Pakistan has launched its first-ever university-level course focused on food legal systems, marking a major step in addressing food governance, sustainability, and public interest through academic study. The course will begin in February 2026 at Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, and will be offered through the Nadira Hassan Law Department.
The course has been developed by Environmental and Animal Rights Consultants Pakistan (EARC Pakistan), the country’s first animal and environmental law firm and research think tank, in collaboration with Rizq, a leading social enterprise working on food security, food systems transformation, sustainable agriculture, and climate resilience.
The programme treats food not just as a source of nutrition, but as a legal, political, environmental, and ethical system shaped by history, power structures, markets, and governance. Drawing on law, policy, environmental studies, and ethics, the course examines how food systems are designed, regulated, and contested in Pakistan and across the Global South.
Set against Pakistan’s growing challenges of food insecurity, climate stress, environmental degradation, and public health concerns, the course explores the colonial roots of food and agricultural laws in South Asia and how these frameworks continue to influence modern governance. It analyzes the role of legal, corporate, and institutional actors in food regulation, while also addressing food safety, public health enforcement, environmental sustainability, climate impacts of food production, and animal welfare concerns.
Participants are encouraged to rethink Pakistan’s food system through the lenses of justice, sustainability, and law, with a focus on legal and policy pathways that support more equitable and resilient food futures. The course aims to connect academic theory with real-world systemic challenges, presenting food as a key site of power, rights, and responsibility.
As a first-of-its-kind academic offering in Pakistan, the course is designed for law students, policy practitioners, researchers, development professionals, and others working in food governance and public interest fields. By placing food at the intersection of law, environment, ethics, and development, the initiative seeks to help build a new generation of legal and policy thinkers equipped to address one of Pakistan’s most pressing systemic challenges.