International Food Law

VOLUME 40, Energy and Environmental Law and Policy Series

Few aspects of today’s world system demand such urgent response as our ability to produce sustainable food. Yet at the same time as malnutrition plagues the world, overuse of land, water, and energy in the agricultural and livestock sectors exacerbates environmental degradation and climate change. This important book, in its focus on the interrelated topics of food, nutrition, animals, health, and environment, critically analyses whether the current food production chain – as regulated by domestic, European, and international food law – is sufficient to guarantee a sustainable food supply, respectful of the right of future generations to adequate nutrition and a healthy environment.

The book’s chapters, written by eminent scholars from a variety of countries and legal backgrounds – including leading experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – explore such issues and topics linked to food production as the following:

• concentrated animal feeding operations;
• relation of human well-being and animal welfare;
• manufacturing, trade, and distribution of food products;
• human rights concepts of right to food and right to health;
• the COVID-19 Pandemic and the One Health Approach
• genetically modified organisms;
• deforestation, habitat destruction and zoonoses;
• food naming and labelling; and
• food risk management.

Throughout there is reference to an abundance of legislation, treaties, conventions, and case law at domestic, regional, and international levels, with particular attention to European, US, and World Trade Organization law and the work of the FAO.

The book clearly demonstrates the necessity for reform of the global system of food production in the direction of a more sustainable and environment-friendly model. In its authoritative discussion of the relations among fields of law that are rarely discussed together – food law and the environment, food law and human rights, food law and animal welfare – this collection of chapters will prove a valuable resource both for officials working in food governance and security and for lawyers and scholars concerned with environmental management, sustainable development, and human rights around the world.