As faculty director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, and deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Emily M. Broad Leib ’08 focuses her scholarship, teaching, and practice on finding solutions to some of today’s biggest food law issues, aiming to increase access to healthy foods, eliminate food waste, and support sustainable food production and local and regional food systems.
In 2017, she helped develop a Blueprint for a National Food Strategy to address challenges and crises in the U.S. food system. The report was updated in 2020 to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here, Broad Leib discusses the food system, highlighting the inherent inequities and historical waste that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and underscores the need for a national strategy — similar to those developed in other countries — to combat longstanding issues related to food in America.