Future access and improvement of industrial lactic acid bacteria cultures

Industrial fermentations based on micro-organisms such as the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) play an important role in several industries globally and represent multi-billion Euro/dollar businesses. LAB provide a natural way to produce safe, sustainable, and environmentally friendly products for a variety of industries. Product innovation is a key requirement for these industries to survive and grow globally. However, the development of new products may be affected by two man-made constraints; the Nagoya Protocol on benefit sharing and the opposition to the use of modern biotechnology for strain improvement. An expert workshop was held in Amsterdam, May 10-11, 2017 to discuss these challenges; a number of conclusions and recommendations were formulated and will be presented herein.