Today I am here representing my family,
I'm not representing any institutions.
I represent my three kids:
Noemi, Ricardo and Eduardo.
My grandson, I'm already a grandmother,
Leonardo.
And my two daughters-in-law, Mariana
and Soraya.
I'd like to tell you how happy I was.
It's a great responsibility to speak after Luís (Ginocchio),
who's such a wonderful person. My dream is that,
in Brazil, we can have in the Agriculture Ministry
a Minister as involved and as committed
to family farming as you are to the country's culture.
Right?
What I wish, as a public manager,
is that every public manager, every technician,
every inspector have a grandmother
like the one I am to my grandson.
Every one of us remembers our grandmothers, right?
The food she made.
Our grandmothers cooked with wooden spoons
in clay pots.
Our grandmothers cooked in wood-burning stoves.
Then we go off to college
and we learn a lot of things.
We learn that nothing is allowed.
I've dealt a lot from the world.
I am the child of a family farmer.
My father is from the Bahia Sertão,
from the semi-arid climate, where I lived for a long time,
and I participated in many movements.
That's my origin. I'm proud of being from Pindaí.
It's a very small town.
I came to the world to help.
My academic background is in teaching,
but I've always dealt with social projects
and always worried about eradicating starvation
in Brazil.
I had the chance, in the county of São Carlos, São Paulo,
of becoming a public manager.
It was crazy. All of a sudden I was vice-mayor
and I found myself becoming
a Civic and Social Work Secretary.
That's when I realized
that, if the government wants it, it accomplishes.
When it's committed, it accomplishes.
Then...
Because I had this background with family farming,
because I'm the child of a family farmer,
I know the reality of poor people from Pindaí,
São Carlos and Brazil, because I had the opportunity
to get to know deeply
all the states in our country.
It's possible to do it. In São Carlos. we did it.
In São Carlos it was possible
to create a policy,
meaning civic duty and social assistance.
It's possible to discuss civic duty and social assistance
as a public policy.
And in our country,
I went to ANVISA.
But before talking about ANVISA, this subject
is very
important to us, to our country.
Food is culture.
Understanding food as a cultural element
is essential to a country. We need that.
In Brazil, and I will talk only about Brazil,
it's very important.
We start with our Federal Constitution.
Our Constitution starts...
The fifth article says everyone is equal before the law
without any distinction of any given nature,
certifying Brazilians
and permanent residents... Welcome, all.
And permanent residents the inviolability
of the right to life.
In order to have a life, we must eat.
Nobody can live without food.
Right?
We have it in our Constitution. Why do so many people starve?
Why do we allow
our citizens to eat from the garbage?
I worked in our country's capital.
I used to demand from the sanitary surveillance agency,
which constantly demands from individual micro-entrepreneurs,
from family farmer,
from solidary economy,
developments that these business have no condition of fulfilling.
But they'll allow governments to let people...
In Brasília, up till 2015,
2016, they would film people
eating from the garbage.
It was allowed, in Brazil's capital,
for women, men and children to collect chicken,
sausages and other types of food from dumping grounds.
That happens in most towns.
Whose responsibility is that?
Then we go to... Nobody shall be submitted to torture
or unhuman and degrading treatment.
Come on, Constitution!
Then we have here, in the sixth article,
food as a social right.
It's new in our Constitution.
The right to food was only included in the Constitution
in 2010. Then article 225.
I'm saying this because it's our law.
Everybody has the right
to an ecologically balanced environment,
to be used by the people and essential
to a healthy quality of life by imposing
to the public power and collectivity
the duty to defend it.
That's why I want to applaud this audience.
All committed, the civil society is here,
fulfilling their role.
And we'll go to this sad reality,
from a country with a Constitution that says all that.
Brazil leaves starvation. Brazil returns to starvation.
And we are discussing that we don't want people starving.
We have other laws. I won't interpret them,
I am not a lawyer.
But I want to tell you that all our laws,
and I wanted to put them up there:
public policies to allow access to human right to adequate food.
Brazil has been evolving in the last few years.
Then we have...
We are still dealing with laws from 1940,
but we have some that are advancing.
The ones the civil society managed to interject.
Then we get to the law that creates
the food and nutritional security national system.
And then, public power and civil society.
But we are not in there, discussing this.
