Advancing Food Integrity

GMO Regulation, Agroecology, and Urban Agriculture

Gabriela Steier

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351395540
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Botany
• Index: Biological Sciences

Key features:

• Presents summaries of key points after each chapter and includes color graphs to visualize the big-picture concepts
• Demonstrates how urban rooftop farms (URFs) can contribute to city greening and climate change mitigation worldwide while providing fresh locally-sourced produce for growing urban populations
• Provides cutting-edge ideas from the the emerging field of food law and places international and comparative legal concepts into an accessible context for non-lawyers
• Examines major disputes surrounding food products that have been brought before the World Trade Organization (WTO) to illustrate how trade trends have pushed toward GMO proliferation
• Uses examples of food labeling, pollinator protection, pesticide permitting, invasive species control, and GMO regulatory policy in the US and the EU to illustrate various methods of bringing public law to the forefront in the struggle toward achieving food integrity

The proliferation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in our increasingly globalized food system is trivializing the inherent risks to a sustainable world. Responding to the realities of climate change, urbanization, and a GMO-dominated industrialized food system, Gabriela Steier's seminal work addresses the interrelationship of these cutting-edge topics within a scholarly, legal context. In Advancing Food Integrity: GMO Regulation, Agroecology, and Urban Agriculture, Steier defines food integrity as the optimal measure of environmental sustainability and climate change resilience combined with food safety, security, and sovereignty for the farm-to-fork production and distribution of any food product.

The book starts with a discussion of the food system and explores whether private law has sufficiently protected food or whether public law control is needed to safeguard food integrity. It proceeds to show how the proliferation of GMOs creates food insecurity by denying people's access to food through food system centralization. Steier discusses how current industrial agricultural policy downplays the dangers of GMO monocultures to crop diversity and biodiversity, thereby weakening food production systems.

Striving to promote agroecology by providing a fresh and compelling narrative of interdisciplinary questions, Steier explores how farming can be geared toward more sustainable and environmentally friendly practices worldwide in the future. This book belongs in the libraries of all those interested in food law, environmental law, agroecology, sustainable agriculture, and urban living practices.

Chapter 1

Food integrity and the food system defined

Improving food integrity in light of the climate change and urbanization challenges gives rise to clashes between public and private law, between genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and agroecology. These challenges may appear to be self-defeating and at an impasse when it comes to gGenetically mModified oOrganisms (GMOs, also called GE or GM crops). This chapter is about finding perspective shifts to get our food system “unstuck.” Here, the disciplinary lense is that of the law. Focusing on the food system, this chapter explores whether private law has sufficiently protected food or whether public law control is needed to safeguard food integrity. Specifically, food integrity describes an ideal direction for the relationships and shall be defined as the measure of environmental sustainability and climate change resilience, combined with food safety, security, and sovereignty for the farm-to-fork production and distribution of any food product.

Imagine a single chess player. In a game against himself, he is challenging his own strategies and viewpoints. He needs to switch the board around to plot the next move in the game against himself. Only a new perspective can help him find the right strategy in his mental tool box to tackle a seemingly “stuck” problem. Just like the chess player, the race toward improved food integrity is one against climate change and urbanization. These challenges may appear to be self-defeating and at an impasse when it comes to certain agricultural products, but changing the perspective helps to reevaluate problems and reveal paths to new solutions. This book is about finding perspective shifts to get our food system “unstuck.” Here, the disciplinary lens is that of the law. Focusing on the food system, this book explores whether private law has sufficiently protected food or whether public law control is needed to safeguard food integrity.

First, it must be clear what this food system encompasses. Professors Robert Lawrence and Roni Neff from Johns Hopkins University define the food system as “encompassing all the activities and resources that go into producing, distributing, and consuming food; the drivers and outcomes of those processes; and all the relationships and feedback loops between system components.” ¹ Notably, the components of a food system include “land-based parts (e.g., agriculture, farmland preservation); environment (e.g., water, soil, energy); economy (e.g., distribution, processing, retail); education; policy; social justice; health; and food cultures.” ² How the relationships between these functional parts play out provide points of attack for “the most strategic and practical ways to intervene for change,” ³ such as through the perspective switchboard described herein.

