Call to Transform Corporate Food Systems

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The UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), scheduled for 23rd September 2021, was designed to address the current problems plaguing food systems. However, the Summit regrettably does not address the COVID-related food crisis, nor the structural causes of unsustainable, unhealthy, and unjust food systems. It has instead been accused of maintaining the status quo of the industrial, globalized, corporate-controlled food production and distribution model.

A policy briefing by FIAN International identifies why the UNFSS is problematic, and calls on governments to mitigate the worst possible outcomes and support a genuine transformation of corporate food systems in order to achieve healthy people and a healthy planet. The clearest instrument by which to do so is the human right to adequate food and nutrition, which entails state obligations and provides a prescriptive framework for food-systems transformation. The concept of food sovereignty is also key for food systems transformation.

Governments are therefore asked to:

1. Promote real transformation by strengthening local, resilient, agroecological food systems.

2. Put public interest first by recognizing food systems as matter of public interest and food as a commons. Public institutions and communal organizations must be strengthened, and corporate power dismantled, and corporations and financial capital must be regulated.

3. Put the holistic understanding of the right to adequate food and nutrition and food sovereignty at the heart of a real transformative food systems approach with special attention to women’s rights.

4. Stop multistakeholderism. Clarify roles and implement robust safeguards against conflicts of interest. Establish clear regulations and accountability frameworks for holding private actors, including corporations, accountable for actions that undermine human rights.

https://www.fian.org/files/files/Policy_Brief-FINAL0.pdf

-Third World Network