Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Para 6:  urges to "renew commitments" made in 1992. One of those commitments was the elimination of vitamin A deficiency. The only response that has been made by the donor community since then (and by most governments with exception of a few such as Thailand and Vietnam, which have implemented large-scale and successful food-based approaches) has been the distribution of megadose vitamin A capsules. These actually have only a small and temporary impact on vitamin A deficiency (usually reducing it for only 4-5 months/year) and thus, despite their being distributed on a very large scale in over 100 countries for many years now, vitamin A deficiency is still prevalent.

One of the problems is that the implementation of this approach has led to at best a lack of enthusiasm for the implementation of food-based approaches which are more likely to work and to be sustainable. (See for example http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/downloads/WPHNA_web_commentary_may2010.pdf)  In contradiction to donor-centric arguments that these approaches are more expensive than capsules, they can often actually generate income for the beneficiaries.

Thus I would argue that ICN2 no longer make promises about the elimination of vitamin A deficiency but instead should set a deadline by which countries replace capsule approaches with food-based approaches. The steps that might be involved in doing that safely and conservatively are listed at the end of this article: http://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/vitamin-a-wars-the-downsides-of-donor-driven-aid/

Ted Greiner, PhD

Professor of Nutrition

Department of Food and Nutrition

Hanyang University

222 Wangsimni Ro

Seoul 133-791

South Korea

The ICN would make an important contribution to global policymaking toward the elimination of all forms of malnutrition if the developing countries would openly question what is going on lately in the donor world. We have seen how disastrous passive acceptance of assistance completely on the donors’ terms has been in the case of vitamin A deficiency. Not only were capsules the only thing on offer, their universalization to over 100 countries has actively inhibited the expansion of what developing country governments always expressed as their preference and what was emphasized in the first ICN: food based approaches.  (Latham, Michael, et al. "World Nutrition." Journal of the World Public Health Nutrition Association 1.1 (2010).; http://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/vitamin-a-wars-the-downsides-of-donor-driven-aid/ http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/agn/pdf/Greiner_VITAMIN_A_Final.pdf) This kind of cloaked imperialism now threatens to expand to the entire field of nutrition.

IFPRI has recently published Stuart Gillespie's quite good chapter on politics and nutrition in their recent 2013 Global Food Policy Report and published it as a separate article on their website: http://www.ifpri.org/blog/transforming-political-will-action-nutrition. Gillespie's points are all well taken.

But to resort to Field's old "underbelly" metaphor (Field, John Osgood. "The soft underbelly of applied knowledge: conceptual and operational problems in nutrition planning." Food policy 2.3 (1977): 228-239.), the question is what all this new political will is being mobilized to do exactly? To what extent will it undertake to deal with the time consuming and low-PR task of addressing weaknesses in capacity? When addressed, will education and training efforts aim to create Alan Berg's "nutrition engineers" (Berg, Alan. "Sliding toward nutrition malpractice: time to reconsider and redeploy." Annual review of nutrition 13.1 (1993): 1-16.) or people with only theoretical scientific knowledge? 

So far the signs are not promising. SUN, like the Millennium Development Goals, has been successful in mobilization even the USA basically by being “non-political”. (Which really means not questioning the currently ascendant neoliberal model of development.) This has involved inviting Big Agriculture and Big Food to the policymaking forums/tables where they have not been welcome in the past, either at international or national levels. It is hard to imagine what benefits are expected to accrue from such "partnerships" if indeed the intention is to avoid conflicts of interest or merely giving large transnational corporations, many of whom are highly complicit in harming nutrition via infant formula or junk foods, a way to score extremely low-cost public relations points. 

The recent 2013 addition to the Lancet nutrition series by Black et al identified 10 high priority interventions (Bhutta, Zulfiqar A., et al. "Evidence-based interventions for improvement of maternal and child nutrition: what can be done and at what cost?." The Lancet382.9890 (2013): 452-477.). Given the way complementary feeding is being interpreted in recent years (local foods are inadequate to solve the problem), the only one of those 10 that would not involve the import of fortificants and/or other products from the rich countries is breastfeeding. Even breastfeeding in recent decades focuses not on empowering communities, families or mothers themselves, but on improving the work of modern health care professionals (eg the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative). 

Thus the community-based nutrition approaches which Stuart and others (Tontisirin, Kraisid, and Stuart Gillespie. "Linking community-based programs and service delivery for improving maternal and child nutrition." Asian Development Review 17.1/2 (1999): 33-65.) focused so brilliantly on when the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition was still active (now dead in the water as punishment for NOT being willing to indulge in collaboration with industry) will likely not see much emphasis as these currently committed billions roll. One wonders in indeed, how many of them will even cross developing country borders. 