1.1 Functional components of food integrity

Sharing the functional components, food integrity describes an ideal direction for the relationships and “shall be defined as the measure of environmental sustainability ⁴ and climate change resilience, combined with food safety, security, and sovereignty for the farm-to-fork production and distribution of any food product.” ⁵ Conversely, food safety, as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defines it, focuses on “handling, storing and preparing food to prevent infection and help to make sure that … food keeps enough nutrients for … a healthy diet.” Here, the key is the wholesome nature of food so that it nourishes instead of sickens. Food security, however, exists when “availability ⁶ and adequate access at all times to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life” ⁷ are guaranteed. Three pillars of food security, (1) availability, (2) access, and (3) utilization, are designed to ensure that food is “available in sufficient quantities and on a consistent basis,” that it is regularly acquirable at adequate quantities, and that it has “a positive nutritional impact on people.” ⁸ Finally, food sovereignty “is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” ⁹ Notably, food sovereignty “puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.” ¹⁰ In other words, food sovereignty creates a right that complements both food safety (the wholesomeness of food) and food security (the access to food). Adding the elements of environmental sustainability and climate change resilience, one speaks about food integrity (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Food integrity. The combination of food safety (blue), food sovereignty (light green), and food security (dark green) with environmental sustainability and climate change resilience (orange) creates food integrity. Agroecology is one link (yellow arrow) that helps to achieve food integrity (yellow).

Second, the food system is maintained by a set of laws, ranging from local ordinances about animal husbandry to domestic farming and international trade. Without going into the specifics yet, this book uses genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as the most commonly traded commodity crops to illustrate how laws interact with the principles underlying food integrity. ¹¹ Simply put, this book explores selected points where the law obstructs achieving food integrity and suggests how the food system may be unclogged. For instance, private law facilitates GMO proliferation by creating an enabling environment for their production and trade. The record of private law and legal actions, as recorded in the many cases and court decisions cited in this book, shows that public law provides little possibility for critique or control in a systematic fashion that permeates all parts of the food system. ¹² Instead, public law advances the interest of the market, prioritizing the trade and business aspects of the food system under the pretense of control by the market. This food trade in a free market context, however, plays a counterproductive role in achieving food integrity when one considers the GMO sector. Most of the requirements to maintain food security, food safety, and food sovereignty fall prey to economic drivers. Conversely, public law could control the product, as in the case of plastics, but neoliberal economics of food products reliant on GMOs, ¹³ justified by the industry’s advertising claim that GMOs will “feed the world,” prevents public law control from being implemented across the food system. Simply put, private law is blocking the path for public law to achieve food integrity. ¹⁴ Especially in light of the growing challenges of climate change, agriculture is at a crossroads. On the one hand, agriculture contributes to global warming and climate change; on the other hand, it has the potential to adapt to and mitigate it. ¹⁵ At this junction, the clash between (1) agroecology, (2) food integrity, and (3) private law is the origin of the GMO debate that is commonly discussed in the media, politics, and at conferences. ¹⁶

1.2 Summary

Improving food integrity in light of the climate change and urbanization challenges gives rise to clashes between public and private law, between GMOs and agroecology. These challenges may appear to be self-defeating and at an impasse when it comes to GMOs. This chapter is about finding perspective shifts to get our food system “unstuck.” Focusing on the food system, this chapter explores whether private law has sufficiently protected food or whether public law control is needed to safeguard food integrity. Specifically, food integrity describes an ideal direction for these relationships and shall be defined as the measure of environmental sustainability and climate change resilience, combined with food safety, security, and sovereignty for the farm-to-fork production and distribution of any food product.

Notes

1 Roni Neff (Ed.), Introduction to the US Food System. Wiley & Sons (2014); ProQuest Ebook Central.

2 Id. Internal citations omitted.

3 Id.

4 For the purpose of this book, sustainability shall be defined as pertaining to a food system that maintains its own viability by using agroecologic techniques that allow for continual reuse and a wholistic service to all components of food integrity. Agricultural sustainability shall be construed to complement environmental conservation and climate change mitigation.

5 Gabriela Steier, A window of opportunity for GMO regulation: Achieving food integrity through cap-and-trade models from climate policy for GMO regulation, 34 Pace Envtl L. Rev. 293 (2017).

6 FAO, Food safety, http://www.fao.org/docr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the author
• List of abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Food integrity and the food system defined
• Chapter 2 The perspective switchboard: GMOs versus agroecology
• Chapter 3 Food dependence: GMOs fail to feed the world
• Chapter 4 Agrobiodiversity and agroecology: Contextualizing comparative GMO regulation
• Chapter 5 The regulation of GMOs in international trade
• Chapter 6 EU-US disputes over GMOs and the WTO biotech cases
• chapter 7 Concluding remarks: Obstacles to food integrity
• Glossary
• Index