The last few weeks have seen a number of announcements related to nano and sustainable materials testing, regulation and commercialization. These are some of the top stories that caught our eyes:

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) has released a significant new report which identifies potential hazards that could be introduced during production of cultured or cell-based foods and considers the sequence of events that would need to take place for harm to occur to consumers – a critical first step in risk assessment for these new foods.

The FDA announced today that they were withdrawing the “Food Standards; General Principles and Food Standards Modernization” rule, proposed in 2005 and were aiming to make FDA definitions and standards of identity for foods consistent with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and the standards used by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to inspect meat and poultry products.

The US Congress has passed the first update since 1938 to the federal law regulating personal care products. The FDA will now have some of the same oversight powers for cosmetics that it has for other product categories, and requirements for animal testing on cosmetic products are removed.

In a landmark decision, the EU Court of Justice ruled that 2017 decisions on carcinogenicity for TiO2  did not rely on valid evidence. The animal studies used were not relevant to humans and they failed to show an intrinsic cause of cancer. The court decision has implications for the EU ban of TiO2 in food.