In recent years, the food landscape in the United States has witnessed a rapid growth of food related start-ups, direct marketing to consumers, and new food inventions. While many of the businesses that have been developed in this new food space have been successful in terms of expanding market share and securing funding and customer support, it is evident that at least some of them are running up against a regulatory and legal structure that was not designed to accommodate them.

With the aim of better understanding these law and policy hurdles, the Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy at UCLA Law and George Abe, Faculty Director of the Strategic Management Research Program at UCLA Anderson School of Management, hosted a roundtable discussion on March 8, 2016, titled, Social Entrepreneurship in the Food Sector: Is the Law a Barrier to Innovation? The discussion is the first in a series hosted by UCLA Law and the UCLA Anderson School of Management on food entrepreneurship. The goal of the collaboration is to facilitate food entrepreneurship by identifying opportunities for law and public policy to contribute to the development of a more dynamic and innovative food sector. 

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