United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

At its December session, the FAO Council recommended an important amendment to the first global goal of the organization, from diminishing hunger to its elimination, which reads as follows: ‘eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, progressively ensuring a world in which all people at all times have sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’ revised language in italics. Expected to be endorsed by the FAO Conference at its forthcoming session in June 2013, this substantial policy change would represent a radical transformation of the current strategy in this regard, which less ambitiously aims to reduce the absolute number of undernourished people—in line with Millennium Development Goal 1 to halve the proportion of those who suffer from starvation by 2015—rather than aspiring to the complete eradication of hunger and malnutrition worldwide.