 I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we are in McMoggy, which is the ancestral and unceded territory of the McMog people and that we are all treaty people. Secondly, I'd like to thank you all for coming out this evening to the first mini law of the year on this appropriately spooky theme of why franken foods need feminism. So my name is Angela Lee. I'm a Shulik fellow here this year, so I'm teaching a small group section of contract law two of my students have very kindly come out in support and I'll be teaching an upper year seminar on animal law in the winter session. I'm also a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, where I've also co-taught food law for the past two years there. And so my doctoral research proceeds at the intersection of technology, the environment, society, and various forms of justice. So this includes intergenerational justice, intergenerational justice, and interspecies justice. And in particular, I've been looking at these themes and these intersections in the context of the Canadian agri-food sector. So given the fact that food is a global issue, of course, there are a lot of broader concerns that are invoked when we're talking about food, but in order to narrow the scope of my project and also the scope of my presentation this evening, I'm going to be focusing my analysis on Canada. So to give you an overview of the material that I'm going to be covering in the course of my presentation, I'm first going to provide you with some background information and some context in which my research proceeds. I'm then going to address the question of what are franken foods? So what is it exactly that I'm talking about? And what are some concerns that are associated with these franken foods? The second logical question that flows from this based on my title is, well, why do these franken foods need feminism? Or what does feminism have to say about these franken foods? I'm then going to bring the law into the equation. So turning to questions of how these new food innovations are currently being governed in Canada and then also questions of what some gaps or deficiencies in the existing regulatory structures are. And then the final question that I'm going to address is, what does this analysis mean for the law going forward? So what does law and policy or what is or should be the role of policy in addressing some of these concerns that I highlight in relation to these new food innovations and what is or what should be the role of law and policy in bringing us toward a more just, ethical and sustainable food future? So essentially the overarching goal of my research is to offer a different and perhaps less taken for granted way of thinking about new food innovations as well as their relationship with the law in an effort to better evaluate whether or not they can contribute to the building of a more just, ethical and sustainable food system for everyone. So to start off with some context setting, we are currently facing a number of significant and interconnected problems. So for one, we're seeing an increasing global population. So the population of the world is estimated to swell to nearly 10 billion by the year 2050. At the same time, we're seeing increasing resource depletion and a growing impact of climate change. So this should not be news to most of you in this room. We're also seeing increasing rates of global hunger. So after a period of marked decline, we're seeing rates of hunger and food insecurity increase around the world and wealthy industrialized nations like Canada are not exempt from this. Rates of food insecurity are also increasing in Canada. And also, malnutrition is increasingly presenting not just as under nutrition and as hunger, but increasingly as over nutrition as well. So increasingly there are a growing number of people who are overweight and obese which presents public health burdens and challenges of its own. And then at the same time, we're also seeing a growing demand for animal products. So as the population grows and as countries become wealthier and industrialized, we are seeing a shift towards more Western styles of eating, which tend to include more animal products in their diets. However, it is important to note here that this demand for animal products is not necessarily proceeding evenly. So there are some countries like Canada for example where certain categories of animal products, so this includes things like red meat and fluid milk consumption, are decreasing. And partly this is due to growing consumer concerns about the environmental, the public health and the animal welfare related consequences associated with producing these products. There is a growing and cogent body of evidence that demonstrates the plethora of harms that are associated with industrial food production methods. So the Eat Lancet Commission Report that was released earlier this year is just one example of the scoring body of evidence. And the Eat Lancet Commission Report is the result of a multi-year study that brings together 37 experts from 16 different countries. So a group of very smart people have essentially come to the conclusion that food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on earth. So this is essentially a double-edged sword in some ways. So this means that if we do the right things in terms of food policies and so on, we can see significant dividends in terms of human health and environmental sustainability. On the other hand, if we continue down the status quo business as usual path, we will likely see these kinds of harms not only not be ameliorated but also continue to be exacerbated. And so this means that we need to see shifts both on the production and the consumption end of the spectrum. So on the production end, the Commission notes that global food production threatens climate stability and ecosystem resilience. It constitutes the single largest driver of environmental degradation and transgression of planetary boundaries. Taken together, the outcome is dire. A radical transformation of the global food system is urgently needed. So not really mincing words there. That's a pretty conclusive statement that we need to see a lot of changes on the production end of the spectrum. In terms of consumption, the Commission also notes that transformation to healthy diets by 2050 will require substantial dietary shifts. Global consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes will have to double and consumption of foods such as red meat and sugar will have to be reduced by more than 50%. A diet rich in plant-based foods and with fewer animal source foods confers both improved health and environmental benefits. So clearly there's a lot of work that needs to happen in this space both on the consumption and the production end of the spectrum. So this brings me to franken foods. So I'm essentially using the term franken food as a synonym for new food innovation. And this is a term that I've chosen specifically in part because I'm really interested in critical discourse analysis and the methods associated with looking at how discourse is deployed and used not only to convey and channel particular forms of meaning but also to legitimize them. So specifically when we're talking about these new kinds of food innovations the ways in which they're discussed and framed can significantly impact the ways that they are thought about and consequently the ways that they also happen to be regulated. So as you might be able to surmise the term franken food is something of a pejorative neologism a newly coined word or expression that was first developed by Professor Paul Lewis a professor of English and he was using this word in the context of mounting public concerns about genetically modified foods. So in the 1990s the flavor saver tomato was first kind of emerging on the market and consumers were expressing a number of different kinds of concerns about what this might portend for the global food system. And now several decades later we find that the public discourse or the public debate about genetically modified foods remains far from settled and indeed there are several different kinds of new and emerging food innovations that are further challenging and redefining the contours of the conversation. So in the past several decades there has been a shift in the way these things are thought about and talked about but generally there's been a lot of enthusiasm on the part of both the public and the private sectors about the potential of science and technology to really work us out of this mess that we find ourselves in. So I have two headlines here one is from the Atlantic in 2003 and one is from