In 2021, the State of Maine became the first in the nation to constitutionalize a right to food via a bipartisan coalition supported by legislators, small-scale food producers, and advocates. In its final iteration, the Amendment was sponsored by a Republican state representative who dubbed it the "Second Amendment of food" to invoke an individual right to care and provide for oneself and one's family with minimal state oversight and regulation. In 2024, a Republican congressional representative proposed a similar amendment to the federal constitution. This Article explores the tensions in the idea of a right to food elaborated in an international human rights context and then rearticulated as a personal liberty in the United States. What has unfolded in Maine testifies to the persistence of an American version of liberalism that centers "freedom" over redistributive egalitarianism even when it comes to basic material necessities such as food.

Food identities are typically ascribed either based on medical or social definitions or chosen by individuals. But they can also be expressive dimensions of other identity traits such as race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, age, body size, disability, and socio-economic status, among others. What role does the law play in supporting or undermining certain food identities? This Article makes two central contributions. First, it highlights that though U.S. law recognizes food identity as an interest to be protected in certain contexts, it does so in an unsystematized way, contributing to systemic deprivation and discrimination in relation to foodways. The current legal regime often places the needs of the agri-food industry over those of eaters, especially those who are otherwise marginalized. Second, it reflects on how this inchoate law of food identity could be evaluated and reformed. There are plausible claims that some food identities may be entitled constitutional protections under equality law, freedom of religion, and fundamental rights, but they are unlikely to succeed in the current environment. The Article concludes with a skeptical reflection on the concept of food identity, arguing that in its current legal manifestation as a primarily individual and depoliticized claim for accommodation, it runs the risk of usurping and nullifying social and political claims around food. The argument proceeds as follows. Part I uses various social science literatures to articulate what food identity is and encompasses. Part II offers a taxonomy of different forms of food discrimination against eaters and food businesses. Part III presents the heterogeneous laws and policies that purport to protect food identities. Part IV argues that in theory, some food identities could be entitled to constitutional protection under equal protection, freedom of religion, and fundamental rights doctrines. To conclude, Part V highlights the limitations of framing food inequities as an identitarian problem.

For over a century, pediatricians, scientists, and industry players have sought to create an infant formula that would be as close as possible to human milk. Until recently, their efforts focused on "humanizing" cow's milk by making its composition more similar to human milk. But in the past few years, new technologies have led some companies to culture mammary cells or yeast in the lab. The resulting lab-produced components have been claimed to be identical to those found in human milk. One goal behind this new technology is to manufacture an infant formula that is more nutritionally adapted for newborns than conventional breastmilk substitutes. What impact might this new lab-produced milk have on infant feeding and regulation? Will it benefit parents and their children or represent a threat for lactation and donor human milk support? Could it precipitate a new regulatory regime for human milk itself? Given the many unknowns in this area, this Article hypothesizes various outcomes, examining their potential costs and benefits. What is certain, however, is that the legal regime eventually accorded to lab-produced milk will shape not only the products on the market, but also who will get access to them and at what cost.

Background In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, billions of people were asked by their state and local governments not to go to work and not leave the house unless they had to. The goal of this qualitative study was to collect the lived experiences of a small group of parents and lactation professionals in the United States about what it was like to feed babies human milk under these conditions of quarantine. Methods This project is a social constructionist analysis of lactation narratives of 24 parents feeding their children human milk and 13 lactation professionals. They were interviewed remotely in 2020–21 via videoconferencing about their experiences and perspectives on the pandemic’s effect on lactation. Additionally, photographs of 16 of the parents are provided to visualize their practices and how they chose to represent them. Results Four interrelated themes were identified in participants’ narratives about how they experienced and made sense of human milk feeding during the pandemic: the loneliness of lactation during the pandemic, the construction of human milk as a resource to cope with the crisis, the (in)visibility of lactation amidst heightened multitasking, and the sense of connection created by human milk feeding at a time of unprecedented solitude. Conclusions While the pandemic may have had both positive and negative effects on lactation, it exposed continuing inequities in infant feeding, generating new forms of (in)visibility for lactating labor. Going forward, one lesson for policy and lawmakers may be that to adequately support lactation, they should take cues from the families who had positive experiences during the crisis. This would call for systemically overhauling of US laws and policies by guaranteeing: universal basic income, paid parental leave for at least six months, paid lactation leaves and breaks, affordable housing, universal health care, subsidized childcare programs, and equal access to high-quality, non-discriminatory, and culturally appropriate medical care—including lactation counseling—, among other initiatives.

