Right To Safe Food Essay

Right to Safe Food: Constitutional perspectives

-Dr Rashmi Ranjan Mishra and Maitreyee Chakrabarty

Food is a basic requirement for life but unsafe food is slow poison. Thus safe food is not a luxury but a natural wish. Food safety is an important part of human right to food. Be it unsafe food served as mid-day or unsafe food sold in market they violate a very basic human right. Food safety according to World Health Organisation (WHO) is the assurance that food will not cause harm to the consumer and covers contamination by chemical and biological agents and concerns about inherent food nature. The aim of this paper is to discuss constitutional perspective of right to food safety. The word food safety finds nowhere mention in the Constitution of India. However Entry 18 in List III of the Constitution empowers both Parliament and the State legislature to enact law on food adulteration. And in this regard various laws have been made. Every citizen has fundamental right to safe food as Article 21 guarantees right to life while Article 47 cast a duty upon State to raise level of nutrition and public health. Food safety and standard is an important condition for enjoyment of right to life and public health.

The Supreme Court of India in Centre for Public Interest Litigation Vs. Union of

Supreme Court of India relying on the famous pronouncement in Munn v Illinios held that right to life does not merely means animal existence. Right to life includes right to live with human dignity. Article 21 thus became a reservoir of right which every human being need for a meaningful and complete life with right to dignity becoming an integral part of right to life. From time to time higher courts have churned out many important rights form this reservoir. Right to health, freedom form hazards and environmental pollution has been held to be falling within the ambit of Article 21 in a number of