Law and policymaking form a central task of the global governance debate, which in times of an emerging global creative economy is increasingly becoming complex and faced with serious challenges of a political, economic, cultural, environmental, social, technological and, last but not least, legal nature. Against the backdrop of a global food crisis, both in terms of food security and food safety for all, the present paper provides an inquiry into some of the broader regulatory aspects of these challenges by looking at the regulation of food and notably novel food as engineered by the use of bio- and nanotechnologies. It aims at showing how the preservation of the integrity of law over time and with it the objectives of providing legal predictability and legal certainty are threatened by deficiencies in the institutional design of the current international legal framework as well as in the conceptual understanding underlying the legal instruments adopted by these institutions. The analysis at the international level is complemented by a brief look at the domestic level exemplified by the situation in the European Union (EU) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) against the backdrop of their attempts to formulate and implement successfully policies enhancing their competitive advantages in the creative economy.