5th Food Law, Policy & Diplomacy Conference: Law, Policy and Diplomacy for Sustainable Food Systems

Shaping the future of food systems

Food systems are changing rapidly. Climate change, technological innovation, geopolitical tensions and changing expectations around sustainability and rights are creating new challenges for governments, businesses, researchers and communities.

How should law and policy respond? How can innovation contribute to more sustainable food systems without leaving people behind? And what role can international cooperation play?

The 5th Food Law, Policy & Diplomacy Conference brings together international experts to examine these questions from different perspectives. Across three thematic sessions, speakers will address topics including climate change, food security, consumer rights, cultivated meat, artificial intelligence, disinformation and emerging environmental markets.

The conference opens with a keynote by Juan Echanove, Head of the Right to Food Unit at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Programme_IJRG_ALFS

Launch of the International Joint Research Group on Agrifood Law and Food Systems

The conference will also host the official launch of the International Joint Research Group on Agrifood Law and Food Systems (IJRG-ALFS), co-directed by Prof. Kim Van der Borght and Dr Jorge Freddy Milian Gómez. Programme_IJRG_ALFS

The new group connects expertise in agrifood law, food systems, sustainability, innovation, rights and governance. It builds on several years of international cooperation through research projects, publications, teaching activities and the annual Food Law, Policy & Diplomacy Conference at VUB.

The network already brings together more than a dozen universities and research groups, alongside NGOs and civil-society organisations, start-ups and SMEs, legal practitioners and other public and private actors. Its partnerships span Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa, with connections to institutions in other parts of the world.

From its Brussels base, the IJRG-ALFS will provide a permanent structure for comparative research, international doctoral cooperation, researcher mobility, joint publications, policy dialogue and the development of European and international research projects.

Its research agenda focuses on three interconnected areas:

• Agri-Food Law & Regulation
• Sustainability & Innovation
• Food, Rights & Justice

Building on a Brussels tradition

The initiative also builds on Brussels’ pioneering history in food law. In 1964, the then-united Université Libre de Bruxelles hosted the symposium Food Law in the Europe of Tomorrow, which led to the establishment of the first Food Law Research Centre in Europe in 1965.

More than sixty years later, the IJRG-ALFS aims to revitalise and expand that tradition. By connecting academic research with policy and practice, the group strengthens VUB’s role as an international meeting place for cooperation around the legal and governance challenges shaping contemporary food systems.