Keynote Remarks: Re-Tooling Law and Legal Education for Food System Reform: Food Law and Policy in Practice

Abstract

Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today and to take part in this symposium on the important role law schools and lawyers can play in changing our food system. Food preferences and food choices are incredibly personal, but the way we produce and consume food, and its impacts on our environment, public health, and the safety of ourselves and others, make it a pressing societal issue as well. Defining food law as a distinct field is relatively new. Lawyers and legal scholars from different backgrounds and perspectives, many of whom previously did not consider themselves practitioners of "Food Law," are coming together, acknowledging the interconnectedness of their work, and harnessing their diverse expertise in hopes of fostering food system change. 1 As lawyers, we possess the skills to propose and enact systemic legal and policy changes that can improve the health, environmental, and social impacts of the foods we produce and consume. Through my remarks, I will share my perspective on the essential skills law schools and lawyers can offer in this field based on my own work and experience. I will first relay my personal background and journey to the field of Food Law and Policy. I will then describe how I define this field of law and share some metrics about the field's growth over the past few years. To explain what this field looks like in practice, I will

Support policies that foster a healthy food environment and incentivize healthy food purchases to mitigate cancer inequities

“…The Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Farmers Market Nutrition Program provides vouchers to purchase fruits and vegetables to low-income mothers with young children [ 32 ]. More acutely, as part of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, the Farmers to Families Food Box Program provided over 50 million boxes of food to support both farmers and families impacted by the pandemic [ 33 ].…”

“…In the wake of COVID-19, the Farmers to Families Food Box Program provided food to millions of individuals that were food insecure, reducing unemployment and food waste throughout the food supply chain [ 33 ]. However, food waste and inequitable food access are public health problems that exist separate from the current pandemic.…”

“…In fact, as much as 31% of food is wasted annually in the USA [ 40 ]. Creating tax incentives and expanding liability protections to farmers for the donation of safe meat, dairy, and produce will divert foods away from the waste stream and into the hands of individuals in underserved communities suffering from disproportionate rates of diet-associated cancers [ 33 ].…”

The role of a food policy coalition in influencing a local food environment: an Australian case study

“…This collaborative and coordinated approach enables food policy coalitions to work on systems-level issues including food production, consumption, processing, distribution and waste recycling ( 5 , 6 ) . Evidence suggests that food policy councils and coalitions have been set up as a response to the lack of governmental bodies that can set or create food policy independently ( 7 ) .…”