There are few laws that we went in and said:
"We want a law that reflects us."
Then, more advances,
but unfortunately, this image also shows that,
when we talk about sustainable development,
healthy eating, our towns lack basic sanitation.
We still have towns
that don't treat sewage,
which allows people
to live
among sewage and going through trash.
And then we have comprehensiveness.
Guaranteeing biological, sanitary, nutritional
and technological quality of all foods.
The cultural, ethnic and racial diversity of people.
This is beautiful.
How many Brazilians can't have rice, beans, meat and lettuce?
Right? Our esteemed...
Luciana!
Luciana, thank you, talked about this.
We have children and adults who still don't have that.
And we still talk about how the ones who suffer
from starvation and misery is the black population.
We don't talk about
equity, gender, race
and we are disrespecting all of that.
We need to work on it.
Then we get to organic agriculture,
which has been talked about. I won't repeat it.
We have an advance,
but unfortunately it's not accessible yet.
Then the food education benchmark.
After that we have...
the whole diversity issue,
which talks about diversity in food,
the practices. This is all in the legislation.
But, look, we see things like this.
School food.
There are children
who go to school without having eaten.
There are children whose only meal
is the one at school.
And it's not true that every child gets food at school.
We have towns in this country
that graft school food money.
And it also encourages this type of food.
We don't make that, we don't offer that.
Children in the Northeast, in the North and other towns
that aren't just in the North and Northeast,
don't have access to that.
And then we see something pleasurable for me,
my work with ANVISA. ANVISA is a government agency,
our national agency of sanitary security,
that may take a while, but had a president
who is also the son of a family farmer
who took over ANVISA and said:
"Our norms can't be the same for everyone.
We need different norms
for different treatments."
The small farmer can't be treated like the big one.
Our developments in solidary economy
can't be treated like a multinational.
Our individual micro-entrepreneurs,
who have a small stand, can't be treated the same.
That's when he called me from São Carlos to Brasília
to help ANVISA
to make a norm.
That norm was discussed with the civil society.
I was exhausted
from travelling around Brazil and by taking a beating
from the national agency of sanitary security.
I was booed.
It was hard work convincing, sensitizing,
but we were able to get RDC 49 approved,
which is now famous. Sometimes I google "RDC 49"
and I see a lot of people talking about it.
It was revolutionary. The social movements,
we have some of them here, we have Slow Food,
a partner of ours in this discussion,
we have Luiz Carrazza, from Rede Cerrado,
a partner of ours.
We have the institute Propriedade, Sociedade e Natureza...
Sociedade, População e Natureza.
So many others present here today who partnered with us
in this debate to build this norm.
This norm says
for the first time
in the history of sanitary surveillance in this country,
protection to handcrafted production
to preserve traditions, habits, traditional knowledge
in the perspective of the people's multiculturalism.
Imagine that!
You can't do anything!
You can't do this, you can't do that.
So this is it. Today, ANVISA recognizes that
and the entire national sanitary surveillance system
has that as a norm. Such norm is talked about.
An inspector can't say they don't know it.
It was made and commented juridically
to leave no room for interpretation.
I just added a few articles.
The matter of reasonableness. It's absurd...
Absurd the way family farmers are treated,
how individual micro-entrepreneurs are treated
and also the solidarity economy by the inspection sectors.
Because today I am happy
that in most Brazilian states there is legislation
from the sanitary surveillance respecting that.
Everything is applied in the same way for everyone.
There is no demand for reasonableness.
There are no demands.
We have a history of sanitary surveillance
ask of a family farmer, and everyone knows
what the composition of a solidarity economy,
asking them to have two bathrooms.
Right?
Family farmers have one bathroom.
Most Brazilians...
Some Brazilians don't even have one bathroom.
We are grateful when we get one bathroom.
And, for a new business, they ask for two.
Ten rooms. It's absurd.
So, this RDC...
There are other abuses I will mention later on.
The development of public policies
and training for professionals.
It's absurd. We can't make laws and not worry about training
the technicians.
That doesn't exist.
There's no use in passing laws in Brasília
and not bringing them to the towns.
The technicians going after the entrepreneurs
are in the towns.
If the civil society doesn't take charge of the training
and the legislation, it'll do no good.
That's why I put it here.
It's important to worry about training.
And then we move on.