Ted Greiner, PhD

Professor of Nutrition

Department of Food and Nutrition

Hanyang University

222 Wangsimni Ro

Seoul 133-791

South Korea

Please kindly find a few comment on the attached document.

Thanks

Julia Suryantan

1. Do you have any general comments on the draft political declaration and its vision (paragraphs 1-3 of the zero draft)?  

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) recognizes that the great challenge faced by economies today is to integrate environmental sustainability within economic growth and welfare by decoupling environmental degradation from economic growth. Now is the time to move towards an energy and resource efficient economy. This is the only way to improve and safeguard the quality of life and well-being for present and future generations. Climate change, agricultural productivity, water management, dietary habits, urbanization, and population growth: the causes and consequences of these burning issues for our planet will ultimately depend on management of the food systems in socioeconomic and environmental frameworks, currently affected by the following three major global paradoxes:

FOOD WASTE: Every year, 1.3 billion tons of edible food is wasted that represents four times the amount needed to feed the 868 million malnourished people worldwide.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE PRODUCTION: A large portion of crop and food production is funnelled to animal feed or biofuels despite widespread hunger and malnutrition. Predictions foresee that global demand for biofuels will imply an additional of 40 million hectares of land converted for biofuel crops. A third of the global food production is used to feed livestock.

MALNUTRITION vs. OBESITY: Today, for every malnourished person, two are obese or overweight: 868 million people are undernourished globally, while 1.5 billion people are obese or overweight. 36 million people perish annually due to undernourishment. In contrast, 29 million people die each year from diseases related to an excess of food.

1. Do you have any comments on the background and analysis provided in the political declaration (paragraphs 4-20 of the zero draft)

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) agrees with the background information and impetus for action. In particular, the BCFN underlines the central role played by prevention with regard to diet and lifestyles, both in Western countries and in developing countries: on the one hand, prevention in terms of spreading the correct behaviors that are able to slow down the onset of overweight and obesity; on the other hand, prevention of the deterioration of food and the lives of people in conditions of extreme fragility in the least developed countries. In light of these reflections, we believe that in Western contexts it is more necessary than ever to:

• Promote the further deepening of scientific knowledge.
• Properly structure the interventions, according to the best international practices.
• Encourage the spreading of accurate food information and promote the culture of prevention.

Alongside the other major players that make up the core of the work of food information / Orientation / prevention, in recent years – with increasing awareness – there has been the role of the agri-food industry in contributing actively to the creation of proposals that are consistent with the accurate information on food and lifestyles and in actively promoting their adoption.  In relation to developing countries, we believe that it is necessary to:

• Promote economic development related to agriculture so as to reduce hunger and malnutrition and to ensure an improvement in access to food by the poor.
• Establish stable and long-lasting actions against undernourishment and malnutrition in the world.
• Implement initiatives to enhance the social role of women and their economic independence, in order to combat malnutrition.  

Furthermore, we recognize that all Parties shall engage in the promotion of sustainable agriculture, understood as the efficient production of safe, healthy and high quality agricultural products, in a way that is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable, by protecting the natural environment and its resources and mitigating climate change, by improving the social and economic conditions of farmers, employees and local communities, and by safeguarding animal welfare for all farmed species.  In addition, we recognize that food waste is a urgent issue, starting with a common definition and methodology to quantify it to harmonize food waste monitoring and practices. With regard to specific commitments:

• Parties shall give priority to avoiding food losses and waste by addressing their root causes, before directing focus to how best to dispose of waste. Therefore waste reduction initiatives should respect a hierarchy, namely:

    - Prevention;

    - Reuse for human consumption;

     - Animal consumption;

    - Energy production and composting.

Parties shall endeavour to address the issue at every stage in the food chain, from producers to consumers to create a fully informed chain of actors wherein all have a responsibility in helping to reduce food waste:

- Analysis to address the gap in knowledge regarding the shortcomings of the food supply chain from a resource efficiency perspective, with particular regard to production and distribution stages;

- Cooperation between farmers as well as long-term vertical food chain agreements to allow for a better planning of consumer demand, both quantitatively and qualitatively;

- Education of consumer on the use-by and best-by dates of food products which have proved to be confusing for consumers, to food consumption planning, storage and preservation, and to the preparation

1. Do you have any comments on the commitments proposed in the political declaration? In this connection, do you have any suggestions to contribute to a more technical elaboration to guide action and implementation on these commitments (paragraphs 21-23 of the zero draft)?

Please provide your comments in the appropriate fields relating to these commitments:        

21.