Wired Magazine more recently in 2016. So the Atlantic headline reads will franken food save the planet and the byline reads over the next half century genetic engineering could feed humanity and solve a raft of environmental ills if only environmentalists would let it. So essentially positioning the kind of people who have deeper concerns about these products as being somehow regressive in their thinking and not really allowing the full benefits of these products to emerge. And then the headline from Wired reads nerds over cattle have food technology will save the world. So once again we see this oppositional discourse so pitting nerds over cattle in this instance and then again this idea of how food technology has the potential to save the planet. So there are a number of different kinds of food innovation that have generated a lot of increased attention recently and the first one that I want to talk about is cellular agriculture. Cellular agriculture can be defined as a method of food production that turns on culturing cells or proteins directly rather than harvesting them from animals. And so using cellular agriculture methods we can produce both a cellular and cellular animal products. A cellular animal products are things like milk and eggs whereas cellular animal products are more conventional flesh foods. So to give you a better sense but still very simplified idea of how this process actually works it starts with taking starter cells from a live animal so no suffering or death is necessarily involved in this process and then these cells are combined with a growth medium. And then this cellular sludge so to speak is put on a scaffolding that helps bind the cells together and then the scaffold is put in a bioreactor which is stimulated using electrical or mechanical currents and much the same way that a human muscle will grow when stimulated via exercise the cells grow and expand in the bioreactor. And then at the end of the day you have something that at the cellular level is functionally equivalent to flesh that is produced through conventional agricultural methods. So this product in Beecher Meat goes by several different names you may have heard of it referred to in the academic literature or in the media as things like clean meat, cultured meat cellular meat, lab grown meat so I'm going to be using the term in Beecher Meat in the bulk of my presentation simply for simplicity's sake and this is a picture of the first in Beecher Meat burger this was served at an event in London of August of 2013 and many commentators noted that this essentially served as proof of concept so effectively establishing this as something that is feasible to further pursue on a commercial scale. So right now there are several dozens of labs and startups around the world that are working on research and development in this category of product and racing to make their products commercially available. That being said there are still a number of major practical barriers that remain. So one is scale, large scale tissue engineering is something that as of yet remains untested. Cost is also another major factor. So the first in Beecher Meat burger that we saw in the last slide reportedly cost about $330,000 to produce and it was only made possible through financial backing by Sergey Brin who is the co-founder of Google. And I think it probably goes without saying that $330,000 is a lot more than the average person is willing to pay for a single burger. So scientists and researchers do estimate that the cost has plummeted significantly since then and that by the time this product reaches the market they hope that the cost will be essentially at par or only a slightly more expensive than conventionally produced animal products but that's still something that requires a lot of work. Another major barrier is the use of animal products. So this is still something that remains a gray area. So the culture medium that is used can be derived from a number of different sources including non-animal based ones. However, currently the cheapest and most commonly used culture medium is fetal bovine serum which is a byproduct that is made from the blood of cow fetuses. And so currently the status of this kind of product is something that is animal suffering and animal harm free and therefore as something that is acceptable for vegan and vegetarian consumers is still something that remains contested. The other major barrier is consumer acceptability. So the results of some early consumer polls reveals that this isn't necessarily something that consumers are enthusiastic about and there are a number of grounds on which consumers reject this product. So these include things like concerns about the naturalness of this product, concerns about potential long-term health impacts associated with eating this kind of product. And so right now there's a lot of research that's going on in the marketing space as to how to present this product as something that's more palatable and acceptable to consumers which is a whole other issue that I will not get into. So MosaMeats is one of the companies that's working on bringing their product to market. This company is based in the Netherlands. Dr. Mark Post, the scientist who is responsible for creating the first lab grown burger he's associated with this company. And you can see the rhetoric that they use on their website. They talk about their product being better for the environment, being better for your health and better for animals. So it's really seen as a triple win situation. And indeed in terms of the host of justificatory benefits that are advanced by proponents of these kinds of products, the environment, human health and animal welfare are right up there. It's three of the major ones that are commonly invoked. Memphis Meats is another company that's at the vanguard in this sector. So they're based in the United States. Their company was launched in 2015. In 2016 they unveiled a cultured meatball prototype in 2017 they unveiled a cultured poultry prototype and Tyson, which is the largest meat producer in the U.S. invested in Memphis Meats in 2018. And you could see on their website how they also talk about how their product represents better meat for a better world. So it's better for your health, it's better for animals, it's better for the environment and so on. And it's not just land based mammals that have gone under the microscope, but there are also companies that are working on producing lab grown seafood and fish and other kinds of products in this space. So Finless Foods is one such company. And they also point out a number of advantages that are afforded by producing their products in this way, including the fact that they can produce fish without using mercury, plastic and other environmental contaminants. There's less hormones and antibiotics involved in this process. We can produce local seafood everywhere, reduced shipping and the emissions associated with shipping and so on. And then in terms of a cellular animal products, there are also a number of companies that are currently working on this. So Perfect Day is a company based in the United States that's working on developing what they call animal free dairy. So they essentially use a process that they analogize to craft brewing of beer. So they say that they start with yeast and then through this biotechnological process they're able to produce a product that is not a plant-based alternative to milk. It is actually milk. And again, they talk about how their product is dairy without the compromise. So it's delicious. It's nutritionally equivalent to real milk. It's more earth-friendly. It has a longer shelf life. It's more food safe and so on. And Clara Foods, just to give one last example, is another company that's working on producing a cellular animal products. And in particular, they're working on producing animal free eggs. So in terms of benefits, they talk about less waste, better performance, increased reliability, and enhanced versatility. And then in terms of their process, they make it sound really simple. So it starts with yeast and sugar, which are common ingredients that are found in everyday kitchens. And then it undergoes a process of fermentation. And then at the end of the day you have a protein product that is tailor-made for its purpose. So to talk now just briefly about the environmental advantages that can be afforded by producing food in this way. There's one preliminary study from 2011 that estimates in vitro meat to involve 7 to 45% less energy, 78 to 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82 to 96% lower water use. So you can see on this chart here we have the two