After a successful guest lecture in 2024, I was invited by the coordinators of the course ‘Becoming Food: Cellular Agriculture beyond the Lab’ at Wageningen University to deliver a guest lecture on the future of food safety in September 2025. My talk was titled ‘Beyond lab tests and regulations: The need for a holistic understanding of food safety in an era of radical food innovation’. Presented to a group of MSc Food Technology students, the lecture sparked a lively debate about what innovations such as cellular agriculture can mean for consumers’ perception of food safety and risk.

By drawing on recent case studies and literature from STS, anthropology, and food systems governance, we discussed how safety comprises of not only regulations and lab tests but also social trust, shaped by the relationships between consumers, experts, and governments.