Eager to avoid charges of hypocrisy, leaders at a UN summit on the world food crisis, meeting this week in Rome, have banned foie gras and lobster in favor of a more modest menu. 

As the London Times Online reported today: 

"It does not look good if leaders discussing global starvation are seen to be dining lavishly," an official of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. "At the last summit in 2002 we did not give enough thought to the menu and were open - unfairly, in our view - to the charge of hypocrisy."

The 2002 menu, published by The Times, began with foie gras on toast with kiwi fruit and lobster in vinaigrette, followed by fillet of goose with olives and seasonal vegetables and ending with a compote of fruit with vanilla, all accompanied by an array of fine wines. This time the catering was scaled down. Leaders first ate vol au vent stuffed with sweetcorn and mozzarella, followed by a pasta dish with a sauce of pumpkin and shrimps, and then veal meatballs and cherry tomatoes, with a fruit salad and vanilla ice-cream for dessert.

The food summit opened today with the UN harshly criticizing U.S. policies supporting farm subsidies and biofuels, while slashing aid programs to the world’s hungry.

“$11 to $12 billion a year subsidies in 2006 and protective tariff policies have the effect of diverting 100 million tons of cereals from human consumption, mostly to satisfy the thirst for fuel for vehicles,” Jacques Diouf, head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization told the New York Times.

But Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil (a major sugarcane biofuel producer) snapped back, “It offends me to see fingers pointed at biofuels, when the fingers are coated in oil and coal.”