 So that's all of the run up to this and let me just say a few words briefly about our keynote speaker Michael Roberts this afternoon. I won't give you his full bio, you could find that on the website, but I did want to say a few words about why I'm so excited about why Michael is here for today. So Michael, as many of you will well know, is a real pioneer in the field of food law and policy, not only in the US, but around the world, and we're just thrilled that he's here to give us his insight and to share his perspective on both this emerging field in the Canadian context and what has been going on elsewhere and some of the history there. So Michael is the founding director, executive director of the new Resnick Food, Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. I think a new policy institute that's going to be a real model for many of those of us who are interested in thinking about how to build that kind of institutional capacity elsewhere. And Michael has an immense depth of experience as you'll be able to tell from his bio or well know already. As a food law researcher, a writer, he's an author of several books. As a teacher, a practitioner, advisor, it's hard to imagine something that Michael hasn't done or been involved in in the field of food law and policy and so I think it's so crucial for us as we're thinking forward about building this discipline in Canada. We have some crucial questions ahead of us, right? Which perspectives and values to include? Which ideas and interests are likely to get privileged? Others that are likely to get more marginalized? How do we wade through these things, these issues, these questions going forward as we think about what the best way to build up this as either a field, a discipline or a connected subject matter in Canada and linked to what's going on elsewhere? We rarely, I think, have an opportunity to make those kinds of choices when we think about defining a field and this is a pretty exciting opportunity to do that. Okay, so I probably said too much already, you're really here to hear Michael and I'll turn things over to him. Let's give him a big round of applause to start out. Thanks very much. Thank you, Jamie, for that very generous introduction. It's good to be here. It's a little colder here than I'm accustomed to at UCLA. I was amazed to show up at the airport seeing people wear shorts. I thought it's a lot colder here than I'm used to wearing shorts. In Los Angeles when it dips below 70 degrees you see the scarves and the coats come out because we like to change our clothing once in a while. I'm also grateful to be here because I'm looking for a job just in case he who shall not be named is voted president in three days. So let me know if you know of anything. But we'll keep our fingers crossed. I broke the first cardinal rule of not injecting politics in the first few minutes of your talk, but so it is. If I can perhaps indicate the excitement around food law by just telling you what's going on in the last 30 days of my life. A couple of weeks ago I went to Beijing, China. We had a workshop there that I participated in and a series of projects that our program at UCLA has been involved in over the last year. I've actually been teaching food law in China now for almost a decade at Reming University Law School which is China's top-ranked law school. They now have a food law program. Shanghai, there's a law school in Shanghai. It's a smaller law school but part of a major national university, East China University of Science and Technology. They have a food law program and there are students who are actually graduating now with an emphasis in food law. When I first started teaching in China I had maybe a dozen students attend the course. They were curious to see to learn a little bit to better their English. Now there's over 200 students that attend these courses because they're really interested and concerned about their food supply. Starting with food safety for good reason but then moving to other issues that have been discussed yesterday in today's conference. Then after returning from China, literally two days later, we had our third annual UCLA Harvard Food Law Conference in Los Angeles at our law school. Harvard Food Law Lab started shortly after we started our program at UCLA and this is our third annual conference. We have a memorandum of understanding. We work together on various projects kind of a bi-coastal exchange. This conference we addressed the regulation of food marketing to children and had a robust discussion among scientists. We had a science panel, a law panel addressing interesting constitutional issues of free speech and then that followed a policy panel and our strong belief is that this intersectional or interdisciplinary approach of science, law and policies the right course to take. Then I headed up to San Francisco a few days later for a food and addiction conference that held at the University of California San Francisco Medical School where there's a lot of research going on with respect to food addiction specifically on sugar. That led to an interview with a newspaper and an article that I co-authored literally less than eight hours with the help of my fellow on this scandal at Harvard University that's been reported in the newspapers where researchers were paid off years ago to redirect attention from sugar to fat and it's been a really interesting development to watch. As you know we have a rich heritage in the U.S. on class action litigation. We're always thinking in those terms and so the question was posed as whether or not this scandal could lead to further lawsuits against the sugary beverage industry. I then leave in two weeks to Italy to where I've been teaching for a number of years at the University of Tusha which is in Bertarrable just outside of Rome and this conference is a commemoration of a European food law treatise that's been put together that I contributed a chapter. Food law in Italy in other areas of Europe is really taking off and it's interesting to watch. I lectured in Milan University last year twice actually. So this is just a sample. It's a really busy 30 days and here I am in Canada and what you're doing here is marvelous and it's part so I wanted to convey to you at least at the beginning that you're part of a larger movement. This is a global movement of revolving around food law and policy and it's really, really fun to watch. There was a program that just started in Milan called the Italian Food Law and Policy Center and I met them recently in New York and I asked them you have the same name that we have at UCLA. I said what was your thinking and the director said well I heard you speak in Spain a couple years ago and I just liked your name so we ended up using it. So I don't mind that. If you want to set up a food law and policy center here that's perfectly okay with me but I thought falling into food law has been an interesting journey for me and I thought I'd personalize it for just a minute because as Jamie mentioned I am a little bit of a pioneer but it's largely by accident and then just pure stubbornness and sort of staying the course but I I've been in food law both as an