Call for Abstracts (2019)
From Microbes to Multinationals:
The Many Scales of Food Law and Policy
For our 4th annual food law and policy conference, we explore the complex issue of scale in all its dimensions. Panel and presentation proposals on a variety of topics are welcome, including but not limited to:
Scale Across the food system and food industries
Differential impacts of law and policy on actors from small-scale artisanal to large-scale industrial in agriculture, fisheries, meat production, and food processing
Implications of scale for regulatory compliance and food safety as well as environmental, social and economic sustainability
The changing structures of local, regional, territorial and global supply chains, networks and markets, including the dynamics of consolidation, disaggregation and restructuring
Ensuring accessibility and availability of country foods, and the means for gathering, processing and distributing them
Addressing access to culturally appropriate foods at individual and community scales
Scale in governance
Changing regulatory frameworks in the areas of food safety, intellectual property, and the trading of food across borders and from supply management and quota systems to free markets
Division of powers (municipal, provincial, territorial, federal, international) – including the benefits and drawbacks of vertical fragmentation and the implications of thinking and working at regional or foodshed levels that defy conventional boundaries
Indigenous worldviews on scale, Indigenous food sovereignty and Indigenous food governance
Addressing food insecurity across Canada (from the North to urban centers and rural landscapes) and those marginalized by the food system
Scale as a matter of politics
Impacts of consolidation and fragmentation on participation in and influence over food policy-making
“Good” and “healthy” food, the 2019 federal election, and the national food policy
Practitioners, scholars, policymakers, agri-food industry actors, adjudicators, activists, students and other thought leaders are invited to submit individual presentations or group-panel proposals of no more than 200 words on any topic related to the conference theme or broader questions of food law and policy by May 10, 2019. Applications can be in French or English (or both).
Any questions may be sent to conference@foodlaw.ca.