axes being land use and energy use with the size of the bubble representing greenhouse gas emissions. And so this represents the environmental impacts of producing 1,000 kilograms of edible meat. So this large red circle is the environmental impact of producing 1,000 kilograms of edible beef via conventional methods, whereas this much smaller green circle that we have in the lower left is the estimated environmental impact of producing 1,000 kilograms of edible cultured meat. So this seems extremely promising. However, a more recent study published earlier this year found that given the energy requirements associated with in vitro meat production systems, replacing conventional agriculture with in vitro meat production methods could actually risk a long-term negative climate impact if this is something that happens before decarbonization. So in particular, in conventional agricultural production methods, especially when it comes to cattle, a lot of the greenhouse gases that are currently produced are methane. And under an in vitro meat production system, a lot of the emissions that would be produced are likely carbon. And the distinction to be made here is that although both are destructive greenhouse gases, carbon has a much longer half-life in the atmosphere than methane, which could be deeply problematic given the future of climate change. So while these early figures and claims are encouraging, it's important to remember that they're based on speculative and highly specific use scenarios. And as a result, it's oversimplistic to focus on these potential benefits in the abstract, divorced from current material conditions of production distribution and consumption. And there are a lot of assumptions that are being made about these technologies and their trajectories that need to be better drawn out. Because certainly as history shows, the history of industrial agriculture alone, there are often unpredictable, and counter-intuitive consequences of technologies that can manifest when they are actualized. And so this points to the need for a more holistic impact analysis in which all aspects of the life cycle of these different production methods are accounted for, both quantitative and qualitative. So this includes things like a consideration of the feed and other inputs that would be required, the land use requirements, the energy use and the source of this energy, the emissions that would be generated and the type of emissions, the water use and the source of this water, what the processing requirements would be, what kind of waste and other byproducts would be created, what this means in terms of tertiary products. So right now, the animal agriculture industry is currently a relatively cheap source of tertiary products associated with animal production that are used in industries like pharmaceutical and in the cosmetics industry. And so where would these kinds of byproducts come from? And then also questions about ancillary harms or benefits and then questions of where these will accrue. And it's important also to remember that we need to account for the secondary advantages or disadvantages of shifting toward different production systems. As the appropriate use of agricultural land by animals can actually offer environmental, economic and social benefits when managed responsibly. And in terms of some of the ancillary harms, this could include things like the increasing corporatization and concentration of power in the global food supply, growing disenfranchisement of small and medium scale enterprises, and also the increasing alienation of people from local and culturally specific food systems. So even while a hierarchically managed, corporately controlled and centrally planned global food chain allows for increased efficiency, lowered costs and greater predictability, this brings with it its own unique risks. So when it comes to animal welfare, even while these kinds of technologies pose as a solution, we cannot forget the fact that technologies have significantly contributed to and perpetuated the institutionalized suffering of the billions of animals that have been, are and will be farmed for food every year. So the next food innovation that I want to turn to talk about now is genetically engineered animals. And in particular I want to talk about the awkward vented salmon. The awkward vented salmon is the first genetically engineered animal to be approved for human consumption by regulators in both Canada and the United States. So in the United States the approval came down in 2015 and in Canada the approval followed in 2016. And so here we have the awkward vented salmon pictured in the background relative to an unmodified salmon of the same age in the foreground. And the awkward vented salmon is a transgenic salmon produced by a company called Aquabounty Technologies and it combines a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon and regulatory sequences of an antifreeze protein gene from a creature called the ocean pout with the genome of an Atlantic salmon. And so the result is a fish that is able to grow faster and year round and therefore reach market size sooner. So in 18 months rather than three years. In terms of the process, Aquabounty commercially produces sterile awkward vented salmon eggs out of research and development facility in Prince Edward Island and then transports these eggs to land based aquaculture facilities in Panama for commercial growth and processing. However the approval also permits Aquabounty to grow out the awkward vented salmon in Canada. So since the initial approval a hatchery in PEI has also been approved and the company has expressed interest in expanding production to other countries. So the fact that this fish is able to grow so much faster and year round and therefore be brought to market sooner is obviously a boon to the company that stands to profit but the company also makes a number of sustainability related claims. So the two main sustainability claims relate to conserving wild fish populations and reducing carbon emissions. So in terms of conserving wild fish populations because the awkward vented salmon grows to market size using 25% less feed than the traditional Atlantic salmon on the market today, Aquabounty observes that this makes an already efficient protein producer even better because it requires less wild fish to be converted into salmon feed. In terms of reducing carbon emissions the company notes that when farmed in facilities close to major metropolitan areas the awkward vented salmon will travel only a short distance to the consumer so this can reduce the emissions associated with transport. Now despite being granted the official stamp of approval there has been vocal opposition by environmental and food safety groups just to name a few to the decision to release the awkward vented salmon on the market. So there have been more than 60 grocery store chains that represent over 9000 locations across the US that have made commitments to their consumers to not sell the awkward vented salmon. So this includes stores like Safeway, Target, Trader Joe's Whole Foods and many others. And among other worries environmentalists argue that the awkward vented salmon poses an environmental risk to wild salmon populations especially given the lack of empirical data over the long term. So even though this is a fish that's produced in land based aquaculture facilities there is a risk of release and then cross breeding with wild fish populations which can have significant impacts in terms of biodiversity. So these concerns have actually risen to the form of a legal challenge. And in 2016 the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal that was brought by eco justice on behalf of the Ecology Action Centre and the Living Ocean Society against Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change Minister of Health and Awka Bounty Canada in respect of their decision to approve the awkward vented salmon. And so with this dismissal of the appeal the Federal Court ruling of December 23, 2015 stands and the Federal Court ruled that the Ministers of Environment and Health were correct to allow the production of the awkward vented salmon in Canada for commercial use and that they had arrived at a decision that was reasonable and made in the manner prescribed by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. In terms of the approval statement that was made by Health Canada it notes that in this case given that no health and safety concerns were identified there are no special labeling requirements for the awkward vented salmon. So when it comes to genetically modified food more broadly voluntary labeling is not something that's required although there is an optional standard that is permitted to provide consumers with information that is not related to the safety of the product. So mandatory genetically modified food labeling is an issue that has arisen in Parliament on a number of different occasions and most recently Bill C291 was labeled and voted down in the House of Commons in May of 2017 and so this Bill would have established mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods but would have left it to Health Canada to determine what constitutes a genetically modified food and also to determine when labeling is required as well as the form and manner of labeling. 