Mandi Wilson, Dalhousie University

Questioning the Boundaries of Food Law and Policy: Corporate Policy and Influence for the Next Generation of Scholarship and Practice: Food systems appear to be changing in significant ways. Climate change, supply chain disruptions, technological innovation, shifting consumer expectations, and increasing scrutiny of corporate practices are reshaping how food is produced, distributed, marketed, and consumed. These changes are also influencing how decisions are made across food systems and who has the ability to shape those decisions.

Food law and policy have traditionally focused on public institutions. Yet many of the expectations, priorities, and practices shaping contemporary food systems are also influenced by actors operating outside traditional regulatory structures. Corporate sustainability commitments, retail procurement standards, traceability requirements, investor expectations, data-sharing protocols, and voluntary certification programs increasingly influence how organizations understand, manage, and respond to food system challenges throughout the food value chain.

Drawing on emerging research examining organizational approaches to food loss and waste and data sharing practices, this presentation considers how corporate policies, practices and culture can shape organizational behavior and influence food system outcomes. These mechanisms often operate across jurisdictions and supply chains.

Understanding food law remains essential. However, the next generation practitioner may need a broader understanding of the actors in the broader ecosystem in which law operates, including corporations, organizational cultures, technologies, and forms of private governance such as corporate policies, voluntary standards, investor expectations, and industry-led initiatives. This presentation invites consideration of whether the traditional boundaries of the field capture the full range of actors and influences shaping food systems in practice.

Caroline Beddoe, School of Health Administration, Dalhousie University

The Role of the Workplace in Food Policy: Dr. Catherine Mah’s Food Policy Lab (Dalhousie University) is interested in the environmental and policy determinants of diet and food consumption, and we are launching a large cohort study of Nova Scotian workers (The Cohort for Healthy Eating in the Workplace Study), to explore the role of socioeconomic and workplace factors, including job type and workplace conditions, in food purchasing and diet quality. Our study will collect diet assessments, food purchasing data, sociodemographic data and more from 400+ Nova Scotian workers over a period of at least 24 months. This research is the first of its kind in Canada, and seeks to expand upon existing literature around workplace food environments, as well as to deepen our collective understandings of occupations, organizations and workplace conditions as social determinants of health.

While food systems research and practice has often focused on issues of labour on the producer-side, working conditions and labour issues are implicated in the consumer side of the food system, too. Given that workers spend a significant portion of their waking hours at work, the workplace is an important organizational space through which to understand diet quality, which affects physical and mental health.