Most scholars attribute systemic causes of food insecurity to poverty, human overpopulation, lack of farmland, and expansion of biofuel programs. However, as Chen argues here, another significant factor has been overlooked. The current food insecurity is not absolute food shortage, since global food production still exceeds the need of the entire world population, but a problem of how to secure access to resources. Distorted agricultural trade undermines world food distribution, and uneven distribution impedes people’s access to food, particularly in poor developing countries. Examining EU and US agricultural policies and World Trade Organization negotiations in agriculture, the author argues how they affect the international agricultural trade, claiming that current food insecurity is the result of inequitable food distribution and trade practices. The international trade regime is advised to reconcile trade rules with the consideration of food security issues. Several other enforceable solutions to reduce world hunger and malnutrition are also advanced, including national capacity building, the improvement of governance, and strategic development of biofuel programs. This book will be of great interest to agricultural trade professionals and consultant policy makers in the EU, US and developing countries. Students and researchers with a concentration on international trade, agriculture economics, global governance and international law will benefit greatly from this study.

In The Right to Food and the World Trade Organization’s Rules on Agriculture: Conflicting, Compatible, or Complementary?, Rhonda Ferguson explores the relationship between the human right to food and agricultural trade rules. She questions whether States can adhere to their obligations under both regimes simultaneously. These two regimes are frequently portrayed to be in tension with one another. The content and contours of the right to food under international human rights law and WTO rules on domestic supports, export subsidies, and market access are considered through the lens of norm conflict theories. The analysis is situated within the context of the debate surrounding the fragmentation of international law.

Office.

Recommendations made include the need: for a background study and consultation on the normative framework for fish trade and food security; for the preparation of technical guidelines on the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF), fish trade and food security; and better training to improve capacity of policy makers and technical personnel on international issues dealing with fish trade and food security.

People are often surprised to learn that although the current global levels of food production are sufficient to feed all of humanity, the problems of undernourishment increase year by year in many countries. Economic growth, while important, is not a guarantee for reducing hunger. The intensification of income concentration worldwide, in the face of the persistence of millions of hungry families, demonstrates that economic interest is not guided by the needs of humanity. Moreover, the problem of food no longer refers to the lack of food alone. Many people are still unaware that our diets are not simply choices of taste and tradition but the result of international dynamics driven by geopolitical factors, the trajectory of capitalism, and other ulterior forces. The authors deepen the link between international relations and food security by exploring the humanitarian and ethical importance of a solution to the problem of hunger; the role of the state as a strategically relevant actor in achieving food security; and the nature of the problem of food security in a world in which the rationale guiding food production and distribution is a capitalist one.

Focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, and discrimination, this book will help readers to understand for themselves the controversies and complexities behind human rights.

estation, 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.