67 MPs voted for the Bill with 216 voting against and it seems pretty obvious by looking at the party affiliations of the people who voted that this is a profoundly political issue. So for example all 74 conservative affiliated MPs voted against this act or this bill. So in terms of what the case for and against genetically modified labeling is one of the strongest arguments for genetically modified labeling is that it's a critical way to inform consumers about what it is that they're purchasing and consuming and that consumers have a right to this information and then in terms of arguments against genetically modified food labeling the arguments say that genetically modified food labeling will perpetuate a myth that these things are unhealthy or unsafe, they might be confusing to consumers, consumers have already been eating these things safely for years and so we don't necessarily need to introduce this at this stage of the game. However consumer surveys do tend to indicate that this is something that Canadians are strongly for. So a 2015 consumer poll that was conducted by the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network found that 88% of Canadians do want mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods and then when it comes to the occupant to salmon in particular the results of this poll found that 45% of Canadians say they would definitely not eat the genetically modified salmon. So in light of some of these concerns or anxieties that have been raised the House of Commons standing committee on agriculture and agri-food convened a special committee to look at this topic of genetically modified animals for human consumption and so they heard evidence and testimony from a number of different witnesses and then in 2016 they released a report with their recommendations and findings and so they made four primary recommendations and the third relates to labeling but they note that the recommendation is only for issues of food health and safety. So this isn't related to the labeling of genetically modified foods more broadly so clearly this is an area in which work still remains to be done and given the additional concerns that are raised when it comes to genetically modified animals, arguably this is a topic that demands urgent attention. So the third category of food innovation that I want to talk about in my presentation today is plant-based alternatives to animal products and so these kinds of products have been generating a lot of attention in recent years and of course things like veggie burgers and soy milk are nothing new people have been eating these for a very long time but it's only recently that we're seeing the very sophisticated versions of these products emerge on the market that we have seen in recent years and products like the impossible burger and the beyond burger are much more able to emulate the taste, texture cooking characteristics and other qualities of the conventional animal products that people already know and love and in terms of arguments that are made for these products the companies note that they have a comparable nutritional profile to the type of food that they're intending to replicate while also being better for the environment, better for your health and so on and demand for these products has really spiked in recent years which has caused tensions to Europe with industry actors and with lobby associations so there have been several different kinds of legal disputes that have emerged in Canada and the US and in a number of other countries as well. Now in Canada the food and drug regulations does contain definitions of products like meat and milk. So meat is defined as the edible part of the skeletal muscle of an animal that was healthy at the time of slaughter so on and so forth and milk is defined as the normal lactile secretion obtained from the mammary gland of the cow and these definitions raised some interesting questions about statutory interpretation because it seems fairly evident that at the time these definitions were drafted that people who were drafting them were not necessarily aware of the kinds of developments in terms of new food innovations that we would see emerging on the scene and so this raises questions about whether these existing frameworks need to be modified or whether entirely new frameworks need to be created and again this is also an urgent issue because these legal disputes and broader societal debates about nomenclature and whether these kinds of products should be defined by their origin or by their composition are more than just frivolous skirmishes over semantics because the law conserved to draw lines around how specific categories of food items are treated and thought about in the face of ontological ambiguity. The professed purposes of a narrow construction of these definitions are consumer protection but their function in reality seems more to be about preserving the existing state of affairs and protecting a certain set of interests and industry influence and regulatory capture have already been identified as significant problems in the agri-food sector. Canada's status is a major producer and exporter of pulses and plant-based foods also positions it uniquely because Canada stands to greatly benefit from the growing demand for plant-based products and as a result this is an opportunity that can be further developed in Canada to economic and social gain. Okay, so now that I've outlined these three new food innovations that I've looked at in my research so particularly cellular agriculture, genetically engineered animals and plant-based alternatives to animal products I'm now going to deal with the issue of why do they need feminism or what does feminism have to say about all this. So the theoretical framework that I draw on in my research is eco-feminism and in its simplest form eco-feminism can be defined as a political and philosophical movement that sees the oppression of women and the degradation of nature as closely linked. So eco-feminism points out that women are both heavily invested in preventing ecological damage and are also very vulnerable to it. So women have a unique perspective and a contribution to make in this space but their voices are often marginalized. Now since its inception in the 1970s and the 1980s eco-feminism has become a diverse movement that encompasses a range of different perspectives but the common thread among these strands is a recognition that solutions to ecological problems must be tied to social transformations including on gendered grounds and eco-feminism also reflects a commitment to exposing systemic and structural causes that underlie various forms of intersecting oppressions. Taking a feminist perspective on food reveals that there are profound systemic influences that determine why, what and how people eat the way that they do. And feminist scholars have already pointed out many of the gendered dimensions of food and agriculture. So for one, in most societies women remain disproportionately responsible for the responsibility of mental and manual labor that's associated with food provision. So this includes acquiring food preparing and serving meals and also taking care of children and making sure that children are adequately fed. Also women and girls are among the most vulnerable to hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. Women make crucial contributions in agriculture especially in poor and rural economies where the fight against hunger and food insecurity is the most pressing. So according to 2017 data that's compiled by the World Bank the percentage of female employment in agriculture is as high as 70% in low-income countries. And as a result gender equality has been proposed as a significant part of increasing food and nutritional security. Unfortunately although women perform the majority of food related work they control few resources and hold little decision making power in the food industry and in food policy and the accompanying ability