academic and as a practitioner now for about 16 years and some at the start I was sitting in my law office bored to death actually to tell you the truth and I knew I needed to change my career and I picked up an article and read in the Harvard Business Journal about the future of food. I had grown up on a small farm my father was a produce broker and I thought this is interesting this is what I want to do and so I ended up making a long story short navigating my way into food law and I remember the president of my law firm who thought I had lost it and even offered me professional counseling when I told him that I was entering into this field said to me Michael what are you doing agriculture and food are dead nobody talks about it anymore he called me about three or four years ago and said how did you know every time I pick up a newspaper there's an article about food my response was so sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart I had no idea that what I was entered into would someday be a movement but nevertheless I I've made my way into a favorable position at UCLA and last year or this year actually published a food law treat us the first if it's kind food law in the United States is a copy of it out on the table with a nifty flyer if you're interested but one of the questions that I've asked myself many many times is what is food law what is food law and policy in fact when I taught the first food law and policy class in Arkansas Fayetteville Arkansas where I was on the law faculty where Bill and Hillary Clinton used to teach I remember staying up all night long worried that a student would ask me well professor what is food law and policy because I really wasn't sure and and we began teaching and experimenting and thinking about this this field and what it means and what it's all about and it has led to some interesting dimensions and it's also occurred to me recently I'm very excited that I'll be teaching a class in the spring on the history of food law even going back before the United States and and looking at the past of food law all the way back to Judaic code which is a really interesting set of laws and regulations albeit they're part of a religious code regulating food in a really interesting way and then even to the middle ages where we we talk about some tree laws that regulated class food class class divisions via food regulation and even to later on in the middle ages where we regulated the quality of food concerned about food fraud and economic adulteration as we call it today and then of course to into the industrial revolution which led to producing food in some interesting and unique ways that have led to this modern food system and so the history of food law is sometimes longer than we think it is and I think that's very very interesting to think about in fact in the United States we usually benchmark the first of two modern federal food laws in 1906 which is when we first had the federal peer food and drug act and then the the Food Federal Meat Inspection Act on the same year now at that time food fraud was rampant and it was led largely by a man named Upton Sinclair who wrote the book Jungle and I know that many of you have read that book either by design or against your free will while you were in school but it's a fascinating book and Upton Sinclair is very famous for saying I aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit it in the stomach and at that time it created a real outcry amongst the public about the conditions in the meat factories particularly in Chicago but it's it's interesting to to to read back at that time and there's a lot of echoes at that time in the 19th century we had a changing agrarian system sound familiar and there were concerns over this this adulteration and food actually reflected larger societal issues about trust and changing moral codes there was concern and it was there's quite a bit written about it about this disconnect between consumers and producers again sound familiar Karen Halton who is a cultural historian noted this distancing shift a crisis of authenticity and confidence and purity became the the byword and there were a number of legal milestones even prior to the 1906 act and I illustrate these to you just by way of reference that we're trying to figure this out and there were a number of different acts and bills that were proposed but this idea of purity this idea of connection and and and how it finally led to the 1906 law is really really interesting there was a great quote in reference to the paddock bill in 1892 by senator paddock himself the devil has got hold of the food supply of this country and it sounds a little odd in its reference to the devil but it's something that probably many a spouse as well today it's also interesting to see who was involved in cleaning up the food supply but the good housekeeping magazine was very much involved in this in this cleaning up of the food supply system in the early 20th century the housewife housewives alliance I love this slide demands proper inspection of meat now this sounds like something that Michael pollen lifted from their banner eat no eat no meat buy no meat eat fresh vegetables so it's a really sometimes we think we're starting something new when in fact there's an interesting patterns that are at hand but the legacy of these acts that it changed forever the traditional constitutional understanding in the United States at least that public uh health and safety was the province of the states and that was really a very very important development what was also interesting about that act again another echo was that it actually had the support of businesses why well trade was at stake no different than the passage in the United States a few years ago of the food safety modernization act known as fisma the business community was in support remarkably bipartisan support in the obama administration for a major act again why trade is a trade was at stake and it also illustrates a consumer political force what we think about food as consumers has a role in moving forward political movements in food and finally what I think is really interesting is the role of literature there is a great deal of writing that goes on in food every from from up to Sinclair to writing that was occurring during the passage of the 1938 act in the United States as well as more recently global writers such as Michael pollen mark bitman from the new york times and others what I also think is really interesting are these moralistic tendencies that seep into food law and I know this probably drives people like Michael ton bomb crazy who spoke earlier in the animal law conference but it's really interesting to think about this in terms of contextualizing law and its role but pure what is the word pure mean well it's the absence of bad stuff but it also has an older meaning as is noted by wiley who is a great leader in this movement to the house committee and you can read that for yourself on the screen but one of the questions that it raises is this is this assertion of moral values does it lead to an oversimplification of complex issues and unrealistic expectations and that's why I go back to the