Karine Bernard has been interested in issues surrounding food security, food systems and the right to food for many years. She is passionate about the initiatives that tend towards a right to healthy, local and sustainable food for all.

As a citizen, she is a member of the Comité d’action et de réflexion sur l’autonomie alimentaire (CARAA) within the organization Carrefour solidaire-Centre communautaire d’alimentation. She is actively involved in issues related to food security and food waste, and with populations living in a situation of financial precariousness. 

With CARAA, she contributed to the writing of the brief “Et si se nourrir était un droit” (What if food was a right?), presented to the Consultation sur la cessation du gaspillage alimentaire de Montréal. Several recommendations on the reduction of food waste were made, but above all, the ethical issues of redistributing unsold food to populations living in precarious situations were raised. Too often, this approach is seen as the way to solve both food waste and food insecurity. However, it does not solve the problems at the source and raises major ethical issues in terms of human dignity and social justice. 

By training, she is a biologist and nutritionist and recently completed a master’s degree in community health, where she examined the contribution of collective gardens and community kitchens to the well-being and health of communities.