Empowering a fair and responsible European FoodRegister, fostering citizen sovereignty and creating a data-driven food system.

ended

The overall goal of our project is to achieve trust in a data-driven food system by implementing Digital Responsibility Goals for the food sector. This will enable new levels of innovation for example in food safety, sustainability, personalized nutrtion, reduction of food waste and fair conditions throughout the entire food chain. The programme works on a clear strategic roadmap (a new virtual food system), a set technological enablers, demonstration of solutions, a structured funding programme with open calls, and measures to guide and support the food ecosystem of third party beneficiaries, citizens, stakeholders. As a consortium, we maintain the perspective that technology is not a means to an end, but acts merely as an empowering enabler, providing the means to achieve a wide variety of innovative and valuable use cases. Use cases that promise to serve a broader audience, provided that adequate access also is considered as a prerequisite. Currently however, technology is primarily developed from the perspective and needs of corporations and / or authorities- a limitation that risks perpetuating or further exacerbating the above-mentioned lack of trust within the markets that they serve. With a more diverse and human-centric driven perspective we believe the new use cases that will emerge and the technology development required to realise them will contribute to a more sustainable ecosystem that is “trustworthy by default”. To truly design for trust, the entire chain of activities and underlying assumptions towards developing technology has to be based on fundamental values like responsibility, privacy and user control - especially when dealing with valuable and sensitive food data. The starting point of all assumptions needs to be the user and their values - not a business model or (legitimate) state interests.