judaic code which I think is really interesting in terms of looking at the past where the jewish dietary laws have often were thought about being about hygiene and purity and mary douglas the great anthropologist who's noted for her work on purity and danger noted that that the food taboos not accounted for by medicine or science in other words that this purity concept was about setting a people apart and it had something to do with cultural aspirations and and creating a unity within a group it's interesting to note that kosher itself is the second fastest growing label in the united states gluten free is number one speaking of which looking at the moral implications of more of purity and the gluten lie which is a book written by alan labenevitz a book that i disagree with on many many accounts but he does at least frame an interesting question and that is why people put moral and religious lenses on food terminology reducing issues to scientific and the scientific and moral tension but what we have here is is regardless of how we think about the history and how it's developed which is all really interesting and i wish i could have more time to talk to you about it but we have a food movement and and this food movement was articulated by michael pollin and i think it's interesting to note what he states it would be a mistake to conclude that the food movements agenda can be reduced to a set of laws policies and regulations important as these may be the food movement is about community identity pleasure most notably about carving out a new social and economic space remove the influence of big corporations on the one side and government on the other and i would add to michael that's also about food justice equity and looking at ways of bringing everyone in the community together so we have new norms as i mentioned in my treatise in essence the food movement has set out to foster new norms for civil society and this these new norms are what are leading to interesting laws and regulations that are then developed in order to meet these norms and certainly there has been no shortage of news articles these are all from the US and i know that you've seen the same sort of headline stories here in Canada as well as food litigation issues and headlines of obesity and nutrition and finally food equity and access and not to leave out climate change and environment urban agriculture sounds a little messy doesn't it laurence freedman who is a law professor at stanford university has written a book on the history of american law and it was actually in reading this book that it really became clear to me as to what is food law in place in its place in modern law when he wrote that modern law mirror society moves with its time so that it is always new and it and and to me food law and policy is the adaptation of law to modern food systems into consumers it provides its new it's provocative and it and this adaptation requires new rules and fresh ideas it also leads to controversies because the modern food system in the interest of consumers and others are not always in sync in other words the goal is not always definitive so we have a number of device of issues to name a few gmo labeling backyard chickens sugar added beverages the word natural which has led to hundreds of class action lawsuits in california and elsewhere in the united states so going now to the beginning which is where we always just start as lawyers or people who think about law what is the definition of food law well this is how i define it now that i've thought about it over the years i come up with a very sophisticated definition a little bit of this and a little bit of that i say this because food law is multi doctrinal i always ask my students at ucla in in the class that i teach it's an introduction of food law and policy course and by the way to illustrate again this great growth three years ago ten students today 45 students and and these students are not all going to become food law lawyers i tell them i want you to become good food citizens and good leaders in your food communities because they're all going to be eaters many of them will have children who eat and many of them will have friends and family who eat and so we're all in the same boat so to speak but i always tell my students you take any class you have at law school and my students write papers in class and and and it allows them to focus on an area where they have an interest you take any class in law school and we'll find a connection to food and if you look at this list it covers about most if not all the classes you might see in a law school curriculum and all these pieces are found in food law administrative law international law of course trade who's heard of kodak's alameteria's commission the f a o the world trade organization and all of the many complex rules around the sps agreement and the tbt agreements uh environmental law a big part of food law when we talk about environmental issues from from water to air to to the soil health law another obvious link when we deal with issues of of obesity and malnutrition torts again litigation is on the rise in many ways with food law in addition to labeling also safety constitutional law first amendment issues uh issues of intellectual property are really big in food law when we deal with geographical indicators for example which divides which goes goes back to international law when we deal with the differences between europe and the united states um real property when we deal with urban agricultural issues real property becomes an issue when we deal with zoning issues water law you can't have food without water becomes really important uh based on what i saw yesterday you seem to have a lot of water here in la that's a big issue uh and so uh these are difficult issues to sometimes address animal law uh which is always a really interesting intersectional point with food law and then finally civil rights on our board we have a one of the leaders in los angeles on our board for our program at ucla uh we had an outside advisory board we have a leader in the civil rights movement in los angeles who's very interested in food equity and so it's something we think about a lot so when we frame food law with all of these pieces this multi doctrinal approach there's a lot of different ways to organize food law and one way of framing it is through topical phases that provides a historical framework and this accepts freedman's notion that that modern law adapts to social change and and so uh that's what i elected to do for example in the treatise and the way i teach is that every each and each of these phases evolves in response to problems and challenges they're sequential and cumulative so they build on each other but they're also distinctive so the first phase is commerce uh food is core to commercial activity and has been for a long long time the earliest laws as i referenced earlier or previously were intended to preserve the integrity of food and to promote trade uh food fraud as we call it in today's parlance at least in the united states economically motivated adulteration is a big part of this as well as trade we then move to safety now bacteria