Conference 2021 Panel Recap - "The Impacts of Covid-19"

Workers in a food facility making ricotta cheese prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The panel on the Impacts of COVID-19 spoke to both what actions were taken by entities that helped regulate the food and beverage industry and get food on our plates in Canada, and what some of the impacts were both globally and locally on communities. A variety of perspectives were covered by the panelists – Jennifer Clapp, Paul Taylor, Tammy Switucha and Kathleen Sullivan – confirming what many of us already know: COVID-19 has laid bare inequalities and cracks in many of our society's structures. As noted at the start of the panel by moderator Sarah Berger Richardson, while this panel deviates from the broader conference theme, it is important to reflect as a group about the impact of COVID-19 on the food system, now that we are a year into the pandemic. 

Tammy Switucha, who is the Executive Director of Food Safety and Consumer Protection for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), shared stories and insights into the actions taken by the CFIA in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, CFIA has had to work closely with industry and its federal, provincial, and territorial partners to implement measures to protect Canada’s food supply, maintain the health and wellbeing of its staff, maintain critical activities, and support the economy and market access without compromising food safety. They spearheaded initiatives early on to try to ease supply chain pressures, and research to assess the risk of transmission through food and food animals. The CFIA is exploring the idea of implementing some COVID-19 response measures longer-term, such as the use of digital tools and devices by front-line staff to deliver services. The process of adopting some of these measures longer-term will require many considerations, with all advances in this space needing to be grounded with a solid legal and policy foundation. 

Kathleen Sullivan, who is the CEO of Food and Beverage Canada (FBC), provided a different perspective on the impact of COVID-19 on Canada’s food system, focusing on what changes were needed to keep food workers safe, whether they worked on farms, in manufacturing and processing, transport or in the retail, restaurant and food service sector. While Canadians were told to stay home to remain safe, the vast majority of these workers continued to go into work so that the rest of us could eat. However, the way many food manufacturing and processing facilities are built made it very difficult to comply with measures such as social distancing. This made PPE of the upmost importance, but at one point, there was such a global shortage of PPE that the Ontario government was calling on food plants to donate PPE to the healthcare system, which would have caused food plants to shut down. Food industry workers are continuing to go into work, often still with no access to vaccines, in order to feed Canadians every day.

While Paul Taylor, of FoodShare Toronto, did not bring up COVID-19 directly in his presentation, he spoke directly about the interconnection between food security and anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in Canada. While COVID-19 has renewed conversations about food security and access in Canada, Paul invited everyone to think critically about how food inequities must be addressed. The highest rates of food insecurity are among Black and Indigenous households, regardless of whether the household has a single or dual income, immigration status and homeownership. This demonstrates that white supremacy is a public health crisis and that even something like homeownership does not provide the same level of protection to a Black household as it does a white one. He finished his presentation by discussing what steps FoodShare Toronto has taken to try to dismantle anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism within their organization. For example, the highest paid workers are limited to three times the amount that the lowest paid worker makes. Foodshare has also implemented hiring practices that reduce the focus on education and other credentials, and allow for anonymized resumes. The organization also has a transparent pay grid for employees. 

Jennifer Clapp, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo took a much broader international look at the impact of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition. COVID-19 has shown that there is an urgent need to build more resilient food systems in the face of this crisis. Although there are many factors that led to the dire food access situation globally, she focused on three in particular: food supply disruptions, the impact of the global recession on food access and good system livelihoods, and uneven food price effects. Supply chains were disrupted in several different ways, for example, staple grains were impacted by export restrictions, which in turn drove up prices. There was a global loss of employment equivalent to 225 million full time jobs, and 120 million additional people fell into extreme poverty in 2020. This number is expected to rise to 143 - 163 million in 2021. Finally, while the global food price index is up 38% since January 2020, there have been uneven food price increases at the domestic level. Countries such as Canada have seen 1-8% increases, while countries such as Argentina, Sudan and Nigeria have seen 20-40% increases. These increases have driven a shift in diets to cheaper staple foods, which will inevitably have health effects down the road.

Jennifer provided a conclusion at the end of her slides that I think sums up well what all of the panelists were pointing to: the pandemic underlines the need for more resilient food systems. At all scales of the food system, a strong focus on justice is needed. We need social protection for the most vulnerable people, protections for food system workers, and protection for countries dependent on food imports. Further, a greater focus on diversity within food systems is needed. We need more diverse supply chains and production systems that promote ecological and nutritional diversity, along with better forms of sustainable production.