Franklin Matters: "The US must acknowledge the right to food in order to transform its broken food system"

Saturday, November 11, 2023

"The US must acknowledge the right to food in order to transform its broken food system"

"The US must acknowledge the right to food in order to transform its broken food system in the post-pandemic era and make it more resilient in the face of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, according to a United Nations hunger expert.

“Whether we’re talking about right to food, food justice or food sovereignty, there has been growing momentum over the last 10 years to understand that food is not just something we just leave to be determined by what is available or by corporations or the status quo,” said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food.

Last month, Fakhri presented a report on the right to food – which would entail that adequate food be available and accessible to all people – as a means of food system recovery and transformation to the UN general assembly.

“People are really mobilizing around food to say food is political, cultural and social, and we should be able to decide for ourselves what counts as good food,” he said.

The right to food, which can also be characterized as a right to culturally appropriate nutrition that a person needs to live a healthy and active life, is recognized in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, it has not historically been a mainstream concept in the US."

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/09/united-nations-right-to-food-us-hunger

"The Challenge

To recover from the current food crisis, and with an eye to the future, States face three issues. They must:
(a) Respond to the food crisis with national plans;
(b) Develop an international coordinated response to the food crisis;
(c) Transform their food systems to make them more resilient to climate change and prevent biodiversity loss.
States must address all three issues as interdependent. If they do not
cooperate and develop an international coordinated response, their
national plans to recover from the food crisis will fail. At the same time,
how they respond to the multiple crises at hand will significantly affect the nature of their food systems for decades to come."