Chair of the Committee on World Food Security briefs European Parliamentarians

The Chair of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Ambassador Gabriel Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio of Spainas visited Brussels for a two-day mission. He briefed the European Parliament Committee on Development (DEVE) and met Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the European Parliamentary Alliance against Hunger and Malnutrition – of which FAO Brussels is the Secretariat. He also visited the FAO Liaison Office in Brussels and held bilateral meetings with, among others, MEP Paolo de Castro and MEP Isabel Carvalhais, two Members of the European Parliamentary Alliance against Hunger and Malnutrition.

During the briefing of the European Parliament’s DEVE Committee, Ambassador Ferrero discussed recommendations for addressing hunger and malnutrition through EU development and humanitarian policies. Emphasizing the importance of the right to food, he spoke of the alarming food insecurity situation currently being exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine. “Food and agriculture are at the heart of almost all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and agrifood systems themselves are not only part of the problem, but also part of the solution,” he commented. “To fully realize the right to food we need to increase responsible investment in agriculture, to achieve better production, and to implement globally coordinated action.”

During the visit to the FAO Liaison Office, Ambassador Ferrero met with a delegation of the Natural Resources Section of the European Economic and Social Committee headed by its President Peter Schmidt. FAO Brussels Director, Raschad Al-Khafaji, presented LOB’s activities and offered his office’s full support to the work and visibility of CFS in Brussels.

You can watch the hearing, to which both Ambassador Ferrero and FAO Director of the Sustainable Development Goals Stefanos Fotiou contributed, here.