This opinion article written by Juan Carlos García y Cebolla, FAO Right to Food Team Leader, and Claire Mason, FAO Right to Food Specialist, was published in El Pais on 15^th March 2022. The following text is a translation of the original article in Spanish.

The lack of access to adequate food is the most visible challenge to making the right to adequate food a reality. Every day, more than 800 million people do not even get the basic food that they need to meet their calorie requirements. But there are many other challenges that are less visible, which affect everyone to some extent and can occur in any country.

Among them, the health and safety of food; problems derived from both inadequate practices and technical weaknesses, as well as illicit behaviour. The impact of aflatoxin contamination in staple foods such as corn or other grains is relatively well known in many African and South Asian countries. Less well known are fraudulent food practices and adulteration, such as occurred with the melamine-laced infant formula.

In this context, in a growing number of countries, consumer organizations work on key issues for the protection of consumers and achievement of the right to food.

With regard to food safety, they not only complement the monitoring and surveillance work of Bromatology networks, but also strengthen them. This is particularly relevant in many developing countries, where monitoring systems still have serious weaknesses and dualities -they may work well for the higher income sectors, but leave part of the population unprotected.

Regarding price transparency and food labelling, consumer organizations promote reliable, clear, pertinent and widely understandable information. This helps people make well-informed decisions about different aspects such as nutritional value, without needing to be experts in the subject.

Consumer organizations have been crucial in highlighting and addressing marketing practices that violate the right to information and children's rights in relation to food and nutrition. Among them, advertising on food and beverages that offers discount coupons, free samples, free toys, or other subtler actions that distort the perception of daily and essential aspects of nutrition, including breastfeeding.

Besides these tasks of monitoring, analysis and information on the quality and adequacy of food, as well as its unit cost -in particular, the price increases that disadvantaged groups sometimes end up paying-, there are other very significant contributions of consumer organizations.

They raise awareness and educate the public about healthy diets, and advocate with authorities and the private sector to improve their standards and move towards sustainable production, to make healthy food accessible and available to all people. In many countries, consumer organizations are also promoting greater coherence in school feeding programs, so that these programs follow the recommendations on healthy diets adopted by governments.

Consumer organizations are key to advancing towards the sustainable transformation of food systems, the eradication of hunger and malnutrition and the conservation of our planet. This transformation requires policy dialogue and negotiation to accommodate different interests, which can only work if consumers have their own space in the conversation.

An example of the important contribution of consumer organizations to these policy dialogues can be seen in the debates on technology and digitalization processes that offer promising solutions.

Everything in this world has multiple viewpoints. If all perspectives are not considered, digitalization may improve food traceability, but at the same time give too much control over information to certain links in the chain, harming consumers and citizens in the long term.

The exponential growth of e-commerce and the asymmetry experienced in the processes of digitalization during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate the importance of strengthening consumer protection in these matters. Counting on consumer organizations in these initiatives is crucial for technology to develop its potential towards a sustainable and inclusive transformation of food systems, leaving no one behind.

Consumer organizations need to be recognized as valuable stakeholders in policy spaces related to food systems. And not only that, but the mechanisms that allow them to carry out their activity in pursuit of improving our societies must be strengthened. We need the participation of consumer organizations to make the right to adequate food become a reality for all.