has had a relationship to food really that got started in the late 19th century and many of these problems of food safety have to do with discoveries and inventions that increase the complexity of food what is food and and one of the funnest things we do in our class is try to define food if you look at the definition at least in the us fda they define food by calling it food a very uh very interesting definition but they also include a second prong to that definition chewing gum now why would chewing gum be called out as food well at that time in congress there was a great debate about whether confectionaries were food and so you take the lowest form of confectionaries which is chewing gum you insert it in the food you make a statement that candy is food so what we think about food and the composition of food uh is is really interesting and it can become more complex today we've moved on beyond beyond candy haven't we we're into second generation of gmo's and nanotechnology which could it will will make gmo pale by comparison in terms of what it can do to the composition of food uh earlier that was mentioned in the in the previous session uh on beyond meat uh a a a plant based meat a substitute for meat that taste and looks like meat uh the CEO of the company recently came to my class and talked about this journey he's had uh in in in introducing this vegan vegan based product is a meat substitute but all of these issues uh increase the complexities of regulating the safety of food uh marketing which is both the labeling and the advertising the the marketing of food uh is really astonishing and it's remarkable how much legal work this is generated for lawyers at least in the united states and worldwide um but it also it's it's the rise of the brand name i've often said that in the world of food there the laws are made by people who have power we all know that right that's an obvious statement and i asked the question who has power in food well having grown up on a farm i can tell you that farmers have never had any power at all the manufacturers have had power for a number of years but there's a shift that's occurring at least in the united states it's really really interesting and that's the rise of the retailer there's a consolidation in retail around the world that's fascinating to watch so we're not competing so much on price anymore we're competing on value and so you see retailers now engaging in private contracts through the supply chain that are regulating food and even the treatment of animals in ways that we never could foresee and it's a fascinating development and one that evokes a number of interesting legal questions and legal issues that are really now contractual in nature rather than regulatory nature which which uh which raises a completely different dynamic in the regulation of food in the world the fourth area uh my counting that correctly yes nutrition which really got its rise in the 1960s and it involves the regulation of dietary supplements a very big industry and a very interesting industry to nutrition labeling to legal responses to malnutrition and obesity and it it calls into play a number of policies and initiatives and a very complicated debate about personal responsibility and regulatory action and in in the united states in new york for example the portion size of soda was a really hot issue in new york city a few years ago and and the law that was passed by the city was by mayor bloomberg was actually struck down by the new york the highest court in new york and and menu labeling and the taxing of junk food and and all of these issues evoked this debate about personal responsibility some years ago there was litigation in a very interesting case pelman versus mcdonald's and at the plaintiff was a young african amel living in york city and the lawsuit was brought in his name pelman and a number of other children were added as part as part were attempted to be added as part of the class the lawsuit was brought against mcdonald's for causing their obesity now my students are now are too young to remember this case but at the time it led to an outcry in radio networks across the country and in political debates and the the problem people had was we're making mcdonald's responsible for the obesity of children now to you and me today we may say yeah but at that time it was a foreign concept it was new and every editorial newspapers across the country denounced this lawsuit as another example of ambulance chasing lawyers trying to make a buck what was interesting is that it is the evidence that came through because of this case showed that there was a connection between eating fast food and obesity and sometimes you lose the battle and win the war in that case this this class action was never certified a few years ago the case was finally dismissed for the last time and after a number of different appeals and on different motion issues but mcdonald's changed its nutrition advertisements it changed its billboard advertising and it was an interesting case as it pitted against again personal responsibility versus corporate responsibility or business responsibility and we see this being played out over and over and over again at our conference we held at ucla recently another interesting case years ago the federal the federal trade commission known as the ftc in the united states wanted to regulate the advertising of sugar to children and the reason wasn't obesity it had to do with teeth with dental care and and again there was a public outcry every major newspaper including the washington post new york times and others took the ftc to task and it's really interesting to go to go back and to read these editorials and that's where the phrase the nanny state first came to play and the accusations of the ftc trying to create a nanny state uh became part of the debate and the ftc had its regulatory wings clipped it lost part of its regulatory authority and it still has not been restored it's interesting to note that in the united states the ftc has more authority to regulate the advertisement of food to adults than it does to children and so it's a it's a fascinating debate as we see this play out i love engaging in this argument in this discussion with my students about the concepts of personal responsibility versus corporate responsibility but a lot of that that we frame it that way because that's the way the debate comes out in this issue of nutrition and then finally and maybe even most importantly uh food systems and this is the last section actually in my treatise and i think this is this is in many respects this is what draws a lot of people into uh food law and and and and it starts with this premise that eating is more is satisfying is more than just satisfying a physiological need culture matters it does matter and what we think about food matters um i remember um i was in the law office of the in london of the attorney who got the call i was actually there present when she got the call about the horse meat scandal in in the uk and she told me i'd read about it in the newspaper the next day and sure enough i did um i was also in china attending a food safety conference and my