Lucas Lixinski (University of New South Wales), Food as Culture: Framing, Legal Harmonization, and Transnational Law as a Regulatory Gateway (UNSW L. Rsch. Paper No. 66) (2024):
This chapter engages with the challenges of legal harmonization, which is the design and implementation of uniform legal rules across multiple jurisdictions on a specific subject matter. Specifically, this chapter examines the challenges of harmonizing food law, and whether and how international law can help in this space. The chapter examines the multiple different legal framings of food in international law, each of which invoke different values and priorities, culminating with consideration of what it means to frame food as primarily a form of culture. Examining the example of Mexican traditional cuisine, this piece argues for greater engagement with culture in our conversations about legal harmonization more broadly, and specifically in the domain of food law.