On the Performance of the State’s Obligation to Protect the Right to Food: Taking Food Conservation and the Combat Against Food Waste as Examples

LIU Hongchun*

Abstract: Food and food waste have multi-dimensional impacts on and pose threats to the state’s performance of its obligation to protect the right to food. Under the guidance of the holistic food security concept and the governance philosophy of classified regulation balancing public and private interests, the anti-waste regulatory framework constructed around food loss and food waste has effectively ensured the adequacy, availability and accessibility of food, and enriched the rule-of-law strategies for the state to fulfill its obligation to protect the right to food. Nevertheless, the practice path of the holistic food security concept remains to be optimized; the “command-and-control” operation mode of the repressive classified regulatory model neglects the heterogeneity of subjects of waste conduct and their specific regulatory logic. Guided by the new concept of national food security protection, drawing on the beneficial legal experience of other countries, and adopting the dual classified regulatory model of responsive law and autonomous law, we shall fully safeguard the state’s performance of its obligation to protect the right to food, and optimize and shape a Chinese-style realization model of the state’s obligation to protect the right to food in a multi-dimensional manner.

Keywords: the right to food · state’s obligation to protect · waste regulation · autonomous law · responsive law