José Andrés, chef and humanitarian: Food is a human right

0:00José Andrés:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Caitriona Perry:to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Hello, I'm BBC Chief Presenter Katrina Perry, and this is The Interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world.

0:52José Andrés:If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention.

0:57Caitriona Perry:We have never seen a people so united. Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not.

1:07José Andrés:We're more popular than populism.

1:11Caitriona Perry:For this interview, I met chef Jose Andres at his home just outside Washington, D.C. Jose Andres was born in Spain and trained as a chef before moving to the United States, where he helped popularise Spanish cuisine and built a global restaurant empire. He later founded World Central Kitchen, an organisation that has transformed the way humanitarian aid responds to crisis, delivering meals in war zones, after natural disasters, and in communities where hunger is a daily reality. World Central Kitchen has now reached what he describes as the bittersweet milestone of delivering one million meals a day in Gaza.

1:55Caitriona Perry:José Andrés reflects on food, power, and why feeding people is inseparable from dignity and justice.

2:03José Andrés:Food is a human right, a human right that should be supported by everybody, that no children should go to bed hungry, even less in a conflict. And so, yes, food has been used as a weapon of war, as a way of punishment, and this should not be allowed by any civilized democratic country. Hopefully it will never happen again, but it's hard to see with the lack of leadership we see right now in the world.

2:34Caitriona Perry:Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Jose Andres.

2:39José Andrés:My mother, my father, they were nurses. I still remember my mom taking me as a very young kid to Red Cross to learn how to save somebody from a heart attack and the hemlock maneuver. So like all of us, we learn how to be of service beyond our duties. I became a cook very young. I love cooking. I cook all the time in the restaurant, out of the restaurant. Very quickly, I learned that the same talent, the talent I have to feed a few, is a talent that put in the right place is the same talent to feed the many. and I was 23 when I joined a small organization, a very powerful one, DEC Central Kitchen, founded by a man called Robert Eggert, who began feeding homeless in Washington, D.C., using food that was unused in hotels and restaurants and taking homeless out of the street, training them to be cooks.

3:34José Andrés:That lesson of the power of food is what got me very interested into what I can do if there is an emergency. And I kind of realized that where there is need of food and water in an emergency, who do you think is the best people that will be very resourceful in adapting to the situation and knowing where food, restaurants, kitchens may be to feed the hungry? So cooks, in that we have a talent. Chefs, we have a talent. And guess what? It's an endless network around the world of millions of restaurants and chefs and restaurant people willing to do it. So this is where it began. Haiti, 2010, the earthquake.

4:18José Andrés:I went to Haiti, to the earthquake, to Port-au-Prince, to learn. I began feeding in some camps. But very quickly I saw that the only thing you had to do to feed people today after an emergency was to arrive, find the fire, find the people, find the food and start cooking. And that way, one plate at a time, you could end serving hundreds of thousands of millions of meals a day in difficult parts of the world. This is very much the story of how World Central Kitchen came to be.

4:50Caitriona Perry:So if we look at one place where you have a big operation at the moment is Gaza. You're about to get to the place where you're feeding or making one million meals per day. How do you run an operation in such a difficult situation?

5:04José Andrés:Well, to get to the one million meals, we had to start with the first meal. We began arriving with one kitchen next to a local organization called Anera that had a long experience in Gaza. We arrived, we began making a few thousand meals a day, and from there we kept increasing. A lot of infrastructure has to happen. From the very beginning, we had a very big warehouse in Cairo. Then we had another big warehouse in Amman, because we had to be helping from both places. And slowly but surely, we began learning the systems, the rules of the game that we don't create. I wish I could create them, but we follow whatever rules we are thrown at us.

5:47José Andrés:And we began sending trucks. constant 20, 30, 40, 50 trucks a day until we are able to have enough food in the warehouses we have inside and enough kitchens and, more important, enough people. At the end, it's Palestinians feeding Palestinians. It's non-Palestinians in our organization, but who is running this operation is amazing Palestinians doing God's work. So the logistics behind are, quite frankly, very complicated, it. But what we do is to make sure that we solve the issues we face, learning the system. And in the process, it's how we are able to support our teams inside Gaza, reaching more than one million meals per day.

6:27Caitriona Perry:But how are you getting that food in? Because we've heard from other humanitarian organizations about the terrible difficulties they have getting supplies across.

