A round 60 participants came together in Freising on 3 September for the 50th meeting of the working group within the Food Chemistry Society. The chairman of the working group, PD Dr Martin Steinhaus from the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (Leibniz-LSB@TUM), put together a lucrative programme.

Dr Gerhard Krammer, Symrise, Holzminden, explained the ‘Current Trends in the Food and Flavour Industry’. He highlighted the four segments of the holistic food quality concept. These include: 1. flavour and taste, 2. nutrition and health, 3. sustainability and resources and 4. legal regulations and declaration. They are essential when it comes to authentic taste and authentic labelling, as these are key criteria for the marketing of future products. The CO2 footprint and the use of renewable sources in particular are playing an increasingly important role. Of course, it is also important to take a look at new flavour sources, whereby the topic of novel food must not be ignored.

Frauke Kirsch, Hertz & Selck, Hamburg, impressively demonstrated what has changed over time with regard to flavourings in EU law and what tasks need to be addressed in the near future. This includes, for example, the topic of smoke flavourings. She explained that smoke flavourings are smoke that has been purified of harmful substances and are therefore ‘healthier’ than smoking. It is now to be expected that smoked flavourings will increasingly be used again as a substitute for smoke flavourings, as the principle now applies that smoke flavourings containing a genotoxic substance may not be used, even if the flavouring as such has no such effect.