Food Law and Policy Clinic of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (WilmerHale Legal Services Center)

A system that makes healthy food expensive and junk food cheap should be fixed, said a panel of experts who gathered at Harvard Law School on Nov. 30 to discuss “Transforming Our Food System,” a discussion sponsored by the HLS Food Law and Policy Clinic in partnership with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

With his recent gift of $1 million and a subsequent matching gift of $500,000 to support individual donations of up to $50,000 through December, Charles Thomas is hoping to make farm animals central to animal cruelty prevention.

Kicking off the semester sustainably, Harvard Law School launched its first formal food donation program, in partnership with Food For Free, a local non-profit that recovers wasted food from companies across Cambridge and Boston to redistribute to the area’s hungry.

Food recovery entrepreneurs, farmers, business persons, academics, government officials and many others converged at Harvard Law School for two days of learning, strategizing, and networking to address the growing issue of food waste.

This spring, more than 370 people interested in food systems attended a two-day conference at Harvard Law School, the 2016 Just Food? Forum on Land Use, Rights and Ecology.

When a severe speech impediment left him struggling to be understood, food became a way for Tommy Tobin '16 to connect with others. In high school he volunteered at a food bank and with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and watched his actions speak volumes. "Speaking through service became a theme for me.”

Harvard Magazine recently featured a story on the evolution of animal law in the United States, highlighting the new HLS Animal Law & Policy Program and faculty director Kristen Stilt. In February, to commemorate Animal Law Week, Harvard Law School hosted a series of animal law lunchtime talks, with topics ranging from Islamic law, direct democracy, and environmental law.

The Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC), in partnership with Racing Horse Productions, has released a short film, "EXPIRED? Food Waste in America," that explores how the variety of date labels on food products contributes to food waste in America.

The Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic has released a policy brief about changes to the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act (CNR) that can support healthy school meals by preserving advances in nutrition standards, increasing participation in national school programs, and increased funding for reimbursable meals, farm to school grants, and kitchen equipment grants.

Participants in a recent gathering at Harvard Law School are hoping to spark the growth of a nationwide student network for making significant contributions to the emerging field of food law and policy.

Harvard Law School Professor Jacob Gersen believes the ever-growing interest in food law is here to stay—and that it, like environmental law and administrative law before it, will eventually go from course-catalog novelty to staple.

Robert Greenwald, director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School, has co-authored an editorial with David Holtgrave, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, on the updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) from the federal government.

A team of researchers from Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Brown University's Department of Medicine, Rhode Island’s Miriam Hospital, Treatment Action Group, and Kirby Institute of Australia, has released findings from a nationwide study of Medicaid policies for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), which affects over 3 million Americans.

For law students interested in entrepreneurism and startups—as entrepreneurs themselves, as lawyers representing startups, or both—there is a wealth of growing and intersecting opportunities at Harvard Law School and across the university.

On March 28-29, The Harvard Food Law Society and the Food Literacy Project hosted the “Just Food? Forum on Justice in the Food System” at Harvard Law School, organized as part of Harvard’s yearlong Food Better initiative, created to discuss issues surrounding what we eat.

This Fall, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, issued a challenge to students across the university to come up with fresh ideas for solving complex problems facing our food system in the United States and around the world.

This fall, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, issued the "Deans' Food System Challenge" (one of several competitions held by the Harvard Innovation Lab and sponsored by Harvard Schools), encouraging students across the university to come up with fresh ideas for solving complex problems facing our food system.

Individuals and communities can improve the food system, according to members of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, which has launched a year-long, university-wide focus on how to make food distribution more equitable, sustainable, and nutritious.

The HLS Library collection includes books and documents that highlight some of the historical rules and regulations surrounding everything comestible.