The matter of risk.
Everything is a risk.
No. Everything is a risk, but there are high and low risks.
ANVISA also approved a norm that deals with this.
Another thing ANVISA did that should be the standard
for other government agencies
is creating a work group
with the national agency of sanitary security
and the civil society. I brought some images
of us taking some meetings. There is the group.
All the representatives of state
and cities with sanitary surveillance
plus the civil society representatives.
Here, we are participating in the world forum
of solidarity economy talking to over 500 people
about the RDC 49. And here, talking to farmers
in Bico do Papagaio, talking to the women
who open coconut about this RDC.
That's what public policies should be doing.
They have to
talk to people about the law
and what it allows so people will take it for themselves.
And ANVISA, back then, was talking about
an inclusion project with the sanitary surveillance.
Then we...
ANVISA created...
Oops...
A program... It's now a program with the civil society.
It created a program...
The program productive inclusion with the sanitary surveillance,
PRAISSAN. Let's move on.
Now, a bit more.
The map decree. We'll talk about
needs to break paradigms. Our Agriculture Ministry
doesn't speak the language of the family farmer,
the solidary economy, because the map's laws
are very complicated. But now there is a law
from SUAS we must take for ourselves and talk about it.
And the map, for our great surprise,
is here now showing...
Considering the customs, the habits and the knowledge,
this is in the decree of the Safra plan
which was launched and we need to take it for ourselves.
Another thing is that the map
created normative instruction number 16,
which followed the example of RDC 49,
except for the discussion with society.
Few organizations participated.
Another thing, this decree
is an advance on the map, which also brings
differential treatment for agriculture.
Here are some quotes by friends.
This is what we want to avoid.
The public power must prevent this type of thing.
I was shocked by this.
I sent an e-mail when I saw Roberta,
a chef, who had all her
cheese thrown in the trash. Someone mentioned this.
This is so sad. It violated whoever made it.
The Rio de Janeiro sanitary surveillance
violated RDC 49. This should not be done.
And sanitary surveillance can't...
And sanitary surveillance can't take away and throw out
good food. They are not this type of authority.
They are not this type of authority.
It was sad.
And a lot of people called me because of it.
I was sad. Very sad. It can't happen.
And we see this. "Government and producers fight
with regulations for cheese in Minas Gerais."
"Inspection is amplified and street vendors complain."
Guys, this is so sad.
We need to work on this.
And we see here,
on the other side, we have this beautiful thing.
The Baianas making acarajé.
We have handmade cheese.
We have many awards outside of Brazil.
We need to encourage this, we need to take this for ourselves
and strengthen our food culture, which is so vast.
This is the portrait... I'm rushing past these
because my time is up. I only ask for a little while.
And to talk about the fighters in Santa Catarina,
which has just been regulated.
This is to say IFAN
needs to be reinforced, needs our support
to continue the good work as we see in these pictures.
And I'm bringing the challenges
and asking for some time to show them.
Identifying and overlapping
assignments between ANVISA and the map.
ANVISA and the map have intersecting regulations.
In the farmer's mind, in our minds,
I'm sure that if I start talking, you won't understand
why one regulates water and the other, juice.
Why one regulates fruit and the other, pulp.
Why is it allowed for one, but not for the other?
One regulates milk and the other, cheese.
This can't keep happening. We need to make a movement
and I hope, from this, that we can do it.
The other thing, the investment...
End commercial barriers. Someone mentioned this.
It's true. We can't...
What happened in Rio de Janeiro
was only a matter of commercial barrier.
It had nothing to do with rotten food.
Nobody would die from eating that food.
The other thing, training technicians
and the civil society. It has to happen.
And then...
I defend the creation of a Brazilian label
for family farming, for handmade products,
and to end commercial barriers. It's an intense fight. I know.
And,
moving on to...
These are more laws that we need to interpret.
Now, to close this,
I'm bringing a tribute to all women.
We are going through difficult times.
Since yesterday, we see a lot of women.
Many women have spoken.
The reality in Brazil for women,
we face poverty, starvation,
especially black women in this country.
We face domestic abuse.
I am a victim of domestic abuse.
And here, a woman's place
is wherever she wants it to be. This is the flag of a fight
we can't abandon.
And here, some Cora Coralina.
Thank you all.
*END*
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