Category: Resnick Center

Introducing a New Food Law Course: The Public Interest in Agroecological Food Systems

The Resnick Center is excited to introduce a new food law course at UCLA School of Law this fall called “The Public Interest in Agroecological Food Systems: An Investigation,” led by Professor Paula Daniels. This seminar is designed to explore the world of agroecology and public policy approaches to institutionalizing its tenets within the US food system.

In the United States, the modern food system is mostly a private industry, with little public investment and fragmented efforts focused on food access and farm-level grant programs. This course aims to address this disparity by exploring opportunities for public sector engagement and directing the food system towards a holistic approach that aligns with public interest values such as environmental sustainability, worker well-being, small farm viability, and community health.

The course will provide a thorough examination of agroecology as a holistic and integrated approach to sustainable agriculture and food systems. Through case studies and guest lectures, students will gain insight into the underlying principles of agroecology and its practical application. The course will also analyze public policy and program approaches required to institutionalize these principles within the US food system.

For more information, please contact the Resnick Center at resnickcenter@law.ucla.edu.  We encourage any student interested in advocating for a more sustainable and equitable food system to sign up this fall!

Just Released: Model Strategies in Global Food System Law & Policy

The Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy is thrilled to present: “Model Strategies in Global Food System Law and Policy,” an interactive issue brief series designed to democratize sustainable, equitable, and inclusive systems-thinking approaches to food governance.

This project was made possible due to a generous gift by the non-profit Seeding the Future Van Lengerich Foundation. 

Drawing from laws, policies, and research from around the world, the series makes the case for a paradigm shift in how we conceptualize and govern food. Rather than adopt narrowly-defined and siloed laws and policies, public and private policymakers should advance food system laws and policies , i.e., solutions that are holistic, multi-disciplinary, and which account for the diverse set of actors, activities, and feedback loops that comprise the food system.

The Resnick Center invites policymakers and other stakeholders to explore the featured model strategies and accompanying issue briefs to learn how countries around the world are successfully leveraging laws and policies to respond to the most pressing and complex food system challenges.

View the interactive story map here.

Seeding the Future Foundation Supports Resnick Center

The Resnick Center is excited to share our good news!  

We have received a generous gift of $300,000 to our endowment fund from the non-profit, Seeding the Future Foundation, founded by Dr. Bernhard van Lengerich. Dr. van Lengerich, a leader in food science and technology, also serves as an outside advisory board member for the Resnick Center.  

Since its inception, the Seeding the Future Foundation has significantly contributed to transforming the food system.  Its unique Challenge Awards Program, hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists, awards up to $1 million in grants and prizes annually for highly impactful innovations to generate healthier people and a planet.  Since 2021, Seeding the Future has received over 1,500 submissions from academic and research institutions, non-profits, and for-profits, representing over 75 countries, for innovation across the food system.  

The endowment gift to the Resnick Center will forward the missions of the Center and of Seeding the Future by supporting legal education and the development of scholarship and tools to bolster innovation that provides equitable access to safe, nutritious, sustainable, affordable, and trusted food.  

Thanks to a previous operational gift from Seeding the Future, the Resnick Center has developed a Model Food Regulatory Strategies Initiative to be launched in the second half of 2023. The Initiative identifies and amplifies positive systems-thinking approaches to food law and policy by showcasing select model regulatory strategies derived and synthesized from best regulatory practices worldwide.  This new endowment funding from Seeding the Future will enable the Resnick Center to continue to develop these types of initiatives, strategies, and tools to encourage and facilitate innovation for healthier people and the planet.   

Renewed FAO/Resnick Center Partnership

by Michael T. Roberts

I am pleased to announce that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has renewed its partnership with the UCLA Law Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy. An announcement can be found here.

The FAO is the largest and oldest sub-agency of the UN and is headquartered in Rome, Italy. The partnership was initially formed in 2019 when FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva visited the Center in Los Angeles and spoke at the law school along with Hilal Elver, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and a Global Distinguished Fellow at the Center. I am also appreciative of Hilal’s tireless efforts in pulling together this first meeting.

