to improve plants or animals or to develop micro-organisms for special uses.
Source: OECD

Gene technology - a definition

Gene technology includes any technique for the controlled modification or transfer of genes from one organisms to another to give a desired characteristic