6:36José Andrés:Just not only food, everything else the Palestinian people need today. Water filtration systems, we need more. Tents. My God, we need tens of thousands of tents. The people of Palestine are going through a very cold winter, one of the coldest winters in recent memory. The destruction inside is so, so huge. So how do we do it? We do it like everybody else. We had our problems too. We obviously keep bringing our complaints to the people that are able to give us this permission. It used to be through COGAT, through the Israeli authorities, who are the ones that give you the permission. More resources are going to have to be put by Israel, Arab countries, UN, to make sure that the amount of trucks that go into Gaza increase, I would say, tenfold.

7:29José Andrés:But sometimes you have to celebrate the little victories. But obviously you have to be putting pressure to the powers to be, to make sure that the people of Gaza don't have to keep going any one more day through the hardships and at times obviously very heavy suffering they're going through. When the ceasefire came, everybody was kind of happy, but then the most difficult things still were ahead of that moment. When the ceasefire, what you hope is that no more civilians die, no more doctors die, no more reporters die, no more humanitarians die. It's a bittersweet celebration that we are reaching a million meals.

8:08José Andrés:But right now the situation is very complicated. It's really still on the edge. More humanitarian aid needs to go in to cover the basic needs and leave it more of every single Palestinian.

8:21Caitriona Perry:And when you mentioned the humanitarians that have been killed, obviously it's coming up to two years since you lost seven of your workers in three vehicles. And I know there have been others killed since then. You were very outspoken at that time, seeking the truth, seeking answers to what's happened. Do you have the information that you were looking for at this point? Are you satisfied with what the IDF has told you about that incident?

8:46José Andrés:The death of the seven World Central Kitchen team members, some of them were good friends of mine. That was, for me personally, a big blowout, obviously. I feel very responsible because I'm the founder of the organization. I felt we had to be there. Obviously, back in the time, I said that somebody did it knowingly because the operation was known to IDF. And if anything, we were supposed to feel protected from any attack. But at the same time, this is something, obviously, I highly criticize. What has been happening in Gaza, the destruction I saw the last time I was there a few weeks ago, it's something like what, frankly, was never supposed to happen.

9:32José Andrés:Nobody should be attacked. The actions of the few should be paid by the actions of the few. And we need to make sure that we isolate everything. If not, we are all in a continuous civil war against each other. That something so terrible, like what has happened over the last years in that part of the world, is something like one day, one day, maybe now it's too early, will bring people together. This is what we believe in Walsandra Kitchen. Longer tables. That's what we were the first day helping in Israel because it was the right thing to do. That's what we were the first day in Gaza because that was the right thing to do.

10:07José Andrés:And that's what we're doing today. Remember, Walsandra Kitchen, we are an emergency organization. Eventually, we will leave. Why we became so big? Because it's one million hot meals. And it's beautiful to see the operation. Three bakeries. We have bakeries that they are top of the art. King Hussein from Jordan was the one that made them happen. We had three more on the works. Every one of those bakeries can make over 100 ,000 loaves of pita bread. Plus, we have partner bakeries. Why? Because now we need to be supporting more local bakeries. So we start increasing kind of the private sector response.

10:42José Andrés:But again, we need more trucks. We need more food. We need more tents. We need more medical care, more medicines, more equipment. The need in Gaza still is enormous.

10:55Caitriona Perry:You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service.

11:23Caitriona Perry:work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions on how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

11:36Caitriona Perry:I met José Andrés at his Maryland home near the border with Washington DC. He's clearly a passionate individual. He does not do half measures, not when describing his family, his food, nor the injustices he finds when doing his humanitarian work. He and his team are regularly in emergency zones, and he shows me albums on his phone full of images and videos of people in need and of the comfort, permanent or temporary, that he and his team can provide. When you talk about World Central Kitchen being able to go to emergency situations so quickly, I've heard you say before, you just get in there while the big guys like the UN agencies are still thinking about it.

12:21Caitriona Perry:And sometimes it can take maybe weeks for them to turn up. Why is that? Why are you able to move so much faster?

12:27José Andrés:Well, World Central Kitchen, we are still a very small organization that sometimes we are operating in 14, 15, 16 places at once. Right now we are in Ukraine. We've been in Ukraine from day one of the war. Food sometimes doesn't solve the long-term problems, but food is the beginning to make sure that people don't lose hope. And because we're a small organization, a very nimble organization, allow us sometimes to adapt very quickly. We don't have one way. We adapt. It's what we've been doing in Gaza. We adapt. So what we keep being is creative. Can we do food other ways? Can you please let us do food other ways?