to make or influence decisions that profoundly affect not only their lives but the lives of their families, their communities and indeed everyone around them. And women continue to face persistent constraints and obstacles in terms of accessing resources, markets and services in the agri-food sector. And so feminism is really salient here because gender affects both the questions we ask and the answers that we come up with to those questions. So for one how do we define and value food? If we're defining food and valuing it by its caloric value staple crops would come out on top. Especially culturally significant ones. But if we're defining and valuing food by its monetary value the niche or specialty goods like coffee would come out on top as well as goods that are generally exported to wealthy industrialized nations. Women also tend to be more concerned about factors like how much land preparation and weeding will be required by crops and how long crops take to cook. Whereas men are generally more concerned with factors like yield and with the value that they can gain from such crops. And so the extent to which these new food innovations really serve to further these goals of gender equality are highly suspect especially given the existing gendered concerns in the science and technology arenas. And even when we look at the current state of affairs virtually all of the farming tools and equipment that is available are commonly used in western industrialized nations are designed for men. Or an average user whose size, weight, strength and etc are heavily influenced by the average man. So in particular we can also point to gender dimensions of new food technologies and how these are understood and received. So research has established that there are notable differences in risk perception based on factors like gender race and socioeconomic position even accounting for differences in education and technical understanding. And so researchers have dubbed this the white male effect whereby white males may perceive less risks than others because they're more involved in creating, managing, controlling and benefiting from technologies and also more confident that they will have access to rights and remedies if something goes wrong. The results of consumer surveys also indicates that young white male and college educated individuals are more likely to react favorably to food biotechnology. And indeed when you look at the composition of the executive teams of many of these companies that I've referred to, they tend to reflect a specific demographic. So let's do that now. So here I have the CEO and the CSO of Mosa Meats. So the chief executive officer and the chief scientific officer of Mosa Meats. CEO and CSO of Memphis Meats. CEO and CSO of Finless Foods. CEO and CSO of Perfect Day Foods. CEO and CSO of Clara Foods. CEO and CSO of Clara Foods. And then the CEOs of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. And I think it's just a crazy coincidence that these two gentlemen have the same last name. But is there anything that you notice about all of these people? Right, so they're all men and indeed the majority of them do tend to be white men. And so if we are going to rely on agri-food technologies then it's arguably really important to broaden the perspectives of people that are working in this space. And funding is a huge factor here. So Money Where Our Bounds Are is a report that was released very recently. And it's the first ever study to document funding inequality for women in the agri-food tech industry. And this industry has enormous potential to impact critical issues from climate change to food insecurity. But the report found that while agri-food tech companies raised a record $16.9 billion globally in 2018 startups with at least one female founder represented only 16% of those deals and received just 5% of investments. Female founders received only 3% of investments and were involved in just 7% of deals. And today more than 82% of investment decision makers are male. And so there generally tends to be a structural bias against female founders and CEOs. So in this report there was a man that was explicitly quoted as saying when I'm making decisions about investment risk I tend to want to prefer people who remind me of me who look like me. And so obviously that tends to be men. And this is a problem because for one thing women are generally closer to the issues. So women make 85 to 90% of the purchasing decisions in their households. And women are also experts and leaders in the field focusing on improving livelihoods. And if the social case doesn't convince you there's also a business case to be made. So while women receive less capital than men, their businesses end up delivering far higher revenue and are faster growing. So as Sandra Harding has pointed out women should have an equal say in the design and administration of the institutions where knowledge is produced and distributed for reasons of social justice. But also as she observes the special and distorted understandings of ourselves and the world around us can be produced in a culture which systematically silences and devalues the voice of women. So ecofeminism is I think a really useful lens here because it emphasizes the role of dominant power structures in making technologies and their consequences not only possible but also framed as the most valuable and sometimes even as the only option to take. And such a narrow approach can have significantly detrimental effects for the environment and for society. Particularly because the promissory potentials of new food innovations often obscure the partial ways in which they are designed, deployed and regulated. So I want to turn now to law but first I need to say a couple of words about food systems. So food systems are enormously complex as you can see from this image because they can be understood as encompassing all of the activities and resources associated with food production and consumption. So this is everything from growing and harvesting food to processing and marketing it to consuming and ultimately disposing of and wasting it. And this complexity makes food something that's very difficult to govern effectively. But it is governed and so food is something that is a highly regulated environment and these new food innovations are emerging in a context that is highly regulated. Now under Canada's system of federalism there's also an inherent challenge in governing food because it's a nebulous subject matter that cuts across multiple and diffuse areas of concern. So all levels of government are essentially involved in governing and regulating food. So this is the federal government, provincial and territorial governments and also increasingly local and municipal governments as well. And not only each level of government but often multiple different acts, actors and agencies within the same level of government as well. So the upside to this complexity is that food law presents a lot of opportunities to look at things collaboratively in a multidisciplinary fashion. So there is space for multiple different voices at the table. The federal government has also recently shown much more of an interest in engaging in a more fulsome fashion with food law and policy. And this can be evidenced through a number of different initiatives that they've undertaken including the development of the first time of a national food policy for Canada as well as a revamp and an overhaul of Canada's food guide. And the food policy for Canada really focuses on four main pillars. So the first is increasing access to affordable food. The second is improving health and food safety. The third is conserving our soil, water and air. And then the fourth and final one is growing more high quality food. And in addition to initiatives that focus on these individual pillars, the food policy acknowledges more broadly that food systems have direct impacts on the lives of all Canadians, that food systems are interconnected and that food systems are integral to the well-being of communities across a number of different metrics. The food policy also acknowledges that around one million Canadian households are not able to access healthy food. That's almost two and three Canadian adults are overweight or obese. And that about one third of food that is produced in Canada is wasted. So there is an acknowledgement that there are these problems and that we need to be working in a more coherent fashion to try to solve them. When it comes to new food innovations, generally speaking, these have been dealt with in an extremely ad hoc and piecemeal fashion. So there's no dedicated regulatory framework