Bio-based food innovation rarely fails in the lab. It fails in the transition to scale. Between pilot success and commercial launch lie the hardest problems in food: reliable feedstocks, waste stream integration, regulatory approval, capital intensity, and infrastructure built for yesterday’s products. This session brings together leaders across law, industrial food systems, waste valorization, and next-generation proteins to examine what it actually takes to move biological food innovations from concept to shelf. Panelists will explore where risk truly accumulates in bio-based food development, how incumbents and startups navigate scale differently, and why waste streams, compliance strategy, and supply chain design often matter more than the underlying biology. The result is a grounded conversation about what survives real-world constraints, not just what sounds compelling on paper.