The course provides students with a broad, in-depth and critical perspective on the link between international economic law (trade and investments), national legal structures and the construction of a transnational food regime that produces almost 800 million undernourished people and more than 1 billion over-nourished and obese. Rather than being natural, the way in which food is produced, transported, allocated, consumed and discarded is strictly dependent on local and international legal structures. In addition, the current global food system has implications and produces consequences that go far beyond individual health and consumers’ rights.

As the students will discover throughout the course, the act of eating, an operation which is often mechanically conducted and taken for granted (especially in some parts of the world, and by parts of society), is the final point of a complex system in which law interacts with economics, politics, culture, human rights, climate change and several other domains that are often overlooked in discussions about law and food.

In order to achieve its goal, the course is structured on the basis of twelve different ‘containers’ of four three each, whose substance will be enriched by students’ presentations, the interaction between the students and the convenor, game play, the discussion of mandatory readings, and the possible intervention of external guests.

At the end of the module, students will have enough instruments and knowledge to pursue future career trajectories in the food regime or, more simply, to be conscious and critical consumers.
All the mandatory readings will be distributed if not accessible via the University library system.