In recent years, the public debate on food has heavily focused on agriculture, rising prices, and sustainability. However, viewing food strictly through an economic lens ignores a fundamental reality. In an exclusive interview, our association sat down with Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Cristina Guarda to discuss why food security must be recognized as a fundamental human right, the challenges facing EU policy, and the deep connection between environmental protection and what we eat.
Food: A Human Right, Not a Commodity
MEP Guarda emphasizes that food is not a commodity, but a human right recognized by the United Nations and other major institutions. Treating food solely from a market perspective erases its legal and moral status.
“As long as food is treated like a commodity, market logic will decide who eats well and who cannot,” Guarda stated. She highlighted a stark reality: since 2019, the cost of a healthy diet has increased by 35% while wages have remained stagnant. To combat this, Guarda advocates for a complex European framework that defines the conditions of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funding and trade agreements based on real access to healthy food, rather than focusing purely on production and export necessities.
Empowering Citizens: The “Good Food for All” Initiative
Currently, the European Union lacks a dedicated legislative framework for the right to food. To address this gap, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) “Good Food for All” allows citizens to directly define priorities for the EU agenda.
If successful, this initiative could deliver practical benefits across society:
- For Citizens: It would guarantee access to healthy food regardless of income, paving the way for instruments like guaranteed access schemes and high-quality public food procurement in schools and hospitals to protect vulnerable populations.
- For Farmers: It would establish fair and stable prices tied directly to production costs. This protects farmers from being squeezed by retail margins and the volatility of global markets.
Ultimately, this initiative successfully merges the battles fought by both farmers and consumers.
Obstacles in the European Union
Turning the right to food into a concrete political priority is not without significant challenges. MEP Guarda outlined three major hurdles in the EU:
- The Agri-Food Lobby: Shifting toward a right-to-food framework could reduce the margins of the powerful agri-food lobby, making it difficult to prioritize the common good and public interest over private interests.
- Institutional Fragmentation: Currently, health, agriculture, trade, and social policies are dealt with separately. The ECI challenges the EU to analyze its strategies coherently across all these different levels.
- The Competitiveness vs. Rights Narrative: A false narrative pitting competitiveness against rights is frequently used to justify agreements like Mercosur or the Omnibus Simplification. This approach ultimately kicks social and environmental costs down the road, heavily impacting the most vulnerable and small producers.
PFAS Pollution and the Environment
Drawing from her personal background in an area heavily polluted by PFAS, Guarda firmly connects the right to food with environmental protection. She notes that farmers are among the populations most exposed to pollution.
“We cannot produce good food with soil and water polluted,” she explained, calling the situation profoundly unfair to future generations. Because PFAS chemicals are highly persistent and do not simply disappear, fighting for the right to food requires fighting for unpolluted soil and water. Protecting the environment is crucial not only to ensure safe food production today but also to protect the health of citizens, consumers, and farmers for generations to come.