This renewed partnership will elevate the Resnick Center’s role in developmental work conducted by the FAO Development Law Service and complement the Resnick Center’s growing international and comparative food law focus. This focus consists of an upcoming book on international food law and other publications, the development of an online platform to publish best practices in mission-driven food law approaches based on comparative analysis, and a major white paper exploring optimal international public-private strategies in food regulation.

We also look forward to leveraging these projects into strategic collaboration with leading global universities, law firms, and organizations. Finally, as always, we hope to translate these projects and collaboration into opportunities for law students.

Reflections on the 6th Annual Food Law Conference: Current Trends & Perspectives Beyond the Beltway

by Alexa Libro*

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of attending CLE International’s 6th Annual Food Law Conference. I vividly remember attending the previous food law conference in San Francisco in February of 2020, deliberating on whether it was appropriate to shake hands and how often to use hand sanitizer. A lot has changed since then, including food law. This evolution of food law was demonstrated in every session of this year’s food law conference. Ann Oxenham, the Acting Director of the Office of Compliance in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) at the US Food and Drug Administration spoke of tech-enabled traceability as a part of the FDA’s new era of smarter food safety. The General Counsel Roundtable session exemplified how food businesses had to adapt to navigate supply chain issues, labor issues, and remote work. Thus, ending the conference with a session on the future of food law was the perfect way to reflect on how food law has evolved and surmise its next evolution.

In the Future of Food Law session, Michael Roberts, the Executive Director of the Resnick Center, moderated a conversation with two of his former students, Evan Graham Arango and Jason Lawler. The conversation illustrated why food is currently top of mind for everyone, not just food lawyers. The pandemic forced us to think about where our food comes from. For many, it was the first experience with gardening or baking bread. For many, it was the first experience not finding numerous items on a grocery list. For many, it was the first or worst experience with food insecurity.

Evan Graham Arango, the owner, founder and farmer at Ojai Roots Farm in Ojai, California noted people’s interest in regenerative agriculture and eating locally. I’m speculating that many people, like me, watched documentaries about regenerative agriculture, such as Kiss the Ground and Biggest Little Farm, when they were stuck inside, and were inspired. Regenerative agriculture and its potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere brings to the forefront the connection between our food system and climate change

Jason Lawler, an associate at Sidley Austin LLP, elaborated on how his work around the business of food interfaces with climate change realities. Businesses are aware that consumers vote with their wallets, which encourages existing businesses to voluntarily offset carbon and new businesses to form with the goal of sequestering greenhouse gases.

Michael Roberts posits that the future of food will revolve around information. As artificial intelligence gives us more insights into what to grow, how to grow it, where to grow it, and when to market it, he wonders how to democratize that information and ensure fairness in data collection and ownership. As a consumer, I wonder how all that information will be relayed to me so I can make good food choices. To all the current and aspiring food lawyers, I look forward to seeing how we navigate the future of food law and reflecting on our progress at the next food law conference.    

*Alexa is graduating this year from UCLA Law. She graduated from UCLA with a BS in neuroscience with highest honors and a minor in biomedical research in 2017. At UCLA School of Law, she has been coexecutive chair of the Food Law Society and is currently chief managing editor of the Journal of Environmental Law & Policy. She is also a research assistant with the Resnick Center.

The problem of food waste in the US, the UK, and Japan

by Minako Kageyama Tanaka

This is the first of three blog posts by Minako Kageyama Tanaka* on food waste in the US, the UK, and Japan.

Food waste in the world

Many people pay attention to what they eat, but not to what they did not eat. According to an estimate released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one-third of the edible part of food is wasted every year, which amounts to 1.3 billion tons per year. Given that between 720 and 811 million people are facing hunger and 2.37 billion people lack access to sufficient food, the amount of food waste is enormous. Besides, wasting food means wasting resources spent on food production and the supply chain.