to deal with the nuanced concerns that arise from these developments. So regulatory structures are among the most important influences in determining the course of technological innovation. So regulatory structures both guide and constrain their development and is also the basis upon which competing and sometimes directly conflicting concerns are mediated. The approach to regulating food innovations is country specific. So in Canada, the concept of novelty as specifically defined acts as the regulatory trigger. And so novel foods are defined in the conditions as a food that embodies one of three characteristics. So the first is a substance that does not have a history of safe use as a food. The second is a food manufactured, prepared, preserved or packaged by process that has not been previously applied to that food that causes the food to undergo a major change. And then the third category is a genetically modified food. And the regulation of novel foods falls under the shared federal mandate of Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The assessment of safety is conducted based on the submission of detailed scientific data by the companies that are producing the food product in question. And the evaluation of novel foods is broken down into nutritional, toxicology, allergenicity and chemical considerations. And notably, a consideration of the environmental or indirect human health aspect of the manufacture or import of novel foods remains a gap in their assessment. Health Canada is currently in the process of developing a regulatory framework for these aspects. But until then, information on potential environmental and indirect human health impacts of a novel food are required pursuant to the new substances notification regulations under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. So it's essentially trying to cobble together these two regulatory frameworks. And in respect of their approval decision of the Aquavanta Salmon, Health Canada explicitly notes that in order to protect the scientific integrity of the assessment process, socio-economic factors such as potential market reaction are not considered in the decision-making process with respect to novel products. And again, this is a problem because decisions made about risk, especially in the agri-food sector are not purely scientific, but instead are inherently political. So the question is not and should not be one of safety as narrowly construed, but instead about acceptability on much broader grounds and for differently situated groups. I also want to flag here the fact that different food innovations all have different risk profiles and so they should be thought of differently and treated differently at long. And looking at food regulation from a comparative perspective illustrates how there isn't necessarily one obviously right way to do things. So for example, genetically modified foods have been dealt with a lot more stringently in the European Union than they have been in the North American continent. In terms of in vitro meat there have also been some interesting developments across the border. So the United States announced last year that cultured meat products will be jointly regulated by the Food and Drug Association and by the US Department of Agriculture and so under their proposed system the FDA would oversee the process from the time cells are collected from animals through the culturing process and the USDA would take over when cells are harvested and turned into meat products for sale to consumers. In August of 2018 Missouri lawmakers also enacted a law that defines meat specifically as any edible portion of livestock or poultry carcass or part thereof and several other states have followed suit after Missouri and essentially this means that producers of plant-based alternatives to animal products for example will be in breach of that law if they label their product as meat as opposed to some other name. And so in thinking about these developments it's important that Canada does not simply take the easy way out and adopt the approach that's been taken by the US but instead use this fork in the road as an opportunity to reflect more thoughtfully on regulatory intent and design and this is something that's needed at the earliest possible stages because once policies are locked in they can create path dependencies, administrative bias and self-reinforcing incentives. So hopefully I've highlighted the fact that the current regulatory structure that governs food innovations has some serious deficiencies that need to be better addressed and in particular the regulatory framework is inadequate in terms of addressing the broader impacts that are associated with these kinds of products. So there's no systematic analysis of environmental and indirect human health impacts especially over the long term and there's also a concerning lack of transparency lack of requirements for independent or third-party data and also a lack of consultation. In thinking about regulation it's important to consider also not only what these technologies and the ways that they are regulated promise or what they claim to do but also that the alternatives that they might be foreclosing or stymying. So myopic understandings of innovation and transformation also pose the risk of diverting time, attention and resources from simpler solutions to these vexing underlying problems that may have potentially fewer systemic implications. So in other words putting all of our eggs in the basket of technological innovation underestimates the possibility that these innovations may happen too little, too late or not at all. And these kinds of developments also underestimate or even overlook altogether consumption side efforts. So there are a lot of policy adjustments that could be made to help shift diets for sustainability so this includes even simple things like incentives for Meatless Monday or even just to simply reduce the consumption of animal products. Public procurement policies also could be levied to make some significant impacts in this area and then of course we have the issue of food waste. So there was a report that was released at the beginning of this year that estimates that nearly 60% of the food produced in Canada alone to be lost and wasted annually. So making substantial reductions in this area has been identified as essential for the global food system to stay within a safe operating space. So the question is not just about producing more food or how to produce food more efficiently, but how we can act more responsibly with the food that we're already producing. So what does all of this mean for the law going forward? Acknowledging these myriad connections between the agri-food sector, between technology and between broader goals relating to the environment and society has huge implications for numerous areas of law. So this includes things like business practices, tax and other incentive structures, trade law and IP law just to name a few. And while there is an appeal in rushing to embrace technological fixes for complex problems such an approach fails to engage more thoughtfully with the structural and systemic barriers that may be precluding more meaningful change. So taking a feminist perspective reveals that no matter which pathway we choose there will be trade-offs that have to be made. And these trade-offs do not affect everyone equally. And so we need to be asking questions like who are these technologies for and who will be harmed. So for example while in vitro meat production systems may offer environmental, ethical and human health advantages they may also serve to disadvantage those groups who rely on animal agriculture and tertiary industries for their livelihoods. And so in this sense strictly technical evaluations of new food innovations are conspicuously incomplete. So given the current state of affairs there are a couple of major changes that I think need to be made. So the first is more participatory governance. So by involving all relevant stakeholders the challenges and co-benefits of various approaches can be better identified. And certainly in advocating for a more feminist approach this is not to say that a less male influence system would necessarily be better but it does point out that it would be different and that these differences are important to consider. There's also a need for greater transparency in the regulatory process. And in thinking about how we might affect these kinds of changes we can draw a lot of value from looking at different paradigms. So these different paradigms might move us away from this western development paradigm that generates economic wealth for