Slaying the Dragon: Vertical Integration in the food system and Human Rights implications

What started as an investigation on the right to food and the food system has quicky become a much deeper and richer study on the nature of the corporation, in particular the transnational corporation. This is the case because I have quicky realized that the only way in which effective and progressive Huma Rights are going to be out in place in the food system is through a better understanding of the corporate entity, which now monopolizes such field employing its economic and management strategy of choice, namely vertical integration: the fragmentation of ownership and control of operations along the supply chain. TNCs are de facto keepers of the right to food and the food system, the main actors to which overtime has been delegated the task of managing it. This fact has carried corporate philosophies and internal norms to the international sphere, starting a chain reaction of environmental and social costs which have been largely overlooked until the second half of the 20th century, with the beginning of the Human Rights and business movement. We will attempt at theorizing a new meaning of the right to food and food security passing through the historical development of the corporation, seen as the main proxy of private initiative as opposed to public state initiative. Such an endeavor also includes a mandatory discussion of how such economic and social changes from which the corporation originates have influenced the way in which the human community has conceived and regulated the corporation in law and practice. Lastly, a brief proposal on new philosophical principles of law and their possible implementation is offered, with the objective of replacing the current corporate-oriented framework which informs, from the bedrock, the current international legal system and the food system.