To change the global consumption and production patterns in the food industry and its supply chain, the United Nations (UN) has set responsible consumption and production as one of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and calls for actions to “halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses” by 2030. The global society has only eight years left to achieve that goal.

Continue reading “The problem of food waste in the US, the UK, and Japan” →

Changelab Solutions Webinar on Food Systems and Health Inequity

by Kyle Winterboer*

ChangeLab Solutions works nationwide to bring about healthier and equitable communities through law and policy. Their ongoing six-part virtual engagement series “Uprooting the Structural Drivers of Health Inequity” is focused on ways that organizations and advocates are addressing inequity in their efforts to improve outcomes. Their recent webinar was the fifth installations of the series, was focused on food systems, and featured an expert panel discussing Policy Solutions for a Values-Based Food System.

Previous episodes can be found on their website, and a recording of Monday’s Panel will be made available at: https://www.changelabsolutions.org/product/food-systems

Below find a list of the expert panelists. Additionally, find a summary by one of the Resnick Center’s Summer Research Assistants, Kyle Winterboer, who attended the webinar on Monday, June 28, 2021.

Expert Panel:

  • Jose Oliva, campaigns director, HEAL Food Alliance
  • Karen Bassarab, senior program officer, Food Communities & Public Health, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
  • Vinny Eng, community organizer and founding member, SF New Deal 
  • Abbey Piner, project lead, Community Food Strategies, Center for Environmental Farming Systems, North Carolina State University
  • LaShauna Austria, Founder, Kindred Seedlings Farm, and Racial Equity Coach, Community Food Strategies
  • Nessia Berner Wong, senior policy analyst, ChangeLab Solutions (moderator)
Continue reading “Changelab Solutions Webinar on Food Systems and Health Inequity” →

Upcoming Webinar

By Diana Winters

Please let me draw your attention to this exciting upcoming webinar in the Faegre Drinker Food Webinar series, to be held at 10am PT on June 15, 2021:

Litigation Considerations Arising From the Pandemic – This presentation will explore litigation trends in the food practice area arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Covered topics include types of litigated claims, state and federal defenses, and jurisdictional questions, among others.

The webinar will be led by Molly Flynn, a partner at Faegre Drinker, and Rita Mansuryan, an associate at Faegre Drinker and a Research Affiliate with the Resnick Center, as well as an Advisory Board member.

I am sure it will be terrific. You can register for the webinar here.

On Food Law News!

Hello! On Food Law is celebrating its approximate three-and-a-half year birthday! Please send (healthy) cake.

We would like to celebrate this milestone with some news. The blog is no longer jointly administered with Harvard’s Food Law Lab, but is now solely a Resnick Center at UCLA Law operation. Nothing has, or will change. We welcome posts from students, faculty, and others from any school and any state, and look forward to many more years of providing cutting edge food law and policy news, scholarship, and commentary.

Thanks for your time, your attention, and your food law wisdom. Please email Diana Winters at winters@law.ucla.edu with questions, comments, and/or blog post ideas.

Repast – New Episode! Reforming Food Systems with Nancy E. Roman

Listen to the new episode of Repast, a food law and policy podcast from the Resnick Center.

In this episode of Repast, Diana Winters and Nancy E. Roman, President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), discuss Nancy’s journey to her work with transforming the food landscape, and some of PHA’s most significant campaigns.  These include Pass the Love with Waffles + Mochi, a food equity campaign held in conjunction with Michelle Obama’s Netflix show about good food, and its Healthy Hunger Relief initiative, where it is working to improve the nutritional profile at our nation’s food banks.

Nancy and Diana also discussed some of the most important action items Nancy would like to see both in the Biden administration and globally, and looked forward to the upcoming PHA Summit, and the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit, a potentially transformative moment in food systems reform.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Nancy E. Roman is the President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America.

You can read Nancy E. Roman’s latest blog post on reforming the food system here.

You can register for the PHA 2021 Summit, to be held virtually on May 12, 2021, at 10am PT/1pm EST, here.

You can find more information about the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit here.

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