Doação de alimentos: fetiche ou política de segurança alimentar

Abstract

The Food Donation remains as one of the Food Security Politic activities. Is this a fetish or an effective component mechanism of this politic? To analyze this issue, it was elaborated a performance study of the Food Bank of Sao Paulo City in the year 2004. The dimensions and the reach of this food waste combat initiative worked as base for the analysis of the governmental moves on this kind of action and other measures to combat hunger. This study tried to rescue, with an interdisciplinary approach, the concepts and notions about Food Security dating at least from the 1950 s, being put together with what has been evaluated currently about public politics of Food Security and hunger combat. A lot of diversity was found, in measurement and in understanding famish and malnourishment in Brazil including variations on the Food Security concept which culminates in disparate results. This range of results enables the creation of different public politics to a same reality. It was detected a disparity in the distribution and demand locations of the service provided by the Food Bank of Sao Paulo City. In addition, it was verified that these locations do not correspond to the most vulnerable social areas of the city, which allows some questioning with regard to the range and reach capacity of this new public service (2002) and even the need or viability of its governmental implementation. The governmental sphere has been allocating many effort in trying to eradicate hunger in the country. However, the initiative of the Food Bank of Sao Paulo City is a control of waste politic, which is absolutely vulnerable as part of a Food Security Politic, to the extent it has presented uncertain results concerning quantity, quality and periodicity in the food distribution to its beneficiaries