13:04José Andrés:That's what World Central Kitchen does. We try to be creative when there is hunger. you have to solve the problem because the urgency of now in terms of hunger and water is yesterday and people cannot wait.

13:15Caitriona Perry:In 2022 you were speaking about international aid, you were speaking to some members of Congress and you said pragmatism and on-the-ground actionable intelligence are sorely lacking in international aid. Do you still think that's the case? So many more millions of people are hungry now than they were in 2022. to?

13:35José Andrés:Well, obviously, you will say democracy dies in darkness, but you can say too that humanity dies in darkness. If we don't know governments, NGOs, and people don't take action. Sudan is one of the biggest humanitarian disasters we're going through right now. It's very rare that you will read anything in newspapers across the world. So it's very important that obviously we give voice to those that bring awareness of the situations. Obviously, the situation of Gaza is terrible and shouldn't be terrible any longer. And therefore, I hope that in any second, that increase of humanitarian aid with the permits to the NGOs that are experts in providing that aid will be the good outcomes of this peace forum or peace gathering that President Trump is organizing in Washington, D.C.

14:38José Andrés:Peace can only be achieved if first we give the things to the people of Gaza that they need to look at the future with a glimpse of hope. And more important, the people of Gaza need to be on the table where we are discussing the future of Gaza. Nobody else can be deciding on behalf of Palestinians.

14:59Caitriona Perry:You often say food is a human right. When you look at all these places where World Central Kitchen is active and indeed others as well, do you think hunger is sometimes a weapon?

15:10José Andrés:Well, obviously hunger is a weapon. So using Ukraine, we saw the Holodomor. That was one very big moment in history that we saw food being a weapon of war. millions of Ukrainians die. Right now we could say it's the same happening with the freezing conditions in Ukraine. It's another way that Ukrainians are suffering and elderly and many others even dying under very difficult winter conditions. In the case of Gaza, we saw that during many, many, many, many weeks, no humanitarian aid, no truck, no food was going in. The suffering that those people were going through was so highly unnecessary. Therefore, food is a human right, a human right that should be supported by everybody, that no children should go to bed hungry, even less in a conflict, and even less in a conflict than in this case in Gaza.

16:05José Andrés:And so, yes, food has been used as a weapon of war, as a way of punishment, and it should not be allowed by any civilized democratic country. hopefully will never ever happen again but oof it's hard to see with the lack of leadership we see right now in the world does UN needs to be changing? Totally I think the UN from where it was formed to the UN that the world needs today I think needs to change but doesn't mean it needs to be disappearing I think UN is very important do we need to make it better between all? yeah Do we need to make sure that it's a more active organization, not just organization of speeches, but organization of actions?

16:52José Andrés:Yeah. I would say, why is UN not with a bigger presence in Haiti right now? It's some presence, but not big presence as it should be. Why UN has not already a big presence in Gaza? Why not? We need to think about what we want UN to become. But UN, I believe, should be a way to achieve peace in the world, or at least to maintain peace in places that there are conflicts that sometimes go back to decades or centuries. But UN has a role to play, only needs to fulfill the dream of what UN should become.

17:29Caitriona Perry:Has the shuttering of USAID had a dramatic impact on the work you're doing, the regions that World Central Kitchen is in right now?

17:38José Andrés:Since USAID shut down, I think the world is not a better place. And I don't think the self-diplomacy of U.S. has improved in any way or form. I hope that President Trump and Secretary Rubio will reconsider and bring USAID again forward. We need a USAID. We need an American power in the world to bring goodness in these moments of necessity. because we need to remember countries also have come on the aid of America, believe it or not, in certain situations and hurricanes. So this is the world together will always be a better place than the world being isolated and working in silos. So I hope USAID will come back.

18:20José Andrés:Somebody thought that USAID needs to be better. Even will be USAID people that will tell you we need to improve USAID. I think you achieve much more rebuilding and reconstructing than destroying. used to put aside USAID, I don't think, place in the best national security interests of the United States of America. And I hope over the next three years, President Trump will reconsider and give another chance again to a USAID that serves the best interests of America by being next to our friends in moments of need.