Breastfeeding in public has become more accepted, but milk expression—defined as removing milk from the breasts manually or using a breast pump—continues to be seen as a distasteful bodily function analogous to urination or sex, which should be confined to the private sphere. Few states explicitly exempt milk expression from their indecent exposure and obscenity laws. Yet, far from being a marginal activity, milk expression is often a necessary component of successful lactation. It allows parents with disabilities that challenge feeding at the breast to produce milk. It is instrumental in feeding babies who are unable to suckle at the breast or those who are temporarily separated from their parents, whether because the parents are ill, must report to work, have shared custody, or need to participate in political, social, and other aspects of life. In other words, milk expression is vital for human milk feeding in numerous circumstances and necessary for lactating parents to enjoy equal citizenship on par with non-lactating people. Legal scholarship is growing in the field of lactation law, but work that specifically focuses on milk expression and its legal implications beyond the workplace—from the regulation of breast pumps as medical devices to the question of whether public milk expression should be protected—is missing. This Article contributes to the literature by arguing that milk expression should be recognized as part of a reproductive justice-based right to breastfeed through a combination of civil rights, FDA law, insurance law, health law, tax law, and work law. Parents need paid parental leave, paid lactation breaks, and access to affordable, high-quality, and culturally competent healthcare and lactation counseling and technology. In addition, they should have the right to express milk in every space where they have the right to be present.

Humans have consumed nearly every human body part. Today, the consumption of milk, placenta, and feces, in particular, is on the rise. Milk, placenta, and feces circulate directly among people given that no medical expertise is required to consume them in unprocessed form, but they are also distributed by institutionalized medical entities (e.g., biobanks, hospitals, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or cosmetic companies). They are considered simultaneously valuable (as they are typically donated gratuitously and primarily used for nutritional, health, and research purposes) and dangerous (as they can transmit viruses, bacteria, parasites, and pollutants). This article has two main goals. First, in examining the social meanings of milk, placenta, and feces consumption, it considers whether and how the circulation of these bio-commodities shapes the limits of human bodies and communities. Second, it asks whether there is something different or specific about the way in which self-consumption (i.e., the consumption of human body materials by humans) is regulated compared to that of foods, drugs, and supplements derived from animal bodies, plants, or other non-human sources.

Food is fundamental to French identity. So too is the denial of structural racism and racial identity. Both tenets are central to the nation’s self-definition, making them all the more important to think about together. This article purports to identify and critique a form of “French food Whiteness” ( blanchité alimentaire ), that is, the use of food and eating practices to reify and reinforce Whiteness as the dominant racial identity. To do so, it develops four case studies of how law elevates a fiction of homogenous French/White food as superior and normative at the expense of alternative ways of eating and their eaters—the law of geographical indications, school lunches, citizenship, and cultural heritage.

Food is fundamental to French identity. So too is the denial of structural racism and racial identity. Both tenets are central to the nation’s self-definition, making them all the more important to think about together. This article purports to identify and critique a form of “French food Whiteness” ( blanchité alimentaire ), that is, the use of food and eating practices to reify and reinforce Whiteness as the dominant racial identity. To do so, it develops four case studies of how law elevates a fiction of homogenous French/White food as superior and normative at the expense of alternative ways of eating and their eaters—the law of geographical indications, school lunches, citizenship, and cultural heritage.

Abstract This study aims to understand the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on human milk banking services in North America, with a focus on the United States. We triangulated questionnaire data with interviews and text‐based website data. Of the 30 human milk bank services from which data were obtained, the majority faced substantial internal organization change in terms of staffing and protocols and experienced financial hardship in particular because of decreases in donor human milk orders. At the same time, most banks reported an increase in their numbers of donors and in the volume of milk collected. These results show that the pandemic significantly affected the way in which many North American milk banks operate, some lactating mothers donate their milk and, at least during the first few months of the crisis, certain hospitals' donor human milk ordering patterns changed. It suggests in particular that stay‐at‐home orders and the turn to remote work created the potential for a surge in human milk available for donation as a number of parents no longer needed their surplus for their own children. Legal and policy reform should focus on replicating the positive effects of the pandemic on breastfeeding by guaranteeing paid parental leave and flexible work conditions. Initiatives should also aim at counteracting its negative effects by mandating the insurance coverage of donor human milk, supporting milk banks financially and, more generally, integrating lactation and human milk banking services within the health system.

