Food advocates team up to raise awareness of people's rights to proper nutrition
Food First N.L. and provincial human rights commission want to educate people on their right to food
Food First N.L. and the Newfoundland and Labrador Human Rights Commission are collaborating on a new campaign that aims to educate people about their fundamental right to food.
Laurel Huget, Food First N.L.'s programs co-coordinator, says the campaign outlines what food insecurity means and how it can be tackled in the province.
"For us, we still have a lot of learning about the right to food framework because it's bigger than having enough food to eat," she said. "We started working with the N.L. Human Rights Commission to put together a social media campaign about what it would look like to have a right to food. Not just from the food systems perspective, but from the human rights perspective."
Carey Majid, executive director of the N.L. Human Rights Commission, says food is considered a human right internationally but it isn't enforced at a state level. Canada has its Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, she notes, the Newfoundland and Labrador has its Human Rights Act, she said.
"[But] in our act, there is no protection for access to food, so you would not be able to file a complaint about that issue, and we wanted to make that clear to people, but we also recognize that it's an issue that needs to be talked about."
The barriers to food security in Newfoundland and Labrador are varied. The province has the fewest farms in the country, there is just a two-to-three-day supply of produce at any given time, and many communities don't have a standard grocery store.
Huget says government intervention can remove some of those barriers.
"I'm finding ways to bring food to communities that don't have a local grocer, probably because it's just not profitable," she said. "Or supporting transit, public transit, or promoting accessibility to wild foods, whether that's standing up for Indigenous land rights or supporting environmental sustainability."
Rules that block traditional ways of finding food in N.L. — such as fishing, foraging and hunting — can also be barriers to food security, says Lynn Blackwood, food security programs manager for the Nunatsiavut government.
"Caribou is one of the most important, culturally appropriate and preferred food for anyone in Nunatsiavut, but eight years ago we had a ban, so people who relied on caribou for the main source of protein. That certainly puts them more into a food-insecure household."
She says the province has lost its cultural methods of food gathering, which creates a different kind of hunger.
"People may be able to replace the protein, so moose would be a comparable source of nutrition. However, it doesn't fulfil that cultural hunger, right?" she said. "When you think about food security … cultural preferences is really important to consider."
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With files from The Signal