Are South African food retailers ignoring constitutional risks? On World Food Day, legal expert Dr Tarryn Bannister explains how animal welfare and human rights are reshaping the future of food security.
When South Africa’s largest food retailers skipped the South African Human Rights Commission’s (SAHRC) right-to-food investigation hearings, they may have saved a few days of management time. What they risked, however, was far more valuable: consumer trust, constitutional legitimacy and sustainability. Their absence also exposed a blind spot in how corporations assess risks to people, animals and the environment.
The SAHRC’s National Investigative Hearing into the Food Systems of South Africa examines the right of everyone to have access to sufficient food, guaranteed under section 27(1)(b) of the Constitution. Rightly so: more than 1 000 children die from malnutrition each year and 28.8% of children under 5 experience stunting, despite the country’s abundant food resources. Poverty and inequality compound this: the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group finds that a basic nutritional food basket for a low-income household costs over R1 000 more per month than families typically manage to spend.
Human rights and animal welfare: The shared supply chain crisis
These challenges are interconnected. The same food systems that leave families unable to afford adequate nutrition can expose workers to poor labour conditions, harm the environment and cause extreme suffering to animals. As a recent analysis of the Daybreak Foods case illustrates, human and animal exploitation can stem from the same supply-chain, governance and accountability failures.
This World Food Day (16 October) is an opportune time to ask why corporate risk models still treat people, animals and the environment as separate concerns.
Corporate decisions shape whether people can realise their constitutional rights of access to sufficient food (section 27) and children’s rights to basic nutrition (section 28). The Constitutional Court has linked animal welfare to the section 24 environmental right and recognised animals as sentient beings with intrinsic value. Because section 8(2) of the Constitution binds private companies where applicable, food producers and retailers cannot treat animal welfare as falling outside constitutional scrutiny.
When suppliers keep egg-laying hens in cruel battery cages or gas-stun pigs, companies need to account properly for the associated harms and risks. Public safety is also at stake: industrial animal agriculture has been linked to the 2017 listeriosis outbreak that affected over 820 people and killed 218.
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Beyond legal compliance: The ESG and governance imperative
These impacts are not merely ethical matters; they sit within a governance framework that places obligations, and potential liabilities, on corporations. Directors’ duties under the Companies Act 71 of 2008 to act in good faith and with due care, skill and diligence are increasingly understood to encompass ESG considerations. King IV expects boards to integrate responsible corporate citizenship into strategy and to treat risk as integral to strategic decision-making.
The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 requires honest, transparent marketing and disclosure, yet, as ALRSA’s Scrambling for the Truth report highlights, consumers are routinely denied clear information about how their food is produced, undermining informed choice.
The environmental framework is also increasingly recognising “animal well-being”, and organisations are pushing for stronger reforms, such as the Animal Law Project’s Manifesto calling for recognition of animal sentience, corporate accountability and transparency.
The high cost of absence: Public trust and social legitimacy
The SAHRC, an independent Chapter 9 institution mandated to promote, protect, investigate and monitor human rights, held the first phase of its hearings in March 2026 and the second in July. Organisations including ALRSA made written and oral submissions in the first phase.
Yet many of the largest food retailers were absent from the second, despite being called to appear. Shoprite alone submitted written responses; Massmart requested a postponement, and others did not participate. Their absence underscores the limits of relying on voluntary participation. The commission had invited rather than subpoenaed participants, prompting civil society to call on the SAHRC to subpoena the retailers so that they could answer questions under oath.
In 2018, Momentum declined to pay Denise Ganas’s R2.4 million life insurance claim after her husband, Nathan, was shot dead in a hijacking, citing his failure to disclose raised blood sugar levels. The ombud backed the insurer, but public outrage exposed a gap between legal compliance and societal expectations of fairness. Momentum ultimately made an ex gratia payment and introduced a payout for families of violent-crime victims.
Amid growing corporate governance debate and scrutiny of corporate conduct, the greatest risks may lie not in legislation or contracts, but in failing to recognise that every corporate decision shapes relationships of public trust, dependence and vulnerability.
Just as Momentum learned that legal correctness is not enough, food companies are learning that disregarding people, animals and the environment is not low-risk. In 2020, the Advertising Regulatory Board ruled on appeal that Fair Cape Dairies could not use “humane” and “#HappyCows” in its advertising, with tangible reputational and commercial consequences.
Yet many corporations still treat these risks as a siloed, box-ticking exercise, divorced from their reputational, financial and legal implications. Consumers care, though: 84% of South Africans expect food companies to ensure animal wellness. So do investors: the FAIRR Initiative, a network of more than 400 investors representing over US$95 trillion in assets, treats the risks of intensive animal production as significant.
The hearings were a missed opportunity for many food companies to showcase their social responsibility work and shape their relationship with the SAHRC and the public. Notably, when asked whether it would support a proposed voluntary right to food charter with measurable commitments monitored by the SAHRC, Tiger Brands said it “would welcome the opportunity to engage” on the charter and to “offer support” through its work in the food system.
The retailers who skipped the hearings appear to have mismapped their risks to reputation, access to capital and constitutional legitimacy. While accountability mechanisms need strengthening, companies that want to stay ahead of the curve must recognise that accountability spans social legitimacy, constitutional values and capital, not just black-letter compliance.
This World Food Day and going forward, corporations should pay heed to how harms to people, animals and the environment represent interconnected corporate risks that need to be taken seriously.
- Dr Tarryn Bannister is the lawyer and programme lead for the Corporate Accountability Programme at Animal Law Reform South Africa. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Food For Mzansi.
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