France is an overwhelmingly majority-White nation. Yet the French majority is reluctant to identify as White, and French social science has tended to eschew Whiteness as an object of inquiry. Inspired by critical race theory and critical Whiteness studies, this interdisciplinary special issue offers a new look at White identities in France. It does so not to recenter Whiteness by giving it prominence, but to expose and critique White dominance. This introduction examines the global and local dimensions of Whiteness, before identifying three salient dimensions of its French version: the ideology of the race-blind universalist republic; the past and present practice of French colonialism, slavery, and rule across overseas territories; and the racialization of people of Muslim or North African backgrounds as

France maintains a court system outside of the European continent in so-called overseas regions such as Martinique and New Caledonia. Held as colonies until the 1940s, these territories became part of the French state with varying degrees of autonomy. Drawing on original qualitative and archival research, this article argues that through these overseas courts, France continues to legally assume the traditional role of a colonial power despite its declared commitment to the nation-state, republican model. Subordinating discourses and elements of colonial structure have outlived the transition to nonempire, continuing to exert strong influences on the courts’ operations, especially the way in which judges and prosecutors are appointed and promoted. This study should also be read as a contribution to the scholarship on how court systems around the globe grapple with the legacy of colonialism in shaping their organizational structure and practices.

France maintains a court system outside of the European continent in so-called overseas regions such as Martinique and New Caledonia. Held as colonies until the 1940s, these territories became part of the French state with varying degrees of autonomy. Drawing on original qualitative and archival research, this article argues that through these overseas courts, France continues to legally assume the traditional role of a colonial power despite its declared commitment to the nation-state, republican model. Subordinating discourses and elements of colonial structure have outlived the transition to nonempire, continuing to exert strong influences on the courts’ operations, especially the way in which judges and prosecutors are appointed and promoted. This study should also be read as a contribution to the scholarship on how court systems around the globe grapple with the legacy of colonialism in shaping their organizational structure and practices.

AbstractThe chapter examines ‘animal colonialism’ and one of its iterations, ‘milk colonialism.’ Until the end of the nineteenth century—and sometimes well into the twentieth century—the majority of the world population outside Europe neither raised animals for their milk nor consumed animal milk. With the violent colonization of the New World and other territories starting in the sixteenth century, dairying began to spread globally. European settlers did not set out to colonize lands and people alone, they transported with them animals and plants, including lactating animals such as cows and sheep. These living imports not only disrupted local ecosystems, but also relational patterns by altering, sometimes even severing, the breastfeeding relationship between females, be they animal or human, and their young. By propagating and spreading animal milk consumption and depreciating colonized women’s practice of breastfeeding, the oppression of humans and animals went hand in hand. This account adds a fascinating dimension to the history of the international law of development.

Milk is young mammals’ primary food. Yet, lactating animals raised for their milk, such as cows and goats, are subject to extreme forms of violence and control preventing them from breastfeeding their own young. Numerous human parents also lack the legal, economic, social, and emotional support they need to nurse their children. At one level, the situation of humans and that of farmed animals is incommensurable in that the latter’s reproductive and lactating capacity is typically exploited and rewarded by death when unprofitable. At another level, lactating animals of all species are in a related social status. Lactating parents, typically gendered as female, produce a highly valuable resource in a position of subordination. Meanwhile, many infants are neither breastfed nor fed their species’ milk. While breastfeeding law and policy is usually presented as a human public health problem, this Article argues that it is also an interspecies food and environmental justice problem. Both humans and animals are under-protected or unprotected by the law when it comes to lactation. This Article proposes the idea of an interspecies right to breastfeed, that is, a right the central meaning of which would be similar across species, even though its full implementation might require different accommodations, depending on each species. At its core, the right should be understood as relational in that it protects the breastfeeding relation, rather than the breastfeeding parent/ caregiver or the breastfed child each taken in isolation.

Of the forms of reproductive labor in which legal scholars have been interested, placenta, the organ developed during pregnancy, has been overlooked. As placenta becomes an object of value for a growing number of individuals, researchers, clinicians, biobanks, and biotech companies, among others, its cultural meaning is changing. At the same time, these various constituencies may be at odds. Some postpartum parents and their families want to repossess their placenta for personal use, while third parties use placentas for a variety of research, medical, and commercial purposes. This Article contributes to the scholarship on reproductive justice and agency by asking who should have access to placentas and under what conditions. The Article emphasizes the insufficient protection the law affords pregnant people wishing to decide what happens to their placenta. Generally considered clinical waste under federal and state law, placental tissue is sometimes made inaccessible to its producers on the ground that it is infectious at the same time as it is made available to third parties on the ground that placenta is discarded and de-identified tissue. Less privileged people who lack the ability to shop for obstetric and other pregnancy-related services that allow them to keep their placentas are at a disadvantage in this chain of supply and demand. While calling for further research on the modus operandi of placenta markets and how pregnant people think about them, this Article concludes that lawmakers should take steps to protect decision-making autonomy over placental labor and offers a range of proposals to operationalize this idea.