It’s a packed week for me, with back-to-back meetings and workshops, which is also why I’m missing the Committee on World Food Security (CFS 54) which is meeting in Rome to talk about global hunger.
So it’s fortuitous that I have a guest post from Angela Carriedo of the Right to Food UK Commission showing that tackling hunger is an issue for rich and poor countries alike. And that includes Brazil, whose pioneering council CONSEA was cited by Angela.
CONSEA gives citizens a say in food policy. Jair Bolsonaro scrapped it, Lula revived it, and on Sunday Brazilians choose between Lula and Bolsonaro’s son Flávio.
Food rights are only as strong as the politics behind them, and I’m hoping Brazilian citizens will continue to have a say. Read about the stakes for food systems in a previous guest post.
Angela Carriedo, Commissioner, Right to Food UK Commission
“Right to food is the right to exist.”
This was a comment from a participant at a community workshop we held in Liverpool this past January. It was short and simple, but it summed up what we were trying to do, and it has stayed with me.
The UK is one of the world’s richest countries. Yet every day, around 14 million people - about 5% of the UK population - struggle to feed themselves. They either skip meals, cut the quantity and quality of food they eat, or go hungry.
The scale of the household food insecurity crisis has been the elephant in the room for UK politicians in international and multilateral conversations, but it should already be at the top of the national policy agenda, alongside social security issues.
When the Right to Food UK Commission, based out of the UK Parliament, was set up in 2024, one of its objectives was to shine a line on the unacceptable and endemic food security levels in Britain. The other two were to map solutions and pressure the UK government to take action.
It was a joint effort between the Right to Food Campaign, led in Parliament by Ian Byrne MP for Liverpool West Derby, the University of Westminster, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) and the Food and Work Network. I was one of the 14 Commissioners.
Over the past year, we have gathered evidence and travelled across rural and urban areas in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and England.
More than 100 organisations submitted evidence, and we heard from 2,475 people through a variety of events in all four nations - in-person community sessions, online sessions, consultations and surveys.
We listened to people who go without food or use food banks; disabled people and carers; people experiencing homelessness; young people; migrant and refugee communities; and the workers who produce and sell the nation’s food. Community organisations, local authorities, academics, trade unions and faith groups also gave evidence.
Three weeks ago, we published our report and roadmap for making a legal right to food a reality in the UK.
It recommended establishing a Right to Food Act that would place clear duties on government and public bodies to help ensure that everyone can access adequate, affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food. The Commission’s proposals include targets, independent monitoring, regular reporting to Parliament and a route to redress when duties are not met.
As a Commissioner, I want to reflect on what we heard, what needs to change, and how the report’s recommendations could shape policy.
The case for change
It has been heartbreaking to hear that people cannot make ends meet.
Elderly people relying on £2 McDonald’s hamburgers a day to avoid starvation, people unable to cook because they could not afford gas, mothers going hungry to feed their children, seeing undernutrition and rickets in children, and kids going to school without breakfast.
Yet what stayed with me most was not despair but their determination to live a dignified life.
People were not asking for charity to replace public policy. They were asking for food to be treated as a matter of rights, dignity and security, not something that depends on goodwill.
The opening speaker at our North London session said it powerfully:
“Tonight is not about gratitude. Tonight is about truth.”
For my fellow Commissioners and me, the question was not simply whether action was needed. The challenge was to identify what a legal right to food would need to look like to make a practical difference to a mother, a carer, a nurse, a student, a disabled person, or any of us.
Public support for the principle matters; the next step is to build a legal framework that is practical, measurable, and accountable.
What we heard: dignity, choice and autonomy
Internationally, the right to food is understood in terms of availability, accessibility and adequacy, and sustainability is increasingly recognised as another essential element. But one theme that came up again and again in our evidence doesn’t quite fit into those categories: dignity, autonomy, and choice.
“It isn’t the right to food we should be talking about; it’s a right to dignity.”
(Participant in Ashington)
People asked for food that reflects their culture, faith, and health needs, not just enough calories to get by. And they rejected, firmly, the idea that the problem is a lack of knowledge:
“It’s not that we don’t know how to eat healthy. We know what foods can make you feel full. We also know what foods are healthier, but we just can’t afford it.”
(Participant in Ashington)
This reflects the argument made by former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri: the right to food includes the ability to feed oneself with dignity and to help shape food systems. He has also warned that concentrated corporate power can undermine this right when profit is prioritised over healthy, affordable food.
Dignity also depends on the means to prepare and eat food, not just on whether ingredients are available. We repeatedly heard about temporary accommodations without a cooker, prepayment meters and carers given just 15 minutes to prepare a meal.
“Food security means meals, not just ingredients.”
(Participant at a disabled people’s session)
A charitable food system stretched to breaking point
Food banks and community organisations are doing essential work, often under enormous pressure. But our evidence also showed the limits of relying on charity as a long-term solution.
