Bioethics, Dignity and Justice: an Ibero-American Dialogue on Food Security

November 10, 2025
Author: María Victoria Fernández Molina 
Versión en español

In Ibero-America, where cultural diversity coexists with a deep inequality gap, adequate nutrition has become a decisive field for reflecting on human dignity. Therefore, guaranteeing healthy and sustainable food is not merely a technical or economic task: it is an ethical challenge that calls upon both peoples and governments.

During the last decade, Ibero-American countries have faced structural transformations that reveal the fragility of their food systems. According to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025₁, the prevalence of hunger in the region slightly decreased to 5.1% in 2024, with 34 million undernourished people, due in part to redistributive policies and public procurement programs in South America. However, 130 million people still experience moderate or severe food insecurity₂.

In this context, a healthy diet—one that includes whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and quality proteins—has an average cost of USD 5.16 per person per day, the highest in the world. This price remains inaccessible to large sectors of the population₃. Behind these figures lies a global ethical problem: producing enough food has not guaranteed everyone’s right to eat with dignity.

To address these issues, the First Ibero-American and Caribbean Parliamentary Forum on Food Security—held at the Mexican Senate from October 22 to 24, 2025, and coordinated by FAO, the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger (FPH-ALC), and FIAP—marked a political and ethical milestone for the region. At this event, over 120 parliamentarians from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal signed the “Food First” Pact, committing to strengthen legislative and budgetary frameworks with a human rights-based approach₄.

The forum placed food security within a bioethical framework: regional cooperation cannot be limited to technical exchanges but must be grounded in an ethic of shared responsibility. Ibero-America shares cultural roots, but also common challenges—rural poverty, environmental degradation, concentration of agri-food trade, food waste, and harmful agricultural techniques. All these issues require the design and implementation of policies consistent with human dignity and the care of our common home.

1. Feeding with Justice: Toward a Global Ibero-American Bioethics

Global bioethics offers a transdisciplinary perspective that integrates health, environment, and social justice. In Ibero-America, this view translates into the need to rebuild the social fabric through the daily act of eating. Every decision—what we plant, distribute, and consume—becomes an ethical act that expresses our relationship with life.

Reducing food security to mere caloric availability ignores its cultural dimension. In Mexico, Peru, or Spain, food not only nourishes; it conveys identity and memory. Protecting traditional cuisines, native seeds, and local markets is a way to defend the right to a culturally full life₅. This perspective calls for a shift from the paradigm of productivity to one of care, since agricultural yield cannot be measured apart from ecological and social costs. As FAO and WHO (2019)₆ remind us, sustainable diets must balance health, culture, and ecosystems, promoting habits that regenerate the planet and ensure equity across generations.

2. Inequality and Vulnerability: The Feminine and Rural Face of Hunger

In 2024, 28% of people worldwide—and more than 30% in Latin America and the Caribbean—suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity₇. Women remain the most affected. In rural areas of Central America, for example, women produce between 40% and 60% of food, yet face lower incomes, limited access to land, financing, and training programs, as well as discrimination in decision-making and an overload of unpaid domestic work.

From a bioethical standpoint, this gap has profound implications: food inequality not only violates rights but erodes the principle of human dignity. Public policies must recognize rural women as guardians of biodiversity and agroecological knowledge, for even under the harshest conditions, food justice begins in their hands.

3. Childhood and Health: The Urgency of a Protective Environment

Beyond malnutrition, another critical issue in the region is the rise of childhood obesity and early-onset metabolic diseases, which shape a lifetime of chronic noncommunicable illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. In several Ibero-American countries, one in three children is overweight₈. The most common causes include obesogenic school environments, weak enforcement of front-of-package labeling, aggressive marketing of ultra-processed foods, and the rising cost of healthy options.

To mitigate this serious public health issue, school feeding programs must not be seen as charitable measures but as acts of social justice. Guaranteeing every child access to fresh, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food translates international human rights commitments into effective policies, fostering a healthier and more active population. As FAO and WHO note, learning to eat well is learning to coexist responsibly₉.

