The Network of Food & Beverage Lawyers

Food law, by concept, is the codified collection of laws and regulations that govern food through the three stages of production, distribution, and consumption. Food laws mainly aim to protect potential consumers and provide for the efficient growth and use of food products. Food attorneys focus their careers on helping clients comply with food laws and regulations. Besides, they work on behalf of government agencies making or enforcing food laws and policies.

Food laws are primarily enacted to protect potential consumers against unsafe, adulterated, and misbranded food, while also facilitating the movement of food and associated food products across national and international state borders for humanitarian aid or economic purposes. While discussing fortified foods, potential consumers must be protected from receiving either toxic or nutritionally ineffective levels of nutrients. 

Legislation, therefore, becomes necessary to require adequate control over this fortification process by food processors to ensure that levels of nutrients are consistently kept within acceptable limits. The legislation is also required to prohibit the addition of nutrients in food products where it is nutritionally and wholly unnecessary or unsafe, or where fortification through adding excess nutrients may create an erroneous impression concerning the nutritional value of the food/food product.

Any legislation involving food fortification should include the standards, recommendations, and guidelines prescribed by the government and the health ministry of said country. The primary purpose of these laws is to make food businesses do what they can to assure that their product is safe for consumption: prohibit food businesses from taking actions that will render their product unsafe; assure that their consumers have the necessary information needed to make their decisions; prohibit businesses from providing misleading information to their consumers; provide their consumers with an opportunity to learn about nutrition, food preparation techniques, and understanding and using information about food products wisely. If stringent food laws are not in place, then it becomes easy for food companies/brands/exporters to take undue advantage of the lax regulations and make a practice of duping their potential consumer base with adulterated and substandard food/food products. This could lead to food-induced viruses and infections and the spread of stomach ailments among the consumer base.

Food lawyers’ study, use, and create rules and regulations to improve food nexus. The client can be a chef, the city or federal government, a non-profit organization, or a farmer. The work of food lawyers touches every area of law: zoning, contracts, environmental, constitutional, international, trade, patents, animal and human rights, immigration. Being a food lawyer requires interdisciplinary thinking and an intensive knowledge of different types of legalities and litigation and using the existing legal system in inventive ways to protect the consumers. Food lawyers almost always offer more than other regular lawyers as they know the technicalities of food regulations and the conditions of food production and retailing. Food law is rarely taught at universities as a course. It is a skill that is acquired through years of practice and by being very closely associated with the food sector.