In October 2001 McGovern was appointed as the first UN global ambassador on world hunger by the World Food Programme, the agency he had helped found forty years earlier. He was still active in this goodwill ambassador position as of 2011 and remained in it until his death. McGovern was an honorary life member of the board of Friends of the World Food Program. McGovern also served as a senior policy advisor at Olsson Frank Weeda, a food and drug regulatory counseling law and lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., where he specialized on issues of food, nutrition, and agriculture.