The right to food in the Catholic Social Doctrine

The right to an adequate and healthy balanced food diet has been, and still is, one of the doctrinal point of reference of, as well as a practical course of action taken by, the Catholic Church, since the Catholic Church has always considered poverty first and foremost as lack of material food. The right to food has very operational consequences in that it obliges us to establish accountability mechanisms to identify the food insecure and the food vulnerable in order to target our efforts very carefully. It obliges us to evaluate the effectiveness of our programmes in reaching the poorest and so it is something more than just trying to achieve food security, it is something which ensures accountability of governments towards the needs of the poorest and the most vulnerable. It is an issue of governance, one which is added to the traditional approaches which are providing emergency assistance or investment into agriculture - which are the two tracks usually pursued in order to achieve food security. It is necessary to think about how to use the right to food as a third track in addition to emergency assistance and to agricultural investment.