How the global food economy is killing children

VIJAY PRASHAD

On June 4, 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a evaluation This is devastating for the state of global food systems. According to new estimates, based on data up to 2021, unsafe food causes approximately 866 million cases of illness and 1,5 million deaths each year. Nearly one in nine people worldwide become ill from consuming contaminated food, and the regions of Africa and Southeast Asia together account for almost three-quarters of all foodborne illnesses and 60% of deaths globally. The burden falls most heavily on those who have contributed least to the crisis: children.

Young children face a nearly three times greater risk of becoming ill from unsafe food compared to older children and adults. Despite representing only 9% of the world's population, children under five suffer almost a third of all foodborne illnesses; in 2021, contaminated food caused the deaths of 143.000 of them. These are not mere statistics. They represent lives cut short by preventable diseases, families plunged into grief, and societies deprived of the future embodied by their youngest members.

The conventional response to these findings is technical. We are told that food safety is a matter of better inspections, stricter regulations, improved hygiene, and effective monitoring. These measures are important and necessary. However, they do not explain why hundreds of millions of people continue to consume unsafe food despite decades of accumulated knowledge about how to prevent contamination. To understand the persistence of foodborne illnesses, we must go beyond technical explanations and examine the structure of the global food system itself.

The dominant food system is organized around the pursuit of profit, not on right to foodIn much of the world, food production has become a highly concentrated industry, dominated by large agribusiness corporations, supermarket chains, food processors, logistics companies, and financial institutions. This system, which primarily seeks to maximize returns on investment, generates contradictions that directly affect food security in at least three key ways.

First, the pressure to reduce costs encourages shortcuts throughout the supply chain. Workers are often employed in precarious conditions (more than 80% of agricultural jobs in Latin America). they lack (formal protection and social security), inspection systems are underfunded, and producers face intense pressure to increase production while cutting costs. Food travels ever-greater distances through increasingly complex global supply chains, creating more opportunities for contamination and obscuring the conditions under which it was produced.

Secondly, capitalist food systems tend to outsource The costs. Environmental degradation, water pollution, unsafe working conditions, and public health consequences are often treated as someone else's problem, rather than as the responsibility of private companies. The social costs fall on workers, consumers, and public health systems, while the profits remain private.

Third, global inequalities shape food security patterns. It is no surprise that the greatest burden of foodborne illness is concentrated in Africa and Southeast Asia, as these regions continue to suffer the long-term effects of colonial underdevelopment, debt dependency, inadequate public infrastructure, and unequal integration into the global economy. Therefore, unsafe food is not just a health issue; it is a manifestation of unequal development.

The deaths of tens of thousands of children each year highlight the moral bankruptcy of this system. A society that allows children to die from preventable foodborne illnesses has failed in one of its most fundamental obligations. These deaths are especially tragic because the solutions are, to a large extent, known. The WHO identifies access to safe drinking water, sanitation, food safety practices, healthcare, and effective public regulation as essential tools for reducing mortality. These interventions require public investment and political commitment and cannot be left solely to market forces. Yet, institutions like the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) continue to promote public-private partnership models that have failed to address the structural roots of hunger and food insecurity.

The problem isn't just contamination by bacteria and viruses. Contemporary food systems expose populations to a wider range of hazards, including toxic chemicals, heavy metals, and industrial pollutants. The new estimates The WHO increasingly recognizes the long-term burden of chronic diseases linked to harmful substances in the food supply. The consequences extend beyond immediate illness and include lifelong disabilities, developmental disorders, and a reduced quality of life.

Furthermore, food security cannot be separated from the broader crisis of food systems. Worldwide, millions suffer from hunger, while others face obesity and diet-related illnesses. Farmers are plunged into debt, while food corporations accumulate unprecedented market power. Agricultural production contributes to ecological destruction, while climate change threatens harvests. The same system that generates food insecurity also generates unsafe food. The contradiction is striking. Humanity possesses the scientific knowledge, productive capacity, and technological means to guarantee safe food for all. However, under current economic arrangements, these capacities are subordinated to profitability rather than human needs.

The WHO findings should be interpreted not only as a warning about contamination, but as an indictment of a global food order that continues to expose millions of people to preventable illnesses and deaths. When a child dies because food is unsafe, the cause is never simply contaminated food. Behind that food lies a chain of political and economic decisions regarding investment, regulation, infrastructure, ownership, and social priorities. Foodborne illnesses are biological in their immediate manifestation, but social in their origins. The challenge facing humanity is not simply to make food safer. It is about building food systems organized around care rather than profit, public health rather than private accumulation, and human dignity rather than market efficiency. Only then can the promise of safe food for all become a reality and not just a slogan.

Five simple renovations

The following are five simple reforms to the current system to create a safe and fair food system:

1. Universal public investment in water, sanitation and health care: Ensure access to clean water, sanitation infrastructure and primary health care, especially in rural and low-income communities, where the burden of foodborne diseases is greatest.
2. Strengthening public food security institutions: Expand food inspection systems, laboratory capacity, disease surveillance networks and regulatory agencies, while protecting them from budget cuts and corporate influence.
3. Supporting local and small-scale food systems: Investing in local farmers, cooperatives, public procurement programs and shorter supply chains that increase transparency, resilience and accountability.
4. Democratizing the governance of the food system: Reduce corporate concentration in the agribusiness and food retail sectors, strengthen the participation of workers and farmers, and ensure public oversight of food production and distribution.
5. Recognizing safe food as a human right: Establish binding national and international commitments that treat access to safe and nutritious food as a fundamental social right, rather than as a commodity market share.

Taken together, these reforms are based on a simple principle: food is a social good, not merely a commodity. They recognize that the right to safe food is inseparable from the right to life.

It's easy to dismiss this approach as naive. But is it mere idealism to insist that no child should die from a preventable foodborne illness?

The World Health Organization report intensified my bitterness at the callousness of the capitalist system. It brought to mind Civilization, a short poem by the great Mozambican journalist and poet José Craveirinha (1922–2003):

Formerly
(before Christ)
Men erected stadiums and temples
and they died in the arena like dogs.
Now…
They also manufacture Cadillacs now.

 

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the Director of the Institute for Social Research. tricontinental. He has written more than 20 books. The last one in collaboration with Noam Chomsky: "The retreat. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the fragility of US power., reviewed by David Bollero at Globalter.

This article was originally published in tricontinental.