FAO — Nutrition and Food Systems Division (ESN)

The division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations responsible for the normative work of the FAO on food and nutrition. Custodian of the Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security, adopted in 2004. Co-secretariat of the FAO/WHO joint expert committees on food additives and on nutrient requirements.

Why it matters here

ESN is the international-institutional home of the right to food in its normative form, and, with the WHO, of the technical committees that set international reference intakes for macronutrients and micronutrients. Both the political and the technical strands of the physiological rights argument have, in the end, to be legible to this division.