developers at the expense of nature, at the expense of women and at the expense of other marginalized groups who are left to bear the hidden and unaccounted forecasts. So food sovereignty is a paradigm that we can draw on here and food sovereignty is a concept that was defined by Levia Campesina which is a global peasant collective in 1997 as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and the right to define their food and agriculture systems. So there are a couple of main pillars to this idea of food sovereignty. This includes the notion that food is more than just a commodity. So food is something that is sacred. Food sovereignty also points to the need to value food providers. Food sovereignty also points to the significance of local and locally controlled food systems. Food sovereignty also advocates for working with nature. So this includes through a rejection of energy intensive, monocultural, industrialized and destructive food production methods. And under a food sovereignty paradigm we would also promote knowledge and skills that allow people to become better connected with the food that we all require to sustain us. Agroecology is also something that can offer significant benefits. So agroecology takes a more holistic and ecological approach to the design and management of agricultural production systems. And it has generated a lot of attention in recent years, including by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. But as the FAO has pointed out, to harness the multiple benefits arising from agroecology, an enabling environment is required, including adapted policies, public investments, institutions and research priorities. So how might we better cultivate those kinds of things to promote agroecology as opposed to these kinds of technological fixes that I've been talking about. And then finally there's also significant value in drawing on indigenous legal orders and traditions as alternative ways of knowing, seeing and relating to the world. So many indigenous traditions really value active participation in landed food systems and also cultivate a more relational approach to food. So understanding land, water and all living things not merely as resources but as relatives to be taken care of. So in thinking about how we can build a more just, sustainable and ethical food system, I argue that we need to go beyond technological solutionism alone. Tackling existing and identified leakage points like food waste and getting at the underlying issues have a significant role to play in developing solutions in the space. The broader environmental, social, economic and ethical consequences of our food choices also need to be better acknowledged because it is only through acknowledging the full scope of the problems and the responsibilities that they engender that we can better set the goals worth striving for and think about the tools that we can use to get there. So I want to emphasize the fact that I'm not opposed to technology outright but I'm instead arguing that it demands much more careful and context specific implementation that focuses not on the technology itself or on its promissory potential but on the needs that technology is meant to address. Tempered by an awareness of the underlying assumptions and the limitations of technological solutions within a particular circumstance. So in this respect, critical legal perspectives including those informed by theories like feminism can help advance a more deliberate appraisal of the relative costs and benefits of new and emerging technologies which are both subjects and drivers of the evolution of law. So the simultaneously regulated products and also a means of engendering new laws and legislative understandings. So food is a source of nourishment but it is also a site of struggle and my hope is that my work in this space can play some small part in influencing the substance and direction of formal food laws and policies and informal social norms such that they more sensitively consider the plight of the animals we eat, the lives of the people who care for and about them and the treatment of the earth on which we all depend because in striving for a more just, ethical and sustainable world, we should settle for nothing less. Thank you so much for your attention and I'm happy to take any questions at this time. And if there are no questions at all, we have one back. I was just wondering if you read Caroline Adam's work on the sexual politics and the pornography of the animals? Yes, I'm very familiar with the one. But I just lose my introduction to the issues that you have as an ego of this and that it's definitely a software presentation of the trine vegetarian festival. Yes, so I am very familiar with Carol Adam's work. I've drawn on it significantly in my research. And when it comes to categories of food like in vitramid, for example, Adams would likely argue that this doesn't necessarily move us away from seeing animals as absent reference, so to speak. So this might actually contribute to this problematic conception we have of animals as simply things for us to eat to beings that have worth and have merit in their own respects. And so while I don't necessarily agree with Adam's position in terms of radical vegetarianism or veganism, I don't want to put forth the notion that everyone needs to go vegan in order for us to have a sustainable food future. I do think that she has a lot of valuable insights that we can draw on in thinking about these kinds of issues. Yes. I have been that same vein in what is your take I guess on using the term feminism in relation to food choices when you're looking at things like cellular agriculture I believe you said was drawn from calves that that so when you consider that it's predominantly female animals that are disproportionately exploited for food choices for food choices how can is that exempt I guess from your idea of feminism? Sorry, it's what exempt? Well, it's predominantly female animals that are exploited for our food choices. That's a lot of what Carol's work talks about you should check it out in the second poll that's being done by Carol J. Adams. I guess it's just kind of a curiosity question or your take on that that is feminism both sides of the realm of speciesism? Are you talking about feminism certainly or are you talking about feminism to extend into to animals? When you look at pens that are the only ones that could exist female cows are the only ones that could eat milk and now when we discuss the proteins they have to be pregnant in order to have cows and so feminism in my opinion is the liberation or the equality at least of women and I guess my question is in your opinion is it strictly for human species or does it extend beyond that? Right, so that whole argument the issue that vegetarianism is not a gender neutral issue that is an argument that I am familiar with it's something that I've discussed in my own work I've written a paper called the milk maids tale veganism feminism and dystopian food futures in which I delve into those issues in a lot more depth however for my part although I recognize that certainly there is a disproportionate burden when it comes to female animals who are exploited for human consumption I don't necessarily think that it flows from that that everyone needs to become vegetarian or that if you are not vegetarian it means you're not a feminist there's a little bit more nuance that needs to be brought to the conversation partly I think the challenge is the fact that a lot of these conversations are taking place in very different contexts so obviously we're operating in the context of a wealthy western industrialized nation in which we do generally tend to have a lot more choice available to us in terms of the kinds of foods that we eat or don't eat and so in that respect I think that people who are educated in a position of privilege do have more of a responsibility to make food choices that do not cause harm and yet at the same time I think that we want to avoid imposing kind of cultural imperialism on other groups or make other groups pay for the kind of missteps that have been made by a legal by an economic by a cultural system that has generated the vast harms associated with industrial animal agriculture yes and do you think that should animal law progress to the point where animals or pets no longer can have property but have more of a responsibility that will have an effect on how we develop food? Right so this whole idea of the evolving legal status of animals is something that I certainly think is interesting I think that there have been a lot of significant strides made in that space in recent years