Tag: Food policy

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.

From Covid 19 to War in Ukraine: Anatomy of the Global Food Crisis in 2022

by Hilal Elver*

In March 2020 the world was shut down along with much of the global economy to avoid the spread of the powerful virus COVID-19. Suddenly, the so-called “efficient” global food supply chains were dismantled, harvests were left in the soil, food workers returned to their homes, the major organizing principle of supply and demand balance all but disappeared, and quite simply, the global food market as we knew it came alarmingly close to collapse. COVID-19 arrived at a time that food production was historically high, and prices low, but constraints on the movements of people and goods left many people without food, and global food systems entered an unusual stalemate. These results were not entirely unpredictable, but the world was unprepared to cope with the challenge. This was true in many countries and regions in both the Global North and Global South. As a result, the number of hungry people has increased by 150 million since the outbreak of the pandemic.

While the world was still struggling with many variants of Covid-19, and full recovery is not yet in sight, the February 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation brought about a further deterioration in global food trade as these two countries happened to be major players in the global grain market.  Today’s food markets are heavily reliant on international food trade. Since the early 1990s, nearly a quarter of all food produced crosses international borders. The high dependency on global grain imports for the food security of many countries in the Middle East and Africa is causing a severe food crisis in many parts of the world.

FAO State of Hunger and Malnutrition Report 2022

On July 6, 2022, in the middle of multiple unresolved crises, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Program (WFP), International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) (Those three are called UN Rome-based institutions), World Health Organization (WHO), and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) published their annual flagship report on progress toward ending hunger, achieving food security, and improving nutrition. The major message of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report (SOFI) was that “the world is moving in the wrong direction” to end hunger, food insecurity, and all forms of malnutrition. The SOFI 2022 report projects that nearly 670 million people, or 8% of the world’s population, will be affected by hunger in 2030, instead of the “zero hunger” target Nr. 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that were adopted by the United Nations in 2015. SOFI assesses the relevance of conflicts, including the most recent war in Ukraine, along with climate extremes and economic shocks. Additionally, for the first time, the report adds growing inequalities as major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition.

Continue reading “From Covid 19 to War in Ukraine: Anatomy of the Global Food Crisis in 2022” →

JOB POST! Law Clerk for Food and Beverage Team

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP is offering a paid, school-term law clerk position to a diverse 2L/3L student to work with our Food + Beverage team for the Spring 2023 Term. This is a remote position with the potential to travel to one of the DWT offices at some point during the clerkship.  The online application site opens on October 3, 2022. Applications must be received by 11:59 PST on October 31, 2022.

The link to the job post is here.

JOB POST! Clinical Instructor in the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic

Apply now!

The Clinical Instructor will serve as a skilled staff attorney and teacher, and will provide leadership and oversight of Clinic projects, help develop and implement the vision for future Clinic initiatives, and conduct hands-on teaching and supervision of students. They will have a chance to work on a broad range of cutting edge international, federal, state, and local projects and with a dynamic team of faculty, staff, and students. The Clinical Instructor will have a chance to manage and support several ongoing projects as well as develop new clinic projects. We have a great team and lots of exciting projects underway.

Applicants for this position must have a JD, earned at least three years ago.

More info is here.

A Science and Policy Interface in Global Food Governance:

 The High Level Panel of Experts of the World Committee of Food Security

by Hilal Elver*

Global food insecurity is a highly complicated, persistent, and multi-dimensional issue that involves multiple sectors, various players, and policy domains (McKeon 2021). It appears in various ways in the different regions of the world, and it has a vast variety of interdependent underlying structural causes that are also linked to other global issues. In times of massive crises, the international community focuses on establishing effective food governance (McKeon 2015).  The sudden spike of food prices in 2007-2008 created major political uprisings in many developing countries. At that time, improving global food governance became a central focus of international discussions. As a result, in 2009, the Committee of the World Food Security (CFS) (originally created in 1974 as a UN intergovernmental body) was reformed and renewed to serve as a forum for review and follow up for food security policies. Since then, CFS is widely seen as the “foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform”for food security and nutrition globally.