Charities can provide vital immediate support, but they cannot, on their own, guarantee secure incomes, affordable housing or healthy food environments. Nor can charitable provision replace the public accountability that should accompany government policy.
“Food support systems in the UK are effectively performing public services unofficially. It is a social infrastructure that the government has disowned.”
(Participant in Aberdare)
From community solutions to legal rights
The core principle I took from the evidence is this: solutions developed with communities and for communities, protected by law.
Many solutions already exist. In Harrow, a Romanian community hub supports more than 150 families every Tuesday, delivers to housebound households, provides slow cookers and helps people learn how to use them.
In Scotland, one community larder grew to 897 paying members, and Dundee City Council is funding its larder network directly. Across the country, pantries let people choose their own food for £5, with a real cost of £20, an experience closer to a normal shop than a queue, and a way to dignify access to food.
Too often, however, these approaches depend on short-term funding, one-off local initiatives or charitable efforts. Their value is clear, but their future can be precarious. Communities should be supported and sustained, not left to carry a national problem without reliable resources.
This is where law matters. The community growers and co-ops we met in London understood it immediately:
“The law protects us, and that is what we must remember. It gives us a legal stand.”
(Participant, Tottenham and Tower Hamlets)
The neglected part: who shapes the food environment?
One lesson in the evidence deserves particular attention. People often discuss the right to food as a claim against the state as the primary duty-bearer, but we must also remember that the commercial food environment shapes whether people can exercise this right.
Food prices and availability, retail environments, advertising, planning, public procurement and the practices of large food businesses all influence what people can access and afford.
Public policy cannot tackle food insecurity effectively while ignoring the conditions in which people make food choices. The Commission heard anger about the power of supermarkets, food manufacturers, landlords and advertisers, alongside repeated calls for stronger regulation.
“Food is grown in our community, and it’s sold in supermarkets miles away from us. Why do we have to pay a premium?”
(Participant in Ashington)“Profits can appear obscene when people are struggling or starving.”
(Participant in Glasgow)
The public health question is how people can meaningfully challenge decisions by institutions and powerful commercial actors when those decisions may conflict with their rights. It is unacceptable that people are pushed towards less healthy options because nutritious food is unaffordable or out of reach.
“Right to real food, not a right to ultra-processed food.” (Aberdare, Wales participant)
This means having a national Right to Food Act, statutory targets and regular reporting to Parliament. They may sound administrative but they make progress visible, expose failures and help show whether legal duties are being met. As participants in Scotland said, we need to shift responsibility away from individuals alone and towards regulation of corporate practices.
Rights need teeth and a voice
However, legal recognition alone is not sufficient.
We also need institutions, resources, monitoring and accountability. Accountability must also give people whose rights are at stake a meaningful role in shaping the policies that affect them. Brazil’s National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA) offers one example of participatory governance. The Commission’s report also proposes establishing participatory regional and national right-to-food councils; it remains to be seen where our recommendations land under the current administration.
The message I emphasised at the report’s launch in Liverpool is simple: recognising the right to food is only the beginning. The harder task is turning a legal principle into something people experience in their everyday lives.
Responsibility cannot sit in one department or be reduced to emergency food aid. It must span income security, health, education, agriculture, planning, procurement, and the wider food environment, a whole-government approach. As we have repeatedly said, accountability should be central to implementation at national and local levels, above all to the people whose rights are at stake.
A single law would not solve every problem overnight, nor remove the need for good policy, investment or community action. But it could change the relationship between people and the institutions responsible for the conditions in which they live. Instead of asking whether someone deserves help, the starting point would be whether their rights are being respected.
“One-off help matters in a crisis, but what really changes things is knowing you’ll be able to feed yourself or your family next week and next month too.”
(Online survey respondent)
A survey respondent who has volunteered in food aid for years wrote to us: “We are relying on YOU to fix the system.”
The Commission takes that as its instruction, and so do I.
Public support for a legal right to food appears substantial. Recent polling found that 82% of people support such a right, while 85% consider it unacceptable that people in the UK cannot afford to feed themselves.
Communities across the UK are already building solutions, often with limited resources and too little security. They should not have to carry this responsibility alone. Our task now is to give people a voice and protect a right that won’t be met without a statutory duty, resources, and the legal framework to make the right to food a reality for everyone.
As a participant in our disabled people’s session said, food should not be something people desperately seek; it should be something they simply have.
Let’s get to work.
Thin’s Pickings
Why is Food So Expensive? A media workshop for journalists
Last week, I moderated a very interesting webinar on what’s really causing the rise in food prices, with farmers from the US and Pakistan, an expert on retail, and a food systems thought leader.
It was organised by Agroecology Coalition, A Growing Culture, UVM Institute for Agroecology, IPES-Food, Rooted Magazine. If you missed it, below is the recording of the event.
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