Food governance

Drawing upon law to create healthy and sustainable food systems

We’re exploring how governments can use law, regulation, and policy to create healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems.

Our vision

Our collaboration team finds solutions to food system challenges such as food security, diet-related health, and food system sustainability through innovative uses of law, regulation, and policy.

It does so by drawing on legal and policy expertise across the University and at other Australian research institutes and non-government organisations, fostering collaboration between lawyers and clinicians, nutritionists, health scientists, policymakers and others to develop practical solutions and create real change.

Our work

Our team will use a cross-disciplinary platform to explore the role of law, regulation, and policy in creating a healthy, sustainable, and equitable food system. Our objectives are to:

Provide a forum for bringing together researchers and advocates from Australia and New Zealand working in food governance, with the goal of creating new research relationships and collaborations;
Translate research into impactful regulatory advice, provided mainly through submissions to law and policy research processes; and
Undertake and support research-related activities such as preparing grant applications and supervising summer scholars

What impact will this research have?

This research will provide all levels of governments with innovative legal and policy solutions for addressing contemporary food system challenges.

Our achievements

Food Governance Conference

Under the auspices of the Food Governance Node, Associate Professors Belinda Reeve and Alexandra Jones (Node co-founders) established Australia’s first Food Governance Conference.
The conference is a collaborative endeavour between The University of Sydney Law School, the Charles Perkins Centre and the George Institute for Global Health, and was first run at Sydney Law School in July 2016. This was followed by conferences in 2019, 2021, and 2024. The conference brings together researchers from across a range of disciplines to explore how law, policy, and regulation address food system challenges or contribute to them at local, national, regional, and global levels. This includes issues such as food security, food safety, food sustainability, equity and social justice in global food systems, and nutrition: under/malnutrition, obesity, and noncommunicable disease
In February 2024 the Food Governance Node hosted the Food Governance Conference in collaboration with Sydney Law School, the Charles Perkins Centre, the George Institute for Global Health and the Global Center for Legal Innovation on Food Environments (Georgetown University Law Centre). The conference had a strong focus on solutions for food governance problems, highlighted Indigenous voices in food governance, and examined how we can rethink food systems and policy to prioritise public health.

Senate Select Committee into the Obesity Epidemic in Australia

The Food Governance Node made a written submission to the Federal Senate Select Committee into the Obesity Epidemic in Australia, headed by the then-leader of the Australian Greens Party, Dr Richard Di Natale. The Node’s submission outlined key gaps in the Federal Government’s policy and regulatory response to obesity, as well as the shortcomings in the existing voluntary initiatives that apply to unhealthy food marketing to children, interpretive food labelling, and processed food product reformulation
On the basis of this submission, Associate Professors Alexandra Jones and Belinda Reeve were invited to give in-person evidence on behalf of the Node at a hearing of the Federal Senate Select Committee on the 6th of August 2018. This evidence, and the Node’s written submission, are cited in the Committee’s final report.

NSW Legislative Committee on Environment and Planning

The Food Governance Node was instrumental in coordinating submissions to the 2021 Inquiry into Food Production and Supply, undertaken by the NSW Legislative Committee on Environment and Planning. The Node also made its own submission, recommending that: NSW develop a Food System Plan; councils be supported to develop local food system strategies; and planning frameworks enable councils to consider community health and wellbeing in planning decision making. Associate Professor Reeve also gave in-person evidence to the Committee. The Committee’s final report makes frequent reference to the Node’s submission and adopts key recommendations by the Node.

ARC Discovery Grant

ARC Discovery Grant ($422,000, 2019-2022. DP190102494) to investigate the role of law, regulation and policy in enabling local governments and communities in NSW and Victoria to contribute to healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems
The project generated recommendations for law and policy reform that will empower local governments and communities to participate more effectively in food system governance at the local level. Led by Associate Professor Reeve, the research team included investigators at the University of Sydney, the University of Wollongong and the William Angliss Institute (Victoria), with disciplinary expertise in law, nutrition, and food systems.

Collaboration team

Associate Professor Alexandra Jones (Project Node Co-Leader), The George Institute for Global Health
Associate Professor Belinda Reeve (Project Node Co-Leader), The University of Sydney Law School
Sally McDonald, Charles Perkins Centre, the University of Sydney
Ellen Johnson, The Leeder Centre for Health Policy, Economics and Data, University of Sydney
Dr Fiona Sing, School of Population Health, University of Auckland
Dr Kelly Garton, School of Population Health, University of Auckland
Associate Professor Liesel Spencer, School of Law, Western Sydney University
Dr Jennifer Lacy-Nichols, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
Jane Martin, Food for Health Alliance
Dr Amy Carrad, Australian Research Centre for Health Equity, Australian National University
Roxana-Claudia Tompea, School of Regulation and Governance, Australian National University