however I also think that it's interesting how when people think about animals or when people think about the kinds of rights that should be afforded to animals there's often a kind of hierarchical thinking that takes place so often people are much more willing to extend these rights to animals like chimpanzees who they see as being very similar to us or to companion animals or to other charismatic animals that they see as somehow being worth saving and then when it comes to animals that are farmed for food there often isn't that same kind of thinking that is extended in terms of their moral status and so particularly when it comes to food I think that there is a lot more work that needs to be done in really redefining our relationship to animals and how we think about them not just as food or for things to be eaten but also as sentient beings that have value in their own right Yes Right so that's a really muddy issue so for one the whole fish and seafood industry has been found to be rife with food fraud so even when you do get a fish that you think is something often you're not getting the species of fish that you think you're getting so right now there's currently a lot of work that's being done in that space to try to enhance and increase traceability of fish to make sure that you are getting what you're getting but because there is no mandatory labeling requirement there are a lot of people who have consumed the aquaventure salmon without even knowing that they've been consuming the aquaventure salmon which is obviously something that is concerning especially because many people still several years after the approval are not even aware that this is something that was approved and therefore are not even aware that it's something that they need to be cognizant of when they're shopping for salmon at the grocery store Yes Ok so we'll actually call our officials for bringing the feminists that mentioned to GM and because actually I'm also doing a gender dimension in the attractive sectors that usually women are the people who suffer the most and the benefits less from the attractive and personless in African context and my only part is the fact that actually it's because of our irresponsibilities that we have to resolve to GM to supplement our food that but it's said that in the news that passed in Africa plastics were used to make eggs eggs were made out of plastics and it was said whether the research came out like that so my concern actually is the fact that this is towards sustainability like in the African context usually we do not have a technical know how to do this modified foods and then so it means that if we would have to achieve the sustainability goals we have to import them and so because we are able to afford it we are more likely to receive less supplemented GM foods and so I'm just going to say about how it is going to impact on our health right and that leads to a really significant point about when people talk about these kinds of developments they often aren't talking about the broader ripple effects that will be associated with this so in thinking about where these kinds of products will be grown who will grow them and who will derive the benefits it is really important to think about the impact between developed or developing world so to speak and between wealthy countries and between less wealthy ones so even when we look at the structure of the industrial food system today we see still that are monocropping soy and that are producing beef purely for export to wealthy industrialized nations and this is causing disproportionate environmental impacts for them to bear so it's almost a double burden in some ways and so I think that these are really significant concerns that need to be brought to the attention of people that are thinking about these issues so that they're not too narrowly focused on oh what might be the potential environmental impact relative to isolated production systems in a wealthy country but what might be the potential impact associated with that yes Zade so I guess since this food technology is such a big area I'm just wondering if you see a way to incorporate indigenous and more traditional knowledge into that it's easier for the public to bring in non-traditional and marginalized perspectives into the industry right absolutely so I think part of the problem is really in thinking about these terms so when people are thinking about technology and they're thinking about innovation they're often thinking about these large scale disruptive innovations that really have the potential to make a radically new way of thinking about food and so on but technology can often be something much different than that so it can be different configurations of existing tools and so I think that there is real value in drawing on indigenous traditional knowledge and other kinds of perspectives that's why I think it's really important to increase the dialogue in the space and ensure that a variety of different voices and perspectives are heard because certainly in these kinds of conversations I don't necessarily think that the omission of these kinds of considerations is necessarily malicious or it comes from a bad place I think sometimes it's just because there wasn't a voice at the table to say why don't we think about it this way or what about this concern what about this potential benefit that might accrue we do need to have an expansion of voices and perspectives at the table so that we can think more holistically about the challenges and about the potential solutions any other questions I just have one other question yes so there currently are legal issues I don't know about in Canada but in the states both labeling using the word meat so but not so much so then again to bring back to Canada I guess that with this kind of resistance to label modified genetically modified foods has there been a definition change this definition now fluid of what is meat and what is genetically modified food why is one acceptable to be labeled and one not acceptable to be labeled right so this is also a political issue so in Canada several commentators have noted that Canada has a strong interest in the uptake of biotechnology for economic reasons and so as a result when we're thinking about things like genetic modification institutions may not necessarily be opposed to genetic modification however when we're talking about plant based alternatives to animal products that present a significant threat to industries that have traditionally held sort of a monopoly in the space then obviously there are different interests that are butting up against each other and so when it comes to the kind of disputes that are arising over whether you know cashew cheeses can be labeled as cheese often that has a lot more to do with politics than it actually has to do with questions relating to health or safety or nutritional concerns and things like that so the really the driving factor really right by my estimation yes in the definition that you showed it said that the animal is healthy at the time of slaughter so clearly they don't care why is healthy and are the animals healthy right so again this points to the fact that these definitions are really invoked to support the interests of particular kinds of industries and as to how healthy is defined that's really left to the interpretation of the people who are applying it so there are significant questions that can be raised about whether animals that are produced in an industrial factory farming system are healthy and yet because it's the skeletal muscle that comes from them that really seems to be the more important variable there yes I'm wondering if you agree that the current political system seems to be more concerned about private business interests and supporting them but protecting the rights of the consumers and there are information to choose if it's healthy right so do I agree with that position you say that this is more yes in my position I do think that private economic interests have been allowed to outweigh the broader public interest and so this is a situation that I find to be extremely concerning especially given the fact that we're facing this ecological crisis given the fact that people are facing a number of different ill health impacts associated with eating cheap unhealthy processed food and so I think that this moment where we're seeing all these new technological innovations emerging on the marketplace is a real opportunity for different perspectives to interrupt that established way of thinking and demand change any final questions or comments alright well thank you all so much for coming and have a good evening