Food for life promotes European manufacturing
The EUfood4life project was a European Technology Platform (ETP) for the agro-food sector. It was created under the auspices of the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU (CIAA) and followed the principles set out in the Lisbon Strategy. The ETP Food for Life was established to help consolidate Europe’s leading position in world markets through the creation of high quality and innovative products. The EU-funded initiative promoted innovation and helped stakeholders to address key challenges by encouraging new approaches and improving knowledge transfer and competitiveness. Stakeholders, who included consumers, food-related industries, researchers, regulators and policymakers, developed a vision for 2020. The aim of this was to deliver new processes, products and tools that met the needs and expectations of the consumer. Project partners promoted innovation in the food chain using an approach that supported the needs of food companies and both high-tech and low-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The interests of stakeholders were addressed through national consultations and the dissemination of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) and Implementation Action Plan (IAP). following its establishment, the ETP Food for Life has developed strong links with industry, academia and researchers. This has helped in the identification and prioritisation of resources plus non-research issues that need to be addressed in order to encourage innovation and competitiveness across the food chain. In this way the initiative has enabled the EU food and drink sector to improve its global competitiveness.
