With consumers crying out about the high cost of living and their inability to buy fruits, vegetables and other wholesome foods, a university academic is challenging them to pressure the government to implement policies so they can access healthy and nutritious food. Nicole Foster, a law lecturer and head of the Law and Health Research Unit at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, said the government was legally obligated to create an environment where its people had access to wholesome food by way of the international human rights conventions it has signed.She suggested that Barbadians needed to do more to get the government to address this issue as it had serious implications for the island’s non-communicable disease (NCD) epidemic.“There is a joint responsibility [needed to tackle the NCD problem],” said Foster. “The major responsibility is not at the level of the individual, but actually in terms of government for two reasons. One is that the government is the duty bearer in the context of international human rights. They’re the ones who have assumed these responsibilities in relation to individuals that they are in charge of; but also too, the government, not me as an individual, can change my environment.”