interpreter was interpreting what was being said and it was in preparation for the olympics and the food safety authorities were telling the local restaurateurs in shanghai no dog meat is to be served if you serve it you'll be shut down and you'll go to jail now after the olympics you can do whatever you want that's not what they said but that was the implicit that was the inference but it's it's interesting how culture and what we think about food matters in in two very sort of severe stark ways um governance is shaped by cultural political and social uh sociological norms that is intensified intensified by this food movement and and it ranges from sustainability uh and access to healthy food localness uh the right to information the treatment of animals the monoculture of these large farms and producers and manufacturers food justice and equity and food security we have on our staff at ucla dr hallel elver who is the right to food special repertoire for the united nations and uh she's also received her sjd at ucla was which was helpful in our persuading her to set up shop with us but she travels around the world talking about the right to food and again what do we think about food i ask my students is there a right to food and most of them will say well sure there is but under the u.s constitutional construct we're a country of negative rights not positive rights and the united states does not recognize a right a right to food within its constitution what's fascinating about this is that china in its 2015 food safety act recognizes that there's an there's an express right to know in its constitution and and who would have ever thought that that that the world will be set up the way it is in terms of food and the right to know and the right to food or right to right to know and the right to food now this vastness of food law the regulation at least in the united states the federal the state you have provincial issues or issues of province jurisdiction here in canada uh municipal as well most of the the advances in food law progressive food legislation in the united states has happened at the municipal level the city level from trans fat to be to menu labeling to a number of of of of laws that relate to food have happened at the city level the international complexities of food how many of you have heard of ractopamine by raise of hand all right one of you excellent well how many of you eat turkeys you don't have to raise your hands if you don't want to but ractopamine is a drug that's used in animals that has been a huge international dispute and it's fascinating because it it brings into play again china in in uh juxtaposition to the united states and to europe where the ractopamine causes the animals to be very aggressive at the end of their life which leads to some interesting animal rights and animal welfare issues but there's also a safety issue and europe in using a precautionary principle is very much against the use of ractopamine in animals the united states was very frustrated because it couldn't get approvals at the level of codex elementaries commission the commission that gives approvals that are then used as a benchmark for international trade disputes a vote was forced the us won by one vote 51 to 50 the question was is this is this a good way to make science now what was interesting about this vote was that china ended ended up entering into the fray and even though there was a vote in favor of the us position china said no we're not going to accept any animal byproducts that have been from animals that have been fed this animal drug of of ractopamine why because the human studies of consumers in the united states that were used the consumers ate every part of the animal except for one really important part that chinese consumers eat the animal the organs of the animal and so the chinese discounted the studies and so you have a food safety issue layered on top of an animal welfare issue to just show you the complexities of these issues both on an international level as well as national level and then of course litigation and and and that's certainly an issue in and of itself in the united states and your canadian system is different but i think there is some borrowing that goes on in terms of at least looking at the us as an example with respect to class action the other area new governance which is really interesting self-regulation which is not really it's a it's a bit of a misnomer that it's voluntary oftentimes corporations and food companies will self-regulate because they see what's coming ahead for example the united states the front of pack labeling front of pack labeling was first introduced in the united in the uk as a way of putting the essential information on the front of packages with a really nifty color scheme and and it was introduced in the and it frightened to death the american the us manufacturer food manufacturers because they saw that perhaps coming to the united states and so as a preemptive measure the industry developed its own front of pack labeling and this is called self-regulation the only thing is it led to some absurd results with products like sugary cereal cereals such as uh frosted flakes or fruit loops i don't remember which one that ended up getting a positive check on the health list uh and it got a positive reference on the front of pack labeling and and there's been a tug of war since then about who's going to regulate in this area is it going to be the industry is it going to be the FDA regulatory bodies move very slowly but they move slowly for a reason because they need to vet they need to work through the issues there's a great deal of public comment there's also the the natural problems of bureaucracy but it is interesting to see this interplay between private industry initiatives and and regulation and that includes these private standards of which i spoke spoke about earlier to give you an interesting example my mother married my stepfathers from lima peru and so i oftentimes would go down to peru and visit my mother and my stepfather lived down there for a number of years and i became friends with the president of lima's largest law firm in in uh and he owned a farm in ica peru anyone ever been to ica peru okay and he he dream dream of growing this asparagus farm that would be the largest in the world and it was irrigated by well water and it was a really it's a fascinating place to visit and i would go down there and and we would ride horses and we would do all sorts of fun things and i used to love to talk to the farm workers in fact i remember uh my daughter who is fluent in spanish she was my translator we went out and spoke to the farm workers having grown up on a farm i was always interested in the the efficiency of the the work and the question was asked well what is Thanksgiving and the reason that question was asked because at Thanksgiving in the United States that's when the greatest demand for asparagus uh occurred and then all of the farm workers in the community would have to come out and work so every time at Thanksgiving if i asparagus i think about this experience in ica well this i went to the manufacturing plant in this farm and they