Continue reading “A Science and Policy Interface in Global Food Governance:“ →

Dr. Sara Bleich, Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity for the Food and Nutrition Service, USDA, appears on Repast

Repast is the food law and policy podcast produced by the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy. Each month Michael Roberts and Diana Winters interview a thought leader in the field of food law and policy to discuss past achievements, current developments, and future challenges. You can find Repast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This month , Michael and Diana talk with a very special guest–Dr. Sara Bleich, the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity for the Food and Nutrition Service, USDA.   Dr. Bleich is leading the department’s work to counter food and nutrition insecurity in the United States.  In this episode, Dr. Bleich discusses the USDA’s Actions on Nutrition Security, the difference between food security and nutrition security, health equity, structural racism, the upcoming historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, and much more.

Dr. Sara Bleich is on leave from her tenured position as a Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  She is a well-regarded public health policy expert specializing in food and nutrition policy and the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications. Her research centers on food insecurity, as well as racial injustice within the social safety net. Dr. Bleich holds a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia University.

In the first year of the Biden administration, Dr. Bleich served as Senior Advisor for COVID-19 in the Office of the Secretary. In January 2022, she transitioned to her new role as the first Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity at the Food and Nutrition Service at USDA.  She will elaborate more on this role today.  From 2015-2016, she served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration, where she worked in USDA as a Senior Policy Advisor for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services and with the First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative. 

Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

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

For more on the USDA’s Actions on Nutrition Security, see here.

See here for Secretary Vilsack’s address on the USDA’s Actions on Nutrition Security.

See here for the USDA’s new blog series on nutrition security.

Look here for information about the upcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.

ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS DURING ARMED CONFLICT: NORMATIVE AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Protection of Right to Food and Environment in Times of Armed Conflict

by Hilal Elver*

The following is the keynote address given by Hilal Elver to the Geneva Academy on June 8, 2022. Footnotes at end of article.

Internal and international armed conflicts are one of the major reasons for increased food insecurity and malnutrition. Despite well-established norms of international human rights law and international humanitarian law protecting the right to food, hunger and  malnutrition, as well as famine has skyrocketed in last few years. There is a shocking failure in addressing criminal acts of deliberate starvation and other severe violations of a fundamental human right: the “right to food.” This non-compliance by States and other political actors as well as the reluctance to implement existing international norms to protect human rights and the environment in times of war is a critical failure of international community.

Most recently, the war in Ukraine has elevated catastrophic hunger and malnutrition levels to the top of the global agenda. The war has raised awareness of ongoing widespread hunger and malnutrition even beyond Ukraine, as the parties to the conflict are the major players of global agricultural trade.

Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights specifically recognizes “the fundamental right of everyone to be from hunger,” which further imposes an obligation on States to ensure “the satisfaction of, at the very least, the minimum essential level” of this right under all circumstances, including the times of war. Freedom from hunger is accepted as part of customary international law, rendering it binding for all states regardless of whether they are party to the Covenant. States cannot put aside or postpone the realization of this core component of the body of economic and social rights. According to their international legal obligations, States must continue to take deliberate and targeted steps using all appropriate means to fulfill these rights, even in times of conflict.  Yet, 60% of the people suffering from hunger and malnutrition globally live in conflict-ridden places, mostly in the Middle East and Africa.

Continue reading “ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS DURING ARMED CONFLICT: NORMATIVE AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK” →

Food waste management in the US, UK and Japan

by Minako Kageyama Tanaka

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

Food recovery hierarchy commonality and difference

How do the three countries tackle the food waste issue? The US, the UK and Japan articulate their food waste reduction strategies in their food recovery hierarchies. These hierarchies showcase available food waste reduction and recycling approaches and nudge people to take action in the order of least environmental impacts. Although the recovery steps in the three countries are not the same, the countries share many approaches. For example, all three countries start their hierarchy with the reduction of food waste sources. Redistribution of surplus to people and animals comes next, and recycling is the countries’ third preferable action.

However, each government’s recovery hierarchy differs slightly in its types of methods and actions. For instance, Japan is the only country among the three that specifically mentions using digestates for mushroom beds in its hierarchy. And the UK is the only country that sets landspreading in its hierarchy. These examples highlight these countries’ intentions to promote such recycling methods. 

Continue reading “Food waste management in the US, UK and Japan” →

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” →

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