Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland publish latest package of guidance to support innovative food businesses

The guidance covers regulatory authorisation and the assessment of growth media components and toxicology. Together, they give innovative food businesses clearer, more detailed advice on how existing food regulations apply to cell-cultivated products, helping them prepare stronger applications and understand the standards they must meet to bring products safely to market in Great Britain.

Dr Thomas Vincent, Deputy Director of Innovation, FSA, said: 

Each batch of guidance we publish makes the path to market authorisation clearer and more predictable for companies developing cell-cultivated products, while ensuring consumer safety remains at the core of everything we do. Through the Sandbox programme, we’re building a shared understanding of how food regulations apply to genuinely novel products, and turning that understanding into practical guidance the whole sector can benefit from.

The regulatory authorisation guidance sets out how the regulated products framework applies to cell-cultivated products, including how to handle changes to an authorised product. The growth media and toxicology guidance gives detailed scientific direction on assessing safety hazards linked to growth media components, supporting businesses preparing dossiers for regulatory review.  

This is the third batch of guidance to come from the Sandbox Programme, which launched in February 2025 and runs until February 2027. Through the programme, the FSA and FSS work directly with businesses to build regulatory understanding of these products, using the insight gained to produce practical guidance for the wider sector.  

In addition to the Sandbox guidance, the FSA has recently published research on cell-cultivated products, including a review of analytical methods for cell-cultivated products and how genetic drift can impact the safety of cell-cultivated products. This will be useful to applicants considering the evidence to include in their market authorisation application.