would fly the asparagus to the united states or to europe uh during their harvest and the plant was really dirty and dismal it was dark there was no light i remember going into the bathroom i couldn't find a light and i only had cold water and i couldn't find soap and i had to use a dirty towel and i always remember that because it struck me that this is very different than food manufacturing facilities that i hadn't encountered in the united states and elsewhere as i've traveled the world about four years after that first time i went to the farm i was in washington dc and there was a certification company uh from from australia that was introducing the concept of private certification as a way to regulate food and he had a power point and guess what that power point was all about this particular asparagus farm in ica peru i couldn't believe it and he showed the pictures of the farm before and he showed the pictures of the farm after and the processing facilities clean sparkling white clothes lights working hot water clean towels hassa and other food safety processes that were followed in the system and it was amazing to see the contrast the retailers in europe had demanded through private standards and private contracts that this operation clean up its act in order to keep shipping and sending food to europe now sounds like a great idea doesn't it but it's interesting to note that developing countries around the world were very concerned about this development and in fact had threatened for a number of years to file a complaint with the world trade organization over the use of these private standards in these contracts because it was a way of regulating food outside of the normal regulatory channels and who was suffering while the small farmers who couldn't afford to capitalize and so when we talk about regulation there's what i call the law of unattended consequences and here was a really interesting unattended consequence from a good idea and something that was leading to a good result and and so we see the complications of private standards are really really interesting and third party certification but in this world of food law we have an expanded audience we have the fda legal bar trial lawyers government council advocacy groups the legal academy policymakers most of you probably fit into one of these categories what we now have is this this dynamic growth of all these complex issues and we end up with the academy law schools as mentioned we have our program at ucla right after we started our program as a program at harvard law school that started at ucla we also have created a law clinic a clinic will be a live policy clinic that will service that will have students who get credit at ucla law school and represent live policy clients with faculty that we've hired food law policy or some version of it's being taught now over 30 law schools just last year yell law school had its first class new york university had its first class um and um seattle um and a number of other law schools what was interesting about new york university is the is the and this is a case where this is really a student movement um the students had formed a student food law association at nyu and and the student leader told me this personally that they had an event and it was the event that attracted the largest amount of participants of any law school event had in the last five years and that's what caught the dean's attention and and now there's a very respected torts professor who's going to teach a food law class because of the student demand at the law school uh it was another interesting side story is a few months ago uh there's a high school in los angeles called san amonica high school and it's a lovely little high school my daughter went there it's right up by the beach had i gone there i would have never graduated from high school but somehow she got through it and and i and every year they invite a law the law students at ucla to teach a law class and so the the law school put together a list of 12 to 15 different topics and i went to the class because one of my students was teaching food law and i encountered the the teacher who was running this program and he said it's interesting that that food law was the unanimous pick of all of the students who voted and and criminal law came in second and every previous year criminal law was always number one and i sat through the class and then i listened to the students and i was amazed at the sophistication and the curiosity of these students in talking about food systems and i i went back to my office thinking this is a generational issue and and where this goes will depend on people who are a lot younger than me and it's it's really uh fascinating to watch so and then the international growth i've told you already about asia the interesting thing about reming university in china is because of its it's the most respected law school in china it's attracting attention from all over asia from japan to um to thailand and in vietnam and and there's professors from all these different asian countries now learning about food law through this law school in china so this vastness of food law i think raises an interesting question and a fair question is it is it a discipline in and of itself or is it a subsection of other forms of law can we call it food law and i i i reminded myself to come back to this question when i wrote the treatise because i think it's an important question to ask and and i i think that that the answer i came up with is that yes it is a discipline and its value lies in its focus on how the law governs food from the seed to the table in other words this modern food system has a unique set of issues and problems and it warrants a legal field that facilitates improvements much like we did with environmental law it also has a framework which is overlooked by a lot of well meaning scholars all the way back to 1906 the pure food and drug act and even prior to that i would submit but it has the legal framework upon which to draw and what i would like to do in the last remaining time of my presentation and during our q and a if you're interested in going that direction is to is to ponder the trajectory of this movement this food law movement and and whether this expanded field of food law is coherent distinctive enough to involve into some permanent discipline and and i think that the time will only tell and to think about the growth of food law in the academy and a private practice and its further adaptation let me make just a few more observations first of all with respect to private practice when i left the university of arkansas school of law i realized that in order for me to really understand food law i needed to practice and so i went to a law firm the venable law firm in washington dc who had a very vibrant food and drug law practice but i convinced the law firm that that my food law practice in the practice of a partner who had joined me on this venture who had been general counsel to the department of agriculture was different and we were focused more on food systems and i think perhaps our enthusiasm outweighed the glassiness that i saw in their eyes as they