4. Ultra-Processed Foods and the Ethical Economy of Nutrition

The expansion of ultra-processed foods in Ibero-America—driven by global chains and digital platforms—has profoundly transformed dietary habits. In Mexico, for instance, these products account for about 30% of total dietary energy, with similar figures in Brazil and Chile, reflecting a regional shift from traditional diets to industrialized, calorie-dense, and nutrient-poor foods.

This nutritional transition has ethical and public health implications beyond nutrition itself: it reshapes systems of production, distribution, and consumption—and thus our relationship with the environment₁₀. From a global bioethics perspective, this trend raises a dilemma between freedom of choice and the duty to protect. The goal is not to demonize industry, but to demand shared responsibility: when pricing, advertising, and urban infrastructure determines physical and economic access to food—what we call food deserts—then food freedom becomes a structural illusion.

For this reason, regulating harmful products, promoting healthy taxation, and encouraging short supply chains are concrete expressions of an ethic of care.

5. Ibero-American Cooperation: From Assistance to Shared Responsibility

Facing the region’s pressing public health challenges, the Mexican forum demonstrated that regional cooperation can become a laboratory for social justice. Spain and Portugal shared their food governance frameworks, while Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico presented legislative advances inspired by the human right to adequate food (FPH-ALC, 2025).

Political and academic dialogue proposed an ethical convergence to overcome institutional fragmentation. Universities—among them Universidad Anáhuac—are promoting training and reflection spaces, such as the Centro Anáhuac de Desarrollo Estratégico en Bioética (CADEBI), to strengthen the link between science, ethics, and public policy.

Thus, the Ibero-American pact outlines a shared horizon: strengthening national laws, harmonizing indicators, and advancing toward the realization of the Food First commitment, which may integrate the vision of global bioethics into international cooperation.

6. Toward an Ecological and Solidarity-Based Justice

One of the recurring concerns at the forum was that access to healthy and sustainable food depends on the balance of ecosystems. Soil degradation, deforestation, and aquifer contamination directly affect people’s ability to feed themselves. In Latin America, for example, around 2.3 million hectares of forest are lost each year—many to export-oriented monocultures₁₁.

From a bioethical perspective, these processes constitute violations of the right to life. Feeding the planet requires allowing it to regenerate, demanding a paradigm shift in economics: sustainability must cease to be framed as an instrumental goal and instead become a moral duty.

Pope Francis, in Laudate Deum (2023)₁₂, reminded us that the climate crisis is also a crisis of justice, for it re-victimizes those most in need. In the most biodiverse region on Earth, caring for the land means caring for the most vulnerable—those most affected by climate change and food speculation.

Conclusion

Food security in Ibero-America will not be achieved through technological innovation or trade agreements alone—it requires a new ethical pact. Global bioethics offers a framework to understand hunger and malnutrition as consequences of inequality, not mere logistical deficiencies.

Guaranteeing the right to food means transforming a culture of consumption into one of care. To achieve this, it is essential to strengthen family farming, promote agroecology, and educate in solidarity. States must create structural conditions for people to freely choose healthy and sustainable foods.

Feeding with justice means understanding that every meal is a political decision and every seed, an act of commitment. If the 21st century is to be remembered for overcoming hunger, producing more will not be enough—we must feed better, with respect, justice, and love. Because food justice is not measured in tons, but in shared dignity, and true cooperation is not sealed in forums but realized at every table where a child can eat without fear, in health and with hope.

María Victoria Fernández Molina is a researcher at the Inter-American Academy of Human Rights (AIDH) of the Autonomous University of Coahuila (UAdeC) and collaborates with the Centro Anáhuac de Desarrollo Estratégico en Bioética (CADEBI). She is a Research Scholar at the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights (Rome). Dr. Fernández holds a Ph.D. in Human Rights from the University of Deusto, an M.A. in Bioethics and Bio-Law from the UNESCO Chair, and a Law degree from the University of León (Spain), specializing in International Relations and International Law at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her research areas include global bioethics, human rights, and food sustainability. 

The opinions expressed in this blog are the sole responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of CADEBI. As an institution committed to inclusion and plural dialogue, CADEBI promotes and disseminates a diversity of voices and perspectives, convinced that respectful and critical exchange enriches our academic and educational mission. We welcome all comments, responses, or constructive critiques you may wish to share.

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2. Ibidem, pp. 17-19.
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