Commitment I: aligning our food systems (systems for food production, storage and distribution) to people’s health needs;  

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) strongly agrees that it is essential to align food systems internationally—from farm to fork— to people’s health needs and realize the high degree of interconnectivity between health, nutrition and well-being.

The BCFN developed the Double Pyramid Model as a way to reconcile the environmental impact of food production with people’s health. The model consists of two pyramids: one lists the nutritional value of foods of the Mediterranean Diet and the other outlines the environmental impacts of such foods.  At the base of the food pyramid there are foods that should  be consumed daily, at the top those to be consumed in moderation. The Environmental Pyramid distributes foods according to their impact on the Planet, using public data calculated according to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method which take into account for the main stages of product life (from the cultivation of raw materials to consumption).

Commitment II: making our food systems equitable, enabling all to access nutritious foods.  

To make our food systems equitable, we need urgently to :

• Do more than provide food and rather create the systemic conditions for food security by recognizing the social factors that lead to malnutrition and access problems such as inability to work, social/economic marginalization, political and social instability, inadequate knowledge about nutrition
• Build a system of multilateral rules for commercial exchanges to guarantee greater access to food (decrease trade barriers, export subsidies)
• Manage the global demand for biofuels to prevent it from interfering with crop cultivation for foods 

Commitment III: making our food systems provide safe and nutritious food in a sustainable and resilient way;          

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) maintains that specific measures should be implemented in order to:

• Spread best farming practices including understanding about farming models and their advantages by using simulations to test models before implementation and spread proven principles (including crop rotation, increased biodiversity, minimized mechanized operations, organic soil surface, biological farmland activity, investment in technology)
• Promote technology investments for agricultural production, water conservation and fight against overconsumption.

Commitment IV: ensuring that nutritious food is accessible, affordable and acceptable through the coherent implementation of public policies throughout food value chains.         

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) recommends to focus on the following initiatives  :

• Protecting the more vulnerable segments of the population
• Support education and awareness-raising campaign on nutrition, especially in primary schools

Commitment V: establishing governments’ leadership for shaping food systems.      

In our view, policies shall give to food and nutrition a primary role in the international political  agenda by:

• Encouraging governments and international organisations to manage price volatility, curb speculation and ensure “safety nets” for emergencies. Food cannot be thought of as something to be indexed, leveraged, and speculated on for profit
• Recognizing the challenge of implementing Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) prevention policies and share best practices in this area

Commitment VI: encouraging contributions from all actors in society;           

Here, we recommend a concerted alliance among various players of the food chain.

• Food industry is expected to :
  • Make their products healthier and provide  meaningful nutrition information
  • Promote investments in applied research and cooperate with universities and research centres.

• Consumers are expected to :
  • Adopt responsible behaviour for their lifestyles.
  • Understand the power of their opinions and purchases to guide government  policies in support of the role of diet and nutrition for health

• Scientific bodies, research centres, universities should make the guidelines and research on healthy diets more applicable and usable.  

• Schools, families and pediatricians should contribute to nutrition education from childhood onward.

• Policy-makers are expected to:
  • Include nutrition and health in their education policies
  • Ensure comprehensive communication solutions based on best practices
  • Promote  public-private partnerships and research

Commitment VII: implementing a framework through which our progress with achieving the targets and implementing these commitments can be monitored, and through which we will be held accountable.          

No specific comments on this commitment.

22. Commit to launch a Decade of Action on Nutrition guided by a Framework for Action and to report biennially on its implementation to FAO, WHO and ECOSOC.       

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition is in favour of strengthening global governance mechanisms to redesign food systems in view of greater accessibility, sustainability and nutritional quality.

A common agenda needs to be found, as does a common venue for discussion and analysis. The Framework for Action should be based on previous conceptions of global food security as developed by the G20 in Seoul, the 2010 United Nations Private Sector Forum on MDGs, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), FAO and others.

23. Commit to integrate the objectives and directions of the Ten Year Framework for Action into the post-2015 global development efforts.  

We believe that Post-2015 development efforts must recognise that the right to food is a human right. Every human being has a right to safe, affordable and healthy food as declared at the Rome World Food Summit in 1996 (Food Security, 51). Development efforts must defend that right with appropriate policies.

    Is the document becoming too long to be an effective political tool?

     I think there should be more linkage to the NCD agenda which has some nutritional focus and currently a powerful appealing theme.

     Bill Keenan

1. Do you have any general comments on the draft political declaration and its vision (paragraphs 1-3 of the zero draft)?

