Summary:
The General Law of Adequate and Sustainable Food regulates the right to nutritious, sufficient and quality food of every person. The law has not been subject to any relevant reforms since its enactment.
Description:
Law objectives
The General Law of Adequate and Sustainable Food (in Spanish, “Ley General de la Alimentación Adecuada y Sostenible“) provides the legal framework for the right to nutritious, sufficient, and quality food, as enshrined in Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution. To achieve this foundational goal, the law outlines a series of key objectives:
- To establish the principles for the promotion, protection, respect, and guarantee of the right to adequate food and related rights.
- To prioritize the right to health, the right to a healthy environment, the right to water, and the best interests of the child in policies related to adequate food by the Mexican State
- Ensure government coordination at all levels to protect the right to food
- Promote the equitable production and distribution of safe, nutritious food and prevent waste.
- To strengthen the country’s food self-sufficiency, sovereignty, and security
- To establish the foundation for social participation in actions aimed at achieving the full exercise of the right to adequate food.
- To promote the creation of sustainable food environments that facilitate the informed consumption of healthy and nutritious foods
Content of the right to adequate food
Articles 3 and 4 outline the content of the right to adequate food.
Right to adequate food (Article 3)
“All people, individually or collectively, have the right to adequate food at all times, and to have food available for their daily consumption, as well as physical and economic access to food that is safe, of nutritional quality, and in a sufficient quantity to satisfy their physiological needs at all stages of their life cycle, which enables their comprehensive development and a dignified life, in accordance with their cultural context and specific needs, without jeopardizing the satisfaction of other basic needs and without hindering the enjoyment of other human rights.”
Scope of the right to adequate food (Article 4):
- Nutritional Capacity: The ability to meet food needs for physical and mental growth, development, and maintenance.
- Food Availability: The ability of all people to adequately feed themselves, either through their own production or through efficient and affordable supply systems.
- Physical Access to Food: The ability of every person to physically obtain food or the means to get it, especially for vulnerable populations.
- Economic Access to Food: Ensuring that income is sufficient to buy food without sacrificing other basic needs.
- Cultural Acceptability: The consideration of non-nutritional values related to food and consumption, as well as consumer concerns about food’s nature.
- Sustainability: Ensuring that food production has a minimal environmental impact to guarantee access for both current and future generations.
- Free Distribution: The free distribution of necessary inputs and seeds for food production.
- Biocultural Richness: The emphasis on gastronomic and agrobiodiversity, and the link between food and culture.
- Access to Water: The access to sufficient, safe, and affordable water for personal and domestic use, as established in Article 4 of the Constitution.
Promotion and Consumption of Adequate Food
School environment (articles 16 to 18)
Article 16 guarantees that all children in basic education have a right to adequate food at school. This food should be free or affordable for their families. The provision should be based on their level of vulnerability and the economic situation of their area.
Similarly, authorities must promote efficient schemes for the supply, distribution, and acquisition of adequate foods, preferably fresh ones, and potable water for human consumption for students.
Furthermore, according to Article 17, all levels of government must “promote before the corresponding authorities the prohibition of the sale, distribution, donation, advertising, and sponsorship of prepackaged foods and beverages when they exceed the maximum limits of energy content, added sugars, saturated fats, sodium, and other critical nutrients and ingredients established by the competent health regulations, both inside and in the vicinity of basic education school facilities”. For the critical nutrient regulations see: the 2020 Amendment to NOM-51 – Front-of-Pack Labeling.
Information and food labelling (articles 19 and 20)
Article 19 establishes that all people have the right to access nutritional information that is culturally relevant, truthful, timely, understandable, accessible, and high-quality, enabling them to make healthy dietary decisions that promote their healthy development and prevent diseases at every stage of life.
Therefore, health and educational authorities must promote permanent educational campaigns for the public. These campaigns should focus on healthy and high-quality nutritional information that promotes adequate food and takes into account age, gender, and intercultural perspectives.
In the same line, Article 20 states that the information on pre-packaged food products must be truthful, clear, and understandable. This includes information on the product’s origin, energy content, and critical nutrients as defined by relevant regulations.