Food banking is a failed response

“Widespread hunger and food insecurity in today’s rich world are markers of the moral vacuum at the centre of forty years of neoliberalism. As governments have neglected their human rights obligations under international law, charitable food banking fed by Big Food and corporate philanthropy in the USA, Canada and the UK — indeed across the OECD — have become the band aid food safety net for broken systems of income security. This outsourcing of rights based social policy has enabled ineffective and stigmatising food handouts to replace income security for those in need. Food banking is a failed response, incapable of ensuring food security for the jobless, the homeless and those on low incomes. The catastrophe of Covid-19 now reveals the true extent of the public health emergency and the crisis of income inequality and material deprivation plaguing not only wealthy societies but especially the Global South. The Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice intends to inform and educate by holding government and public policy to account. Please join. #RightsNotCharity!”

Graham Riches, Professor Emeritus of Social Work, University of British Columbia, co-editor with Tiina Silvasti of First World Hunger Revisited. Food Charity or the Right to Food? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Food Bank Nations. Poverty, Corporate Charity and the Right to Food (Routledge, 2018)