The vision of FutureFoodS is to collectively achieve environmentally-friendly, socially secure, fair and economically viable healthy and safe Food Systems (FS) for Europe. FutureFoodS gather 87 partners from 22 EU Member States, 6 Associated Countries and 1 third country. FutureFoodS includes public and private actors, policy makers, foundations, locally, sub-nationally, nationally, EU-widely. All these FutureFoodS partners are fully aligned on the vision for the Partnership and the methodology for its implementation in line with SDG17 and EU Green Deal components. This vision has been broken down into general (GO), specific (SO) and operational (OO) objectives applying across the 4 R&I areas and 4 transversal activities identified by the FutureFoods consortium in its stable draft Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) which constitutes the strategic backbone of the project. The four GO cover: GO1 - Functioning of FS; GO2 - System approaches; GO3 - Inclusive government; GO4 - Co-creation cases. These GO have then been translated into SO prioritised in line with the timescale and resources of the Partnership: SO1 - Change the way we eat; SO2- Change the way we process and supply food, SO3 - Change the way we connect with FSs and SO4 - Change the way we govern FS. In addition, 6 interconnected OO have been set: OO1- Pooling R&I resources and programming; OO2 - Operational FS Observatory; OO3 - Active FS knowledge Hub of FS Labs; OO4 - Functioning knowledge sharing and scaling mechanisms; OO5- Revisiting the SRIA; OO6 - Promoting, supporting, widening & gathering FS various communities. The objectives implemented in the 8 WPs of FutureFoodS will exert impact directly or indirectly in most of the destinations of Horizon Europe’s Cluster 6 2023-2024 work programme and particularly for the topic destination ‘Fair, healthy and environment-friendly FS from primary production to consumption’ echoing to the main EU and World FS policies & strategies.

EQUAL-LIFE will develop and test combined exposure data using a novel approach to multi-modal exposures and their impact on children’s mental health and development. A combination of birth-cohort data with new sources of data, will provide insight into aspects of physical and social exposures hitherto untapped. It will do this at different scale levels and timeframes, while accounting for the distribution of exposures in social groups based on gender, ethnicity, social vulnerability. Beginning with child development and mental health, a set of theory-based questions is formulated, a wide range of relevant environmental and social hazards is defined and validated at the stakeholders end. Exposure assessment combines traditional GIS-based approaches with omics approaches and new sources of data that could explain aspects of the urban environment at a higher spatial and temporal granularity, and provide insight into untapped parameters relating to exposure (spatial quality of neighborhoods). These together form the early-life exposome. Statistical tools integrate data at different scale levels and times and combine e.g. machine learning, causal models with subgroups measures. EQUAL-LIFE uses data from birth-cohorts, longitudinal school data sets and cross-sectional studies (N=>250.000), including data on exposures, biomarkers, mental health and developmental outcomes, in their social context. EQUAL-LIFE contributes to the development/utilization of the exposome concept by 1) integrating the internal, external and social exposome 2) by studying a distinct set of effects on a child’s development and mental health 3) by characterizing/measuring/modelling the child’s environment at different stages and activity spaces 4) by looking at supportive environments for child development, rather than merely pollutants 5) by combining physical, social indicators with novel biomarkers and using new data sources describing child activity patterns and environments. EQUAL-LIFE is part of the European Human Exposome Network comprised of nine projects selected from this same call.

METROFOOD-RI is a distributed research infrastructure (RI) that promotes scientific excellence in food quality and safety. It provides metrology services in food and nutrition across various highly interdisciplinary, interconnected fields along the food value chain, such as agrifood, sustainable development, food safety, quality, traceability and authenticity, environmental safety, and human health. In May 2022, it completed its preparatory phase upon the H2020 METROFOOD-PP project (GA871083). However, a few bottlenecks were identified in the final evaluation report; furthermore, the consortium prepared plans for the next short- and medium-term phases and the Board of Governmental representatives proposed several suggestions. METROFOOD-EPI was established with the overarching mission to build METROFOOD-RI as an infrastructure consolidated for its full implementation and to begin the operational phase, addressing any critical issues. Four specific objectives have been identified: support the establishment of the legal entity that will manage the RI, specify the technical implementation of the RI as service-oriented, consolidate its position in the landscape and secure long-term sustainability. METROFOOD-EPI will act on four layers, covering: ERIC set-up, including membership consolidation, governance establishment, securing funding, and distributed architecture; technical organisation and implementation of the RI for its operation, including a definition of user requirement specifications for the e-component and set-up of the core components, data management solutions, access, and services; consolidation of the RI’s positioning in the agrifood research & innovation landscape, including an update of the scientific strategy and contribution to the ERA, community building, and liaising with other complementary initiatives; long-term scientific & financial sustainability, including impact, risk management and user engagement.

METROFOOD-RI – Infrastructure for Promoting Metrology in Food and Nutrition - is a pan-European Research Infrastructure (RI) aimed to promote scientific excellence in the field of food quality and safety. It provides high-quality metrology services in food and nutrition, comprising an important cross-section of highly interdisciplinary and interconnected fields throughout the food value chain, including agrifood, sustainable development, food safety, quality, traceability and authenticity, environmental safety, and human health. METROFOOD-RI has been selected to the ESFRI Roadmap2018 as mature enough to be implemented within the next ten years. The Action is aimed to support METROFOOD-RI to grow from its current status (research-based network of facilities and skills) to a mature, centrally-coordinated, integrated RI, with the legal, financial and technical maturity required for implementing it. The main objective is to develop the organizational, operational and strategic framework of METROFOOD-RI. Activities include legal, governance, financial, technical, strategic and administrative aspects carried out in 15 work packages, organised in 3 blocks dedicated respectively to: the organisation of the legal entity that will manage the future RI, i.e. ERIC; define the operation and the operational standards at the level of the whole RI and for the National Nodes, as well as the role of the RI as service-oriented organisation; define the long term activities for the future RI and update the Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda, in response to the actual and future challenges in the agrifood sector and for the Society. The main outcome will be the establishment of legal and financial commitment for the future ERIC, ensuring long-term common commitment, decision-making and funding engagement. Continuous relations with stakeholders and the user community will be kept in order to ensure the addressing of their needs at the best, and to focus strategies and planned services

The overarching aim of INHERIT is to define effective inter-sectoral policies and interventions that promote health and well being across the social gradient by tackling key environmental stressors and related inequalities in the areas of living, consuming and moving. INHERIT will bring together relevant stakeholders from different sectors, including the private sector. It will support inter-sectoral cooperation between environment, climate and health by: a) Analysing existing scientific knowledge on key environmental stressors to health and approaches to address these; b) Identifying existing promising inter-sector policies and interventions that enable conditions for more healthy and environmentally sustainable behaviours, in three main areas: living, consuming and moving; c) Developing a Common Analytical Framework using impact assessment tools and quantitative and qualitative indicators to assess the social, environmental and health benefits and the economic value in promising inter-sectoral interventions; d) Developing targets and future visions while considering overall economic and politics contexts and global trends (i.e. participatory back-casting, stakeholder and citizen consultations and household surveys); e) Implementing, testing and evaluating pilot interventions in different European contexts; f) Enhancing the leadership skills of public health professionals in inter-sectoral work to address key environmental stressors to health and promote healthy and environmentally sustainable lifestyles; g) Translating evaluation findings into models of good practice for effective inter-sectoral work and evidence based tools for policy development to contribute to the global and European environment, health and sustainable development policy agenda. The novelty of INHERIT lies in its support for health, environment and climate sectors to jointly pursue the inter-related goals of improving health and well-being of the population while preserving the environment.