A call for food system change

M Nestle - The Lancet, 2020 - thelancet.com
The Lancet, 2020thelancet.com
In shutting down entire societies, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fundamental
inequities and inadequacies of market-driven economies that prioritise profits over human
welfare. Inequities show up in businesses that furlough employees while paying high
salaries and bonuses to executives. They are also revealed by the dependence of food
systems on poorly paid workers and cheap global supply chains. The COVID-19 crisis
demonstrates how current food systems fail to protect populations from hunger and diet …
In shutting down entire societies, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fundamental inequities and inadequacies of market-driven economies that prioritise profits over human welfare. Inequities show up in businesses that furlough employees while paying high salaries and bonuses to executives. They are also revealed by the dependence of food systems on poorly paid workers and cheap global supply chains. The COVID-19 crisis demonstrates how current food systems fail to protect populations from hunger and diet-influenced noncommunicable diseases and why the poor, disenfranchised, discriminated against, and chronically ill are those most vulnerable to this disease. In the USA, the pandemic has caused massive unemployment and impoverishment. But it has brought to public attention the plight of formerly invisible low-wage food workers, many of them migrants or immigrants, whose jobs on farms and in slaughterhouses, meat-packing plants, and grocery stores rarely provide sick leave or health-care benefits yet put them at risk of contagion. Their work is now deemed essential. Suddenly, the inadequacies of US policies on labour, immigration, health care, food assistance, and international trade are visible to all. Some farmers are culling livestock and discarding unsold milk, eggs, and vegetables while the newly destitute wait in long lines for foods distributed by volunteer-run food bank charities, now the front line of food assistance to the poor. A food system unable to respond to a viral pandemic is broken. In 2019, reports from two landmark Lancet Commissions established a roadmap for creating resilient food systems capable of preventing hunger, non-communicable diseases, and the environmental damage caused by industrial food production. The
EAT–Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems proposed a Great Food Transformation of dietary improvements to accomplish this goal. The Lancet Commission on the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change called for recognition of food as a fundamental human right and of food systems as a means to promote human health and environmental
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