Remember back in the 1990s, when Hillary-Care was being bandied about as a program to provide free medical care for all Americans. During that debate I thought it was only a matter of time until someone went further and started pushing, seriously, for a program advocating free food for all. Perhaps we’ve reached that point.

Per an article at GlobalGovernanceWatch.org, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations recently produced a five volume guide entitled the Methodological Toolbox on the Right to Food, the contents of which are very interesting. Let’s discuss how the implementation of this publication’s call-to-action could lead to free food and, with it, economic instability in the food industry and perhaps social uncertainty.

The article on the Global Governance Watch site states that, since the United Nation’s founding in 1948, it has been a goal of the UN that individuals worldwide have the right to an adequate standard of living. In the United States, we call this the “pursuit of happiness.” Global Governance Watch (GGW) also says that in 1999, the United Nations clarified this position with General Comment 12 of the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:

. . . the right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.

As I interpret this quote, its key idea is that governments create an environment where individuals have economic access to food or access to its means of procurement. Very reasonable. In simplified terms, we can call that access a politically-supported environment where those who want a job can have a job so that they can economically access and procure, i.e., buy, food. Again, you have the right to the pursuit of happiness. I support that wholeheartedly.

But GGW reports that in 2005, the game began to change at the United Nations because in that year the General Assembly passed a resolution calling:

upon States to implement legal and political strategies to ensure that the right to food was not compromised.

Hmm.  That’s a bit of a shift in thinking, isn’t it?

GGW says that for the UN to give “traction” to General Comment 12 and the 2005 resolution, the UN produced the aforementioned Methodological Toolbox on the Right to Food. The Toolbox was recently published (October 23, 2009) and in its website article about the Toolbox, GGW calls specific attention to the first of the five Toolbox volumes. The first volume is entitled “A Guide on Legislating for the Right to Food. In its synopsis of the Guide, GGW interprets the Guide as saying that:

. . . States must incorporate the right to food into national constitutions . . . (and) they must establish a “framework” law on the right to food, which sets out obligations for state authorities and private actors and establishes “necessary”

Continue reading Free Food is Next on the NGO Agenda