sustainable planet
Learning to Feed the World
By Melanie Takefman
What do a legal student from Italy, a geneticist from Vietnam and a plant scientist from India have in common? They all study at TAU’s Manna Center Program for Food Safety and Security
Chiaretta Giordano is an Italian doctoral student at TAU who studies the legal implications of food security. She thinks that human rights start in the kitchen. This interest in food brought her to the Manna Center Program’s Food Safety and Security Summer Institute in 2016 while she was completing a master’s degree in Italy.
at the Summer Institute that she decided to pursue a PhD in food security law at the Zvi Meitar Center for Advanced Legal Studies at the TAU Buchmann Faculty of Law. She aims to prove that only by enabling indigenous groups to follow and practice their native food cultures can governments guarantee their full human rights.
Research Bearing Fruit In the framework of her doctoral studies as a Manna Center fellow, Cameroonian student Japhette Esther Kembou Tsofack joined forces with TAU Prof. Eran Bachrach who studies tilapia fish. Together, they discovered a virus that was causing disease in tilapia around the world. Tsofack is now developing diagnostics and vaccines to contain the illness.
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“Although Israel is a little country, it has connections all over the world. Professors from different countries come to give lectures or participate in conferences,” she said. Giordano connected so much with TAU’s global and comprehensive approach to food security during her time
Giordano’s research focus is one example of the broad spectrum of topics encompassed by food security, a pressing issue that could potentially affect everyone. Around the world, demand for food is on the rise, while the quantity of arable land and agricultural resources is declining. Close to 1 billion people
suffer from malnutrition, while another 2 billion are undernourished or suffer from an excess of harmful caloric intake due to lack of access to healthy food. Against this backdrop, TAU created the Manna Program for Food Safety and Security, the first of its kind in Israel, to address food security “from field to fork.” Leveraging TAU’s interdisciplinary research culture, the Program promotes innovative, potentially high-impact research by forging ties between professionals and academics from different disciplines. In doing so, it prepares the next generation of scientists and policymakers to guide global food security issues.
Hands-on agricultural training The Center’s international programs are taking this holistic and pluralistic agenda even further. Building on the success of its 4-week Summer Institute, the Manna Center and TAU International launched the International MSc in Plant Science with Emphasis on Food Security in 2014. The graduate course is run jointly with the Arava International Center for Agriculture Training. Students have the opportunity
