Food Sovereignty
Food sovereignty and Livestock Production in Canada
When the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition was founded in 2002 we placed food sovereignty at the centre of our mission. The concept of food sovereignty provides an over-arching framework for understanding the multifaceted social justice issues of food and agriculture. “Who controls food production”, “who benefits”, and “what is the meaning of food and farming in our society”are the central questions which food sovereignty addresses. Food sovereignty allows us to think about how trade policies, for example, affect what food is produced, how it is produced, who has access to it, and what are the social, cultural, health, and economic consequences of these policies.
Some of the key elements of the Nyeleni Declaration (pdf 36k) that the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition is fighting for include:
- the ability of Canadians to determine our own livestock producing systems and policies that provide us with good quality, adequate, affordable, healthy and culturally appropriate meat, eggs, dairy and poultry;
- all people in Canada to be able to live with dignity, earn a living wage for their labour and have the opportunity to live in their homes;
- food sovereignty to be recognized in Canada as a basic human right, recognized and implemented by our communities, governments and in international relationships;
- to conserve and rehabilitate rural environments, fish stocks, landscapes and food traditions in Canada based on ecologically sustainable management of land, soils, water, seas, seeds, livestock and other biodiversity;
- genuine agricultural reform that includes the assurance of decent jobs with fair remuneration and labour rights for all, and a future for young people in the countryside;
- revitalizing inter-dependence between producers and consumers, ensuring community survival, social and economic justice and ecological sustainability, and respect for local autonomy and governance with equal rights for women and men;
- defending peoples’ power to make decisions about their material, natural and spiritual heritage;
- the right of all peoples to defend their territories from the actions of transnational corporations.
In the context of the Nyeleni Declaration, the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition is also fighting against:
- the dumping of Canadian meat and livestock at prices below the cost of production in the global economy;
- the domination of our livestock production and food processing systems by corporations that place profits before people, health and the environment;
- the technologies and practices that undercut our future food producing capacities, damage the environment and put our health at risk. Those include transgenic crops and animals, industrial livestock production, and industrial agro-fuel production (see The Factory Farming - Ethanol Connection);
- the privatization and commodification of food, knowledge, water, livestock and our natural heritage (see BFF’s position on livestock cloning) (pdf 48KB)