Food Law and Policy (LAWS10005)

Can law help our food systems deliver safe, healthy, sustainable, fair, affordable food? This subject examines how law impacts on food systems and whether it can help resolve tricky issues concerning land and agriculture, production and processing and marketing and consumption.

Students will learn about the range of different laws and regulations in Australia and around the world that impact on food systems through analysis of how law and regulation addresses conflicts and problems that arise in the food system.

The subject will use a case study approach. Each week we will use a different case study of a food system issue to examine how the law applies to that problem and evaluate how well the law addresses multiple competing values and perspectives in relation to food and law. Some examples of questions we might address are included below.

• Can law help us work out when it is safe, healthy and more sustainable to use new food technologies such as genetically modified organisms and vegan “meat” and “dairy” products?
• Can junk food manufacturers be forced to make their food healthier?
• What should be on the food label – traffic lights, GMO, fair trade, animal welfare, food miles?
• Given that land use for agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, can law be used to make it more sustainable? How are conflicts over the use of land between indigenous land rights, cattle grazing and environmental advocates of biodiversity, habitat protection and preserving the forests be resolved?
• What standards should there be to make sure farm animals are happy or not treated cruelly?
• Are the supermarkets too powerful? Should the power of big food corporations be better controlled?
• Are hospitality and agriculture workers treated fairly and what can we do about it?
• Does everyone have a right to healthy sustainable safe food?
• Can the law do anything about food waste?

The subject takes a holistic approach to the food system and the connections between the various stages of the food system and between issues e.g. between local and global, between the individual and the food system and between individual consumption decisions and the ‘big picture’ of public health, ecological sustainability and fairness.