On February 15, 2019, the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy and The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law hosted the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General José Graziano da Silva, who gave a talk titled, “A Global Perspective on Regulating and Promoting Nutrition.” We were honored to host the Director-General for this important presentation.
In his talk, Graziano da Silva emphasized the critical need for regulation regarding healthy food. He explained that while there are regulations regarding food safety, global entities have entirely failed to regulate for the nutritional value of food. The world is grappling with a crisis of malnutrition—a broad concept that includes obesity as well as hunger—and this crisis is exacerbated by the failure of regulation. Malnutrition costs the world economy between three and five billion dollars a year, which is approximately 3% of the global economy. This problem must be seen as a public issue, Graziano da Silva said, not an individual one, and it is critical that countries find a way to work together. This is the foremost challenge the FAO faces.
Graziano da Silva was introduced by Hilal Elver, the Global Distinguished Fellow at the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. The video recording of the entire event can be found here.
On Food Law 