Rights-based approaches to addressing food poverty and food insecurity in Ireland and UK

Abstract

Food poverty is an important contributing factor to health inequalities in industrialized countries; it refers to the inability to acquire or eat an adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways (or the uncertainty of being able to do so). Synonymous with household food insecurity, the issue needs to be located within a social justice framework. Recognising the clear interdependence between the right to food and the right to health, this paper explores how international human rights obligations could inform approaches to addressing food poverty and insecurity with specific reference to Ireland and the UK. Little attention has been paid to how countries should meet their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food in developed countries. The paper contributes by examining the social and policy circumstances which inhibit poor households from obtaining sufficient food to eat healthily, along with strategies and interventions from State and civil society actors in the two countries. In practice, problems and potential solutions have largely been directed towards the individual rather than at social determinants, particularly as research on environmental factors such as distance to shops has produced equivocal results. Other key structural aspects such as income sufficiency for food are broadly ignored by the State, and anti-poverty strategies are often implemented without monitoring for effects on food outcomes. Thus scant evidence exists for either Ireland or the UK meeting its rights to food obligations to date, in terms of roles and responsibilities in ensuring access to affordable, available and appropriate food for all.

Adapting Nonprofit Resources to New Social Demands: The Food Banks in Spain

“…This point takes part of the wider field of the government-nonprofit relationships in the Welfare State [59] and, speaking specifically about food banks, requires expanding the point of view up to both the social protection system and the rest of the supply food system [60]. Strategies systematically linking poverty and food insecurity are needed, instead of solving individual and urgent difficulties [61,62] that are nothing but "symptoms" of those structural problems [63]. There is little doubt that Spanish food banks would be making just such kinds of mistakes if their Catholic origin and present links to major retailing companies are taken into account.…”

Food for thought: An ethnographic study of negotiating ill health and food insecurity in a UK foodbank

“…Food poverty -the inability to acquire or eat an adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or the uncertainty of being able to do so (Dowler and O'Connor, 2012) -has reached epidemic proportions with an estimated 4.7 million people in the UK now living in food poverty (defined as spending ten per cent or more of their household income on food) (Centre for Economic and Business Research, 2013). The most deprived households in the UK spent almost a quarter of their income (23.8 per cent) on food in 2012 compared with an annual spend of around four per cent by the most affluent households.…”

Efficiency Analysis of the European Food Banks: Some Managerial Results

“…While access to healthy food is a human right (Anderson, 2013) the concept of food poverty appears as the inability to acquire or eat enough quantity or appropriate quality of food in an acceptable, social way (Dowler and O'Connor, 2012). Therefore, hunger and malnutrition (under-nutrition as well as over-nutrition) delimit social problems that must be remedied for moral reasons (Vernon, 2007).…”

“…Furthermore, in the conceptualization of food security there is huge divergence (Allen, 2013): on the one hand some researchers analysed the problem according to the stakeholders involved (farmers - Fish et al, 2013; agro-food industry - Brunori et al, 2013;countries and their governments -Dowler et al, 2007;Dowler and O'Connor, 2012;Kneafsey et al, 2013;Taylor-Robinson et al, 2013;individuals and households, and so on), and on the other hand some authors studied policies and practices as a problem or as a solution (Dowler et al, 2007;Lawrence et al, 2013;Marsden, 2013).…”