HOLiFOOD 3rd Cross-Fertilization Workshop: from project results to uptake pathways

Veronica Lattanzio, Nathan Meijer, Ine van der Fels-Klerx, Sara Altamore, Alessia Careccia

The third HOLiFOOD Cross-Fertilization Workshop, held in Wageningen, The Netherlands on June 9, 2026, marked the final step in a structured stakeholder engagement process designed to connect project results with real-world application. Building on previous activities (1st and 2nd cross-fertilization workshops), this workshop focused on consolidating insights, validating feasibility, and identifying actionable pathways for the uptake of HOLiFOOD outcomes.

The workshop was developed in collaboration with the EU Food Safety Platform, which contributed to both the design of the participatory exercise and the mobilisation of experts, supporting a broad and high-level participation of stakeholders from across the food safety ecosystem.

Over the course of the project, HOLiFOOD has developed and tested innovative approaches to improve the integrated food safety risk analysis in Europe to support the early detection of food risks in the food chain. These efforts focused on two key areas:

· AI-based tools for early risk detection and prediction, enabling a shift from reactive to proactive risk assessment

· Holistic risk–benefit assessment frameworks, supporting integrated decision-making across health, environmental, and socio-economic dimensions

The developed tools and approaches were iteratively refined through stakeholder engagement and hands-on experimentation in living labs. The third cross-fertilization workshop aimed to move beyond validation of individual tools, focusing instead on how these results can be realistically transferred, reused, and sustained beyond the project context.

Participants were invited to reflect on several key dimensions:

· Positioning within the current food safety landscape, assessing whether HOLiFOOD results complement, overlap with, or fill gaps in existing European and international initiatives

· Entry points for uptake, identifying where implementation is most feasible (e.g. scientific community, regulatory agencies, policy processes, or operational settings)

· Conditions for implementation, highlighting key enablers such as data access, interoperability, institutional mandates, trust, transparency, and capacity building

· Boundaries of applicability, clarifying in which contexts these approaches may not yet be suitable, in order to ensure realistic expectations and avoid overgeneralisation

A central component of the workshop was dedicated to the co-definition and prioritisation of draft policy recommendations, developed from HOLiFOOD findings and Living Lab results.

Participants were asked to evaluate recommendations related to both innovation areas, covering strategic themes such as:

· regulatory frameworks and governance for AI in food safety

· data integration and interoperability

· transparency, explainability, and trust

· methodological integration for holistic assessment

· capacity building and cross-sector collaboration.

This process provided a structured basis for refining the recommendations and ensuring their alignment with stakeholder expectations and operational realities.

By explicitly addressing questions of feasibility, uptake, and implementation conditions, the whole cross-fertilization workshop series aimed at strengthening the connection between: scientific outputs, stakeholder needs, and policy action.

The outcomes of the third cross-fertilization workshop play a central role in the finalisation of the HOLiFOOD white paper, which synthesises project results into policy-relevant insights and recommendations.

The Cross-Fertilization workshop belongs to the HOLiFOOD Living Labs process, following the initial exploration and experimentation phases, where the three Living Labs converged to exchange insights, evaluate interim results, and collaboratively steer the project towards its final evaluation and the drafting of a comprehensive white paper outlining future food safety innovation directions.

Learn more here: https://HOLiFOODproject.eu/citizen-and-societal/living-labs/

Stay tuned!