Geography of Food and Drink: legal issues and responsibility

GeoPalestine 2010

Global issues

• 1 bn undernourished vs surpluses• Food prices vs biofuels• Neoliberal institutional world order• Biotechnology and IPR• Water• McDonaldisation and Walmartisation

Source: FAO

Food/drink and the law: three examples

1.Food adulteration2.Famine3.Bangladesh

Case Study 1

The adulteration of food and drink

Case Study 2

Famine

Famine and conflict

1.Acts of omission

2.Acts of commission

3.Famine crimes

Photograph by Paul Lowe/Panos

Somalia 1992

War Years Average difference (%) in food production between peaceful and war years

Angola 1975-93 -44.5

Burundi 1972, 1988-93 -5.6

Chad 1980-87 2.2

Ethiopia 1974-92 -10.9

Ghana 1981 -9.5

Kenya 1991-2 -3.4

Liberia 1985-8, 1990-93 -25.5

Mozambique 1981-92 -5.0

Nigeria 1980-81, 1984, 1991-2 -4.3

Somalia 1988-93 -23.1

Sudan 1984-93 -18.5

Uganda 1971-87 10.2

Zambia 1984 -13.7

Zimbabwe 1983-4 -19.8

Estimated Impact of African Conflicts, 1970-93

Source: Messer et al. 1998

Case Study 3

Arsenic in the ground water of Bangladesh

http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/arsenic/pictures/arsenic_project_sufferer_picture10.jpg

Source: P. Ravenscroft

Sutradhar v NERC

• 1992, Davies & Exley report• 2001, Binod Sutradhar decided to sue NERC• 2002, Writ lodged• 2003, High Court• 2004, Court of Appeal• 2005, Appellate Committee of HoL• 2006, House of Lords rejects appeal• ?, European Court of Justice

Arsenic is different

• No industrial pollution or corporate greed

• No oil slick or radiation cloud drifting across national borders

• No non-human victims and no threat to the environment generally

Duty of care

‘You must take reasonable care to avoid acts and omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour [i.e…] persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation.’ Lord Atkin, Donoghue v Stevenson 1932

‘It seems to me that the alleged implied statement about arsenic in the BGS report is no different from a statement in an authoritative textbook on geology to the effect that the aquifers of Bangladesh are very unlikely to contain arsenic’.

Lord Hoffmann, HoL, 2006

Future of duty of care

1. Proximity better seen as ‘networked association’?

2. Crisis of expertise. ‘Duty of care’ better judged in terms of research and information from service provider?

3. Should weight ‘duty of care’ according to vulnerability’?

‘The proximity of the Other is not simply close to me in space, or close like a parent, but he approaches me essentially insofar as I feel myself—insofar as I am—responsible for him. It is a structure that in nowise resembles the intentional relation which in knowledge attaches us to the object—to no matter what object, be it a human object. Proximity does not revert to this intentionality; in particular it does not revert to the fact that the other is known to me’.

Emmanuel Levinas, Ethique et infini (1982)

Proximity

‘…not from my choices or foresight, nor from our policies, but from your vulnerability’

Manderson 2006, 176

≈ “response-ability”