listened to us tried to distinguish between the two but we ended up developing an interesting practice and and it included parts of fda law but also bigger parts of food law as well as we found our ourselves representing retailers and indian mango farmers who wanted to export food and their mangoes into the united states and food companies trying to set up business in shanghai china and so the the work was interesting and diverse recently i had attended my class a lawyer from the law firm of davis right in termain i think is the last name a very large law firm based in seattle they have offices throughout the united states about 600 lawyers she told me they have 40 food law lawyers in their law firm it's an industry based practice and i think in in talking to and i i speak to a number of large law firms in the united states and friends practicing law food law in these organizations and what we're seeing is this shift from practice focus to industry focus which bodes very well for a food law practitioner and so you have in these large law firms somebody who's a patent lawyer intellectual property lawyer calling themselves a food law lawyer because they represent food companies for the most part and because their issues are unique and so the private practice is is fascinating to watch the acceptance and the and the and the development of food law there's an organization just had a meeting in budapest in in in europe that's formed of mostly practitioners around europe that are now engaged in food law the european food law association is comprised of mostly of practitioners who share information with each other and represent food companies and so it's it's changing even the big accounting firms deloitte and others who have who got into the business through the food safety modernization act are now have hired lawyers uh to to to work on food policy issues and representing their clients and so and and the other area that i think is really really interesting that i encourage my students to think about are emerging food companies and new technologies we have convened at our law school at ucli three different stakeholder meetings of of various groups that are involved in new emerging food companies and and i think there's a lot of work to be done and they have legal needs that are really interesting the new economy the alternative economy is is fascinating to watch and so there's a lot of areas for for development of private practice in addition to law schools but i think working together is really important because food law is in and of itself is an applied law and in in order to have a an academic legitimacy we've got to be interdisciplinary and also intersectional with private practitioners so i'll leave it at that and if anything else i've hopefully i've been able to communicate to you the the complexities of food law as well as the dynamic it's dynamic growth uh around the world and i congratulate you for thinking about this in china and wish you well and hope to to watch your progress over time thank you so we're open to questions and james gonna help me kind of feel arbitrate uh i'm gonna just gonna moderate quickly um uh or briefly uh we are a little bit limited in time so for those of you who do have questions i'll say come to the microphones uh up to the front and and please any interest of both time and and fairness to keep your questions very brief and and and hopefully we'll be able to take about 10 minutes um and and address your questions for for michael so i'll start over here on my right thank you i just want to follow up on your kind of conclusion about the role of academy in food law and policy and so i'm wondering this conference is a kind of we bring together practitioners and law schools and law schools train practitioners but also have conversations within academy and i'm just wondering where you see food law and policy having those academic conversations because as you mentioned the constitutional lawyer who's working on food issues they speak to other constitutional scholars with kind of a shared understanding of what framework they're working in same for property lawyers same for tax lawyers but who do the food law scholars talk to inside kind of the legal academy because they can talk to geographers or political scientists talk about food and so i'm just wondering how the academic field gets built up yeah it's a it's a great question and and this laboratory that we're involved in at UCLA is sort of answering your question as we go day by day um it it was difficult at first for us at UCLA to identify who are the scholars for example the law school that have an affinity with us and and over time we've been able to win a lot of people over and so for example at our our marketing conference we had a great constitutional scholar Eugene Bolak who gave a talk on on first amendment issues and food law or food marketing and and so it depends on the issue we have folks who are involved who teach health law at UCLA who are very involved with us now the animal rights program the director of that program as a professor is now working closely with us on issues of animal law and food the environmental law program works very closely with us the civil rights the human rights we're actually cosponsoring a program when i get back on the 12th that will look at prison food and in issues related to food and prison both in terms of safety and nutrition that's being cosponsored by us in the civil rights program at UCLA so it's actually now becoming almost a problem where at first we had a dearth of faculty interest and now we have almost too much uh in the sense that we it's it we're really being called into various aspects i think it's a matter of just time and again it's it's a it's a model that that reflects again a multi doctrinal approach to a problem the expertise we bring to the table is our understanding of the food system and how all of this works in context with the food system and i think that's unique thank you hi i'm bill joffrey from the center for health science and law i wonder if you could comment on the interplay between kind of academic style research and food law reform three examples in which the american academy has actually affected policy in other countries um one is a trans fat um around 2000 u.s. institute of medicine what was called then published a report on trans fat and that almost immediately led to a ban on trans fat in denmark and i guess we'll see something eventually in in the united states and canada but you know a decade decade and a half later um likewise the federal trade commission report that you refer to uh on advertising directed at children um the result of that in the united states was that it kind of impeded the ability of the federal trade commission to act in that area in the future but on almost immediate impact was it led to um a ban on advertising directed to children in kebac and in fact that staff report was used to defend the kebec law on the supreme court of canada and successfully interest and then the the um the last example um i guess it's more um germane uh these days is um u.s. academic literature and a bunch of different disciplines law and economics particularly