The draft political declaration is strategically strong, in all 3 areas, however data about declining or increasing number of population is very general while in reality, women and children are highly affected by malnutrition. Despite this fact being recognized here and there, gender disaggregation of data needs to be addressed in order to provide a true picture of the malnutrition status.

Loss of local food value: One basic reason of increasing malnutrition among the indigenous communities has been recognized as impacts of modern markets supplying junk food which discourage the indigenous food intake. The low recognition of nutritious value of indigenous food items by the food experts is a factor leading to marginalization of such locally available nutritious food.

2. Do you have any comments on the background and analysis provided in the political declaration (paragraphs 4-20 of the zero draft)?

The analysis seem to be based on older experiences and reports, whereas currently developing countries have been spending a large portion of national budget in security forces affecting investment in agriculture (example: Nepal invested 30% of budget in security forces in the last 10 years due to Maoist political conflict). Despite having priority set for agricultural investment, the countries investment in agricultural production need to be assessed and analyzed from food security angle. Moreover, mentioning about collaborative approach is not clear about ensuring rights of the small landholders' claims for land allocation, irrigation and credit, including single women who make a major group of farmers in the South Asia region as well as in Africa. Thus specific points of analysis of their needs, voice need to be reflected in these paragraphs.

3. Do you have any comments on the commitments proposed in the political declaration? In this connection, do you have any suggestions to contribute to a more technical elaboration to guide action and implementation on these commitments (paragraphs 21-23 of the zero draft)?

Technical collaboration with issue based organizations is very important, e.g., farmers organizations, women's agencies, youth and IPs, besides private companies.

The role of market that ensures quality food needs to be stressed more ina strategic manner

Madam, Mister,

Please, kindly find attached a few comments on the political outcome document off the ICN2, section on committments.

Kind regards,

Sonia

Sonia Blaney, Ph.D., Dt.p.

Nutritionniste - Consultante

Dakar, Sénégal

The Zero draft seems to be missing the point that malnutrition should, in my view, be connected with the attitude towards GM food which should be clearly spelled out. My second point is that  the burgeoning farm-outsourcing (growing crops in the developing countries to bring to and serve the rich ones) is a threat to malnutrition as well and should be equally seriously considered and pointed out in the Rome Accord.

Dr Renat Perelet

Institute for Systems Analysis

Moscow, Russia

1.            Do you have any general comments on the draft political declaration and its vision (paragraphs 1-3 of the zero draft)?     

Paragraph 1:

Consider adding link between malnutrition and communicable diseases.

Paragraph 2:

Consider being a bit more specific on micronutrient deficiencies

Not only women but also pre-school children are affected by anemia with negative impact on their learning capacity

Paragraph 3:

It is not clear enough. Consider divide better content between three main issues: food production/agriculture, food consumption/diversity of diet, food distribution/market forces.

The issue of market forces influencing production and distribution is missed.

Consider adding a 4th paragraph on what is known/solutions to improve nutrition and benefits of  investing in actions to improve nutrition.

2.            Do you have any comments on the background and analysis provided in the political declaration (paragraphs 4-20 of the zero draft)?            

Consider adding reference to market forces influencing production and commercialization thus availability of food and the need of strengthening the regulatory framework including effective enforcing mechanisms and monitoring systems in countries.

Paragraph 4:

Consider adding estimate of lives saved and disability averted by investing in nutrition interventions.

Paragraph 7:

Delete “maintain” in relation to prevalence of wasting.

Add “hypertension” to obesity, diabetes in the last sentence.

Paragraph 9 and 10: market forces play also an important role, people produce what can be consumed and sold.

Paragraph 9:

Add processes with which food is “marketed”

Paragraph 10:

Add “commercialization” to food processing

Paragraph 11: there are many concept in the same paragraph, consider divide in two.

Paragraph 12:

Add “investment, trade, and finance” to the list of sectors

Paragraph 14:

Add concept of “functional enforcement mechanisms” to the concept of regulatory framework

Paragraph 15:

The content is not very clear. Consider focusing on building evidence on effective policies and interventions.

Paragraph 16:

Add global goals/commitments/standards at the end of the sentence.

Paragraph 20:

As part of the accountability mechanism suggest adding indicators on investment or cost benefit of selected policies/interventions.

3.            Do you have any comments on the commitments proposed in the political declaration? In this connection, do you have any suggestions to contribute to a more technical elaboration to guide action and implementation on these commitments (paragraphs 21-23 of the zero draft)?

Please provide your comments in the appropriate fields relating to these commitments:    

21.

Commitment I: aligning our food systems (systems for food production, storage and distribution) to people’s health needs;              

add specific reference to marketing, as this can be regulated