Multiple determinants to responsible consumption and production of food - a human right approach

The effective protection of the right to sufficient, accessible, healthy and nutritious food has been felt crucial over the last decades, given, on the one hand, the contemporaneous growth of world population and the increasing demand on the limited disposable resources and, on the other hand, the more frequent food crises due both to pandemic cases of foodborne disease caused by the consumption of unhealthy food or poor quality productions, as well to food scarcity due to sudden emergencies (war, atmospheric harsh conditions, earthquakes, tsunami..). The interrelation of the qualitative and quantitative dimension of the right to food suggests a broader and more comprehensive definition of ‘right to adequate food’, as stated by the international community since the 1966 Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and reinforced in the 2015 SDGs.  Such a concept should impose primarily States, but also, at different degree of responsibility, other public and private stakeholders, including international organisation, private companies (producers and suppliers), NGOs, as well as private individuals, to respect, protect and fulfil (facilitate and provide directly for) the right of any individual to have access to food in a quantity sufficient to conduct a healthy, autonomous and productive life, but also corresponding to an adequate quality for such an individual consumer considered as a whole, including his/her mental and physical condition, gender, age, religious, moral, ethical beliefs, traditional and ancestral cultural values associated to his/her same identity and the right to life. 
The States in particular are required to take all the appropriate steps to ensure the realisation of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international cooperation based on free consent, in order to improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilisation of natural resources; taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies (including fresh drinking water) in relation to the specific needs of the individual and the communities he/she belongs to in a certain historical, socio-economic context.
 

The interrelation among all the different components of the right to adequate food do require an interdisciplinary and multilevel approach both to analyse the actual constraints posed to States and other private and public stakeholders, but also to detect the gaps of the existing legislation (often complemented by private standards) and policies having a direct impact on national, regional and international markets and eventually to propose new standards of sustainable protection. Such an interdisciplinary approach is aimed at identifying all the different elements necessary to define a ‘food governance’ through the contribution of law, international relations sciences, sociology and economic history.
To this extent the project members will analyse not only the content of the rules and standards detected at different levels, but also the competence of (and the policies established by) those bodies, agencies and authorities both in the international context (such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission; WTO; FAO; WFP; UNCTAD…) and within regional integration organisations (such as OECD, and within the EU, the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission), as well as private standard setters, which have been attributed or de facto exercise the function of granting food safety and quality in such a broad sense.
 

The identification of the relevant legal determinants will be useful to suggest future interventions to promote sustainable diets in a broad sense (M7.1.1.1).  In particular, the ex-post evaluation of existing legislation, practise in courts, standards and policies and the collection of feedbacks from policy makers and other public and private stakeholders that implemented them will enable the spoke to suggest how to appropriately implement and/or modify the existing rules and when and how to introduce new and more effective rules (M7.4.) and/or to accompany them with ‘nudging’ policies, when deemed appropriate and more effective.