Welcome to the Food Court

This is an episode I recorded last March when I visited McGill Law School with Amélie Gouin, a lawyer who does food law work at BLG Montreal. We got to do a food law edition of Scared Straight by trying to answer the question: “is it of value to pursue a career in this area?” Amelie and I came to speak on the practice of law: what food law looks like as a career, on the ground, as practicing lawyers, and that’s what we did.

This episode is on the Healthy Menu Choices Act in Ontario, where mandatory calorie labelling has finally come to be. And this episode sounds like a polished version of the conversation that two solicitors might have at a social gathering, talking shop while their spouses get increasingly bored. As a new act, we wanted to take a different approach to thinking about Healthy Menu Choices. So, rather than grabbing on to the public health discussion at large, we wanted to get pretty technical. It’s a technical piece of legislation and to treat it generally would have been to waste the expertise of my guest Kelly Harris.

On this episode, Gerald Chan of Stockwoods LLP speaks with Glenford about criminal process in the food crime world. Taking the perspective of an operator, the discussion ranges from search warrants to sentencing.

The second part is all about the Constitutional Challenge brought by the Toronto Distilling Company to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s ambiguous proprietary charge to distillers – a 140% mark-up on all sales by a distiller at their shop. I’ll note that since we recorded this, Ontario’s Finance Minister has announced a 61.5% spirits tax is to be passed in the legislature. This has been largely received as being bad news for micro distillers, and a lot of folks in the whisky world are pisssssssed off with Charles Sousa and Kathleen Wynne. If you’re looking specifically for Bill 70, Spirit tax, or #free my rye content, that’s all going to be here in Part Two.

The Toronto Distillery Company: It’s a microdistiller, and it reflects a new generation of whiskymakers making products for a new generation of whisky drinkers. Charles and Jesse focus on highly traceable and locally sourced grain for their whisky. In a world built for Hiram Walker, one of the world’s largest distillers, to sell to the LCBO, the world’s largest purchaser of beverage alcohol, operating an innovative still at a small scale has presented challenges and opportunities. Get ready for us to fuss about the food and drugs regulations standard of identity for Canadian whisky and rye, straight whisky, some issues relating to the excise act, and creating a new mark or standard of identity to separate what Canada’s micro-distillers are creating versus more traditional distillers.

Catherine Mah speaks about health promotion, public health, and the role that public health can play in preventative rather than curative medicine

First episode of Season 2! Glenford speaks with Second Harvest's Debra Lawson on current issues in food recovery and food law - John Oliver, Italy, France, a National Food Policy and more!

On this episode, you'll hear me speak alongside food lawyer Dan Kutcher of Cox & Palmer's Summerside, PEI, office at Law Hour, a one-hour lecture each geared at engaging students with presentations by guest speakers about current legal issues, at Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. Because Dan's practice is in PEI, his is distinctly focused on export markets and international standards for seafood. Dan has worked with Michigan State's Institute for Food Laws and Regulations and has developed an interest in food law at a personal level. We talk about the development of our expertise in food law as being a way to make a better, more useful lawyer for clients.

Initially I had intended this podcast to be on the impossibility of taking the political out of the NFP/Charitable sector, you know - real charities law focused as it relates to food policy. I learned instead that two guests are harder to manage than one, and that interviewing family is a different beast than interviewing anyone else. The old adage: the lawyer who represents him-or-herself has a fool for a client. Well, I think that may extend to family (sorry, family!). But it was also immensely pleasurable to listen to Kristie and Brian, to learn about how their two completely different organizations share quite a bit despite completely different geographies and stakeholder groups. But let's be a little more honest: this also might just be an opportunity to celebrate some talented members of my family.

Frank discusses workplace safety and the family farm, his thoughts on Upton Sinclair, and what life is like as a workplace health and safety lawyer.

Tipping at restaurants is an quintessential part of North American culture. But is it a good thing for restaurants? Glenford is joined by Richmond Station's Ryan Donovan to discuss tipping in the context of owning a restaurant, creating stable and fulfilling jobs, and what Danny Meyer is doing in New York.

Jamie Baxter, professor at Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University joins Glenford to speak about how legal education is changing in Canada, how law students are seeking different things than they have historically, and how developing a food law program is a real opportunity for academics, students, and practitioners alike.

In an age where almost all Canadian grain/corn/soy/sugar/alfalfa is proprietarily grown and everything else is grown from seed that is imported from abroad, Aabir and the Bauta Initiative are saying that our seed system needs some help to retain characteristics like "regionally adapted," "open source," "biodiverse germplasm," and "secure seed". Aabir speaks clearly and with insight on how ecological vegetable farmers need some help and how the farer service as a producer of food and public good needs to be reexamined at a policy and legal level. Canada doesn't have a celebrity chef like Dan Barber to bring into the mainstream these major issues of agricultural policy. If we have more people like Aabir and his colleagues working on the issue, maybe that's okay. Maybe their voices will be heard.

In an age where most Canadian grain/corn/soy/sugar/alfalfa is grown from proprietary seed and everything else is grown from seed that is imported from abroad, Aabir and the Bauta Initiative are saying that our seed system needs some help to retain characteristics. The characteristics, like "regionally adapted," "open source," "biodiverse germplasm," and "secure seed", should matter to everyone. Aabir speaks clearly and with insight on how ecological vegetable farmers need some help and how the farmer's public service as a producer of food and public good needs to be reexamined at a policy and legal level.

Liquor law is crazy stuff. It defines relationships between nations (US-Canada during 18th Amendment America) and people themselves (Montreal itself voted for prohibition - which lasted for mere months whereas PEI held out from WW1 until 1948). Legislation has often had more to do with religio- and socio-cultural values than good public policy surrounding safety, certainty, jobs, and good government. Because of the wide-ranging interests behind liquor law, people pay attention when a government thinks about making changes. As we learned in O Brother Where Art Thou, "People like that re-form. Maybe we should get us some." Enter British Columbia. In 2013, BC - a province with no shortage of wacky historical liquor legislation - decided to do some reforming. Or at least some consulting. BC MLA John Yap was tasked with consulting with British Columbians. Two years and some remarkable consulting later, The Yap Report has been adopted and as changes are being implemented, one can't help but think that the regulatory landscape looks at once similar to before, but different. Joining us on Welcome to the Food Court this month is Dan Coles, a litigator and specialist in liquor law from Owen Bird Law Corporation in Vancouver, to talk about the reform process and how it has affected British Columbians. Dan spends an incredible amount of time writing and speaking about liquor issues - check out his website BCLiquorLaw.com or his twitter handle @liquorandthelaw

Carly and Glenford discuss the Burnham Complaint, Jen Agg’s Kitchen Bitches Conference, Rene Redzepi and David Chang’s perspective on managing a kitchen, and examine some of the opportunities available to restaurant owners and managers to create a better workplace. about how to design a healthier hospitality kitchen by asking the question: are 21st century chefs still working in 20th century work environments?

In this preview of Welcome to the Food Court, Glenford describes the who, what and why of Food Court: a podcast on food law. Subscribe now, the first episode is to premiere in early September, 2015