From Surplus to Sustenance: Confronting Food Waste to Uphold the Right to Food

By: Emily M. Broad Leib & Noelle Musolino

PDF: From Surplus to Sustenance

The right to food has been acknowledged as a key part of the global human rights framework, officially recognized by 171 countries. Even in countries that have not formally recognized the right—notably including the United States—there is general agreement that government plays an important role in ensuring food security. Recent global shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the impacts of climate change on agricultural output, are straining that right. Yet, governments have under-recognized a key global opportunity: leveraging surplus edible food that would otherwise go to waste to help realize the right to food. Governmental entities in several countries recently recognized the connection between food waste and the right to food. The Lahore High Court in Pakistan made this connection in a 2019 decision, as did national legislation in Mexico enacted in 2024. However, this connection has been understudied. While scholarly literature exists about the right to food and about food waste, there is little discussion about how the two issues intersect. Further, critics of connecting food redistribution with the right to food have posed challenges to the broad set of solutions that are available.

This Article fills a gap in the literature by describing the ways in which food waste violates the right to food, and how recovery and donation of surplus food can actually ensure the right to food. This Article argues that, given all the options available to reduce food waste, governments that fail to take action to remediate food waste should be seen as violating the right to food. To make this argument, the Article analyzes how food waste negatively impacts the right to food, looking at the Lahore High Court decision as well as legislation in Mexico and other countries that connect the right to food and food waste. The Article also examines various policies that countries have adopted to address food waste even when not directly referencing the right to food. The Article closes with a discussion of various critiques of the connection between food waste reduction and the right to food, concluding that these critiques actually offer further evidence of the important role government must play in efforts to align food waste reduction and the right to food.