Can Ethical Labeling Make Food Systems Healthy, Sustainable, and Just?: Lessons from a Critical Evaluation of the Democratic Governance Capacity of Animal Welfare Labeling
Description
In this talk, Professor Christine Parker critically investigated the role of food labeling and its contestation as a governance pathway towards healthy, sustainable, and fair food systems. Consumers are often encouraged to “vote with their fork” and “say no” to unhealthy, unsustainable, and unfair food. As a result the food label has become a heavily contested governance space – an arena in which governments, activists, social entrepreneurs, and industry all seek to influence both consumer choices and the food chain as a whole. Professor Parker described the results of her three-year empirical socio-legal research project examining higher animal welfare labeling in Australia to examine how effective these strategies are. She compared the Australian experience with approaches to humane labeling in the US and EU, and drew some broader lessons about health and sustainability claims on food labels.
This event was free and open to the public.
About the Speaker
Christine Parker is Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Law School Animal Law and Policy Program. She teaches corporate social responsibility and business regulation, legal ethics, and food law and policy at Melbourne Law School, and is the author of The Open Corporation: Effective Self-regulation and Democracy (Cambridge UP, 2002), Explaining Compliance: Business Responses to Regulation (with Vibeke Lehmann Nielsen; Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011), and Inside Lawyers’ Ethics (with Adrian Evans; 3rd edition, Cambridge UP, 2018). Professor Parker’s research on the politics of higher welfare food labeling has been published in a range of Australian and international legal and socio-legal journals. Her paper (with Hope Johnson and Janine Curll) on the insidious impact of misleading health, sustainability, and fair trade claims on “superfood” products is forthcoming in the Journal of Food Law and Policy. She is currently developing a new project on the possibilities for regulatory governance to help create a transformed relationship with animals and ecosystems in food system.
Sponsored by the Animal Law & Policy Program, the Animal Law Society, the Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Harvard Food Law Society, HLS Effective Altruism, the Dean of Students Grant Fund, and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
Tags
animals bioethics fda food health law policy international public health regulation