Food insecurity remains a pressing global problem, affecting millions of people who lack reliable access to sufficient and nutritious food. In the face of this challenge, various strategies have been adopted to improve food systems, promote sustainable agriculture and improve access to food. One critical path gaining traction is certification, it says Euractiv.
By establishing standards and ensuring compliance, certification can play a key role in addressing food insecurity on a global scale. The right to adequate food is enshrined as a basic human right in the second UN Sustainable Development Goal covering hunger. It is considered fundamental because food security is closely related to the fulfillment of other human rights and its absence can lead to violations such as child and forced labor, gender inequality and discrimination.
Currently, some 733 million people do not have access to enough calories, and 2,8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, according to this year's Global Hunger Index. This number has changed little since 2016. Ironically, the people who work in agriculture in the developing world, producing food for the world market, are actually the ones most likely to go hungry.
Food certification
Certification, which covers various processes in which products, services or systems are evaluated against established criteria, can help to improve this situation. When it comes to food, in the past certification was mostly used to ensure food safety and quality.
Certifications such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) and ISO 22000 set strict safety standards that food manufacturers must follow. As a result, consumers can trust that certified products are safe to eat, which is especially important in regions where foodborne illness is common. What if the same logic were applied to preventing side effects affecting food security?
In 2017 a Food Safety Standard (FSS) was developed by the NGO Deutsche Welthungerhilfe and Meo Carbon Solutions, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
Environmental audits
Assessing authorities can use the FSS to carry out audits. Lisa Marie Pica, human rights project manager at Meo Carbon Solutions, says FSS can be used as a supplement to a core certification that also looks at environmental components:
“As the right to food is a cross-cutting human right, the FSS encompasses many other human rights and is therefore a suitable tool for assessing and monitoring human rights due diligence in agricultural production. This includes voluntary due diligence activities as well as legal obligations such as demonstrating their duty of care. FSS is suitable for all agricultural commodities and production sizes ranging from small-scale farming to plantations.”
Legal obligations
"Increasingly, this knowledge of the origin of food will not be voluntary, but a legal requirement. In recent years, an increasing number of legislative acts establishing mandatory due diligence for mainly large companies have been adopted in Europe. These include the French law on the duty of vigilance of parent companies and outsourcing companies, passed in 2017. and implemented since then, the German Supply Chain Act passed in 2021. and implemented from 2023, as well as the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) adopted in 2024. and which will enter into force in 2027. for the first group of affected companies. The EU's deforestation regulation adopted in 2023, which will apply from the end of 2025, also requires companies to carry out due diligence on the introduction of seven types of goods into the EU market,” says Pica.
The EU CSDDD will oblige companies to mitigate or avoid negative impacts on human rights or the environment through due diligence. It applies both to their own business activities and to the activities of their subsidiaries and partners. EU member states have until July 2026. to transpose it into their national law and it will then apply to companies in three stages until 2029, starting with statutory compliance from 2027. for EU companies with more than 5000 employees and a global net annual turnover of more than €1,5 billion.
Mitigation measures
Affected companies will be required to understand their environmental and human rights risk exposure, design prevention and mitigation measures to address these risks, conduct meaningful stakeholder engagement and install grievance mechanisms by those affected, and to monitor and report annually on identified risks and improvement measures.
Penalties in the event of non-compliance will depend on various factors such as the nature, severity and duration of the breach, potential previous breaches and corrective actions taken by the company. Sanctions may include removal of the company's products from the market and fines. With all these different pieces of legislation in different jurisdictions, a company's specific obligations can depend on many factors.
"Which supply chain and related products is the company involved in?" What is the annual profit and number of employees? In which countries does the company operate? Not all current European and national regulations have the same scope. A company must follow the regulations under which it falls,” explains Pica.
Reputational risk
According to Pica, regardless of legal obligations, companies should now start looking for certification solutions to ensure good practice. Unknown practices affecting food security, once exposed, can cause major reputational damage.
“All companies have a responsibility to respect human rights in their economic activities, as they are important actors in society and their actions will have an impact on future generations. Certification can be a powerful tool to strengthen a company's human rights due diligence obligations. A social sustainability standard such as FSS, for example, covers human rights in the standard catalog,” Pica points out.
However, she clarified that certification can never be a green light for companies to fulfill their due diligence obligations. Human rights due diligence remains the company's responsibility and where certification is used to reinforce their obligations.
In the global fight against food insecurity, certification can serve as a powerful tool to ensure food safety, promote sustainable practices and empower communities. However, policymakers, stakeholders and consumers will need to collaborate to expand the reach and effectiveness of certification practices, ultimately working together to create a world where everyone has reliable access to safe and nutritious food.
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