Several food rights activists in India have applauded a Vatican official’s call to rebuild the world’s food systems to make it more resilient, inclusive and sustainable.
“We have the potential to embark on this journey together, taking this unique Covid crisis as a unique opportunity,” asserted Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
The Ghanian cardinal spoke at the second of a three-part webinar the Vatican organized by the Vatican on May 26 ahead of a high level UN Food Systems Pre-Summit gathering in Rome in July.
The webinar held under the title, “Food Justice: Jobs, innovation, and finance at the service of food justice.”
“Thanks to Cardinal Turkson for re-iterating Jesus’s vision for an equalitarian society,” says Jesuit Father Irudhaya Jothi, a food rights activist in India’s West Bengal state.
Biraj Patnaik, the former principal advisor to the Supreme Court in the right to food case, welcomed the cardinal asserting the right to food as an inalienable right.
“Indeed, Cardinal Turkson is very interested in these issues and is the points person of the Pope on the right to food,” Patnaik told Matters India.
According to him, the UN is running a major food systems summit and the Vatican does comment on the right to food on such occasions.
“The UN food systems summit is at an opportune moment as the world needs a fundamental reset post-pandemic. Covid 19 has shown us that the world cannot sustain itself at the current levels of inequality,” he added.
Cardinal Turkson had stressed the urgent need to re-imagine and re-build food systems, so they “may become more resilient, inclusive and sustainable.” This is not an “impossible enterprise,” he added.
According to him, “the lack of food is inextricably linked with other social struggles, aggravated by the pandemic.”