This paper investigates the impact of corporate research and development (R&D) on firm performance in the foodprocessing industry. We apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with two step bootstrapping using a corporate data for 307 food-processing firms from the EU, US, Canada and Japan for the period 1991–2009. The estimates suggest that R&D has a positive effect on the firms’ performance, with marginal gains decreasing in the R&D level as well as the performance differences are detected across regions and food sectors. R&D investments in food processing can deliver productivity gains, beyond the high-tech sectors generally favoured by innovation policy.