but also public health um about putting a tax on sugar sweeten beverages it's interesting because i think united states is maybe the only country in the world that doesn't have a natural a national sales tax and almost every other country taxes food in some way um but there's this like an obsession about just taxing sugar sweeten beverages in i think in the mass media anyway now and i'm just interested in yeah it's a it's a great question and i think the the answer to the question is that there is definitely a role uh and i think that what the law can actually not only take a leadership role but also um a a role that adds some maturity to the debate as well so for example take take taxation um or any other legal remedy as it relates to sugar sweet sugar sweeten beverages uh the question that that i always have is is will it change behavior um and will will taxation be effective uh so we i think that allowing for social behavior science and uh to to mature and develop over time will lead to better laws and better policies um but i think that the role of law is to help arbitrate the the conflicts so when it comes to the constitutional issues or first amendment issues in the united states uh having lawyers who are firmly committed to free speech understand the complexities of what's going on so for example we think of advertising strictly in terms of television advertising historically when it comes to ftc regulation but if we look at social media what's going on in gaming what's going on in youtube with advertising it's really it's it's really quite incredible and that's where a lot of the advertising dollars are being spent now anyway changes the facts and and and for first amendment scholars to know about this it's up to the food law bar i think to communicate that and to ask you know where do we go what do we do with this new information does this change or color the views of constitutional scholars have looked at these issues for a number of years another example is uh antibiotics and antibiotic resistance and feeding animal drugs to animals um we had a conference our conference last year in cambridge at harvard uh addressed this issue and we've been writing about this in fact we're publishing on the UCLA law review an article on antibiotic restrictions and it just so happens that california now has a new law but one of the fundamental legal questions is one of preemption you know what is the role of states and local municipalities in regulating in this area so i think there's a there's a tremendous need for for lawyers in this field to step up and hopefully the food law bar offers that opportunity so we can work with both scientists and policy makers thank you okay we have we have time for one more question so i'll i'll i'll leave the last question now here to the mic thanks thank you for a truly remarkable talk so one comment you were talking about the vastness of food law which made me think of the same vastness in my field of health law the sub um themes such as the intersection of criminal law tort law administrative law and it seems to me that this is a feature of laws that are crafted around a subject matter so now to two questions you're talking about the growth of food law is a discipline and this makes me think about i'd like to ask you two questions one question is what do you think are the main reason why food law is growing is a discipline the second question is why now is is what now why now why now well i think the white let me address the why now question first i guess um well both at the same time the the the it's the problems the problems that we're facing uh in i mean we just obesity for example um it's a serious problem caught the attention of policy makers military leaders educators what causes this problem well it's in large part due to a food system that's generating a lot of food that makes us gain weight and and that has led to um has sort of nicely dovetailed into a food movement that was mainly part of that but also independent of that and it was really you know the writings of michael pollen and and and and before him there were also philosophers who are writing about food and so i think the the other it's not necessary it's why now is because of of the food movement and the problems of the food system and what's interesting to me is that this discussion has been going on a long time but now it's being recognized uh by by others your prime minister who's calling for a food policy um and and it's also going back to the previous question we have on our board a fellow who was in the white house um and the nutrition advisor to president obama and he has told us that the question he would ask at the white house and then he heard asked at the white house is where are the lawyers in other words the environmental law move the environmental movement was led by lawyers the food movement where are the lawyers and one of the reasons for having not having lawyers necessarily engaged in the united states is that the food drug and cosmetic act the 1938 act is not allowed for private cause of action which you have under the environmental statutes in the united states so that is one fundamental difference but another difference is just that the law just isn't hasn't reacted fast enough and and so this this movement is is is a value-based movement but it's also based on problems that are really complicated and i think that's another problem that the law has is that how do you solve these problems by law and and maybe we can't but maybe the law can be used as a tool to move the needle and to help generate issues and generate interest as i tell my students it's you're not just going to be lawyers you're going to be leaders and and lawyers are naturally not all the time but naturally fall into the leadership category because they're articulate they think we train them we train them to analyze so we need thoughtful people because these problems are not simple they're complicated we didn't wake up with an industrial food complex overnight and we're not going to get rid of it and even organic food i mean my good heavens when i grew up on our small farm an organic food store used to buy our produce we sprayed our produce when i was a kid we didn't know any better and and then we have the organic food act in the united states and every country now has a food act but it was seen as local food now we have treaties there are treaties between countries that regulate organic food the united states and europe has a treaty china wants in on the action everyone has a treaty when it comes to organic food it's an international trade issue now and so the complexities of food really sort of rise to the point where it makes it difficult but even more important for lawyers to be involved sorry i went off on a tangent but great question i hope i answered it in the interest of our time i'm gonna have to wrap it up there i'm sure it is someone with a grant we could we could talk about this at length and hope we will that's to say please stay tuned and stay connected we'll be in touch certainly about things that come out of this conference please join me in thanking michael for coming all this way to Halifax and really