Angela Lee, University of Alberta, Faculty of Law

Ludovic Sirois, Agriculture and Food Inspection Legal Services - Department of Justice Canada

Food Law in the Vavilov Era: A New Generation of Judicial Review of Regulatory Decision-Making?: Since the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Vavilov in 2019, courts have approached administrative decision-making through the lens of justification, transparency, and intelligibility. While the implications of Vavilov have been widely examined in administrative law scholarship, its application within the federal food law context has received comparatively little attention.

This presentation will explore how courts have applied the Vavilov framework to decisions made under Canada's federal food regulatory regime. The food sector provides a particularly rich context for analysis, as decision-makers exercise significant statutory powers in an environment shaped by scientific expertise, risk assessment, and the overarching objective of protecting public health.

Drawing on recent jurisprudence from the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal, including cases involving the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the enforcement of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations, the presentation will examine the principal legal constraints governing the exercise of regulatory authority. Particular attention will be paid to the justification of findings based on scientific evidence, the interpretation of discretionary statutory powers, and the role of legislative objectives in shaping administrative decision-making.

Finally, the presentation will consider whether the jurisprudence emerging from Vavilov can be understood as reflecting a new generation of judicial review in the food law context. Rather than contrasting the pre- and post-Vavilov eras, it will focus on how courts now conceive of their role when reviewing decisions grounded in specialized technical expertise. More broadly, the presentation will offer an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between regulatory expertise, judicial oversight, and institutional legitimacy in contemporary food law.

Giulia Torre, Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria & Maria Carlotta Rizzuto, University "Magna Grecia" of Catanzaro

The Generational Challenges of EU Food Law: Novel Foods Between Tradition and Innovation: Over the course of the last generation, novel foods have become a privileged lens through which to understand how food law responds to scientific and technological progress. New ingredients, innovative production techniques and emerging forms of food innovation require legal systems to protect public health and consumers while, at the same time, avoiding undue obstacles to the market and to the economic, environmental, and social benefits that innovation may bring to food supply chains.

In this context, this paper employs the traditional methodology of legal scholarship to analyse the regulation of novel foods from a generational perspective, taking European Union law as its starting point and using the Canadian framework as a comparative counterpoint.

In EU law, Regulation (EC) No 258/97, later replaced by Regulation (EU) 2015/2283, established 15 May 1997 as the temporal threshold separating foods characterized by a history of significant consumption within the Union from those subject to prior authorization requirements. Instead, traditional foods from third Countries are now subject to a simplified notification procedure based on evidence of at least twenty-five years of consumption experience in at least one third country and as part of the customary diet of a significant number of people.

Canadian law provides a particularly useful comparative perspective. In Canada, novel foods (including GM foods) are likewise subject to a system of preventive control based on notification and safety assessment. Moreover, the concept of a «history of safe use» similarly links regulatory treatment to accumulated consumption experience over time. However, unlike the EU framework, Canadian law does not rely on a fixed cut-off date. Rather, foods are assessed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account significant consumption «over several generations» (Health Canada, Guidelines for the Safety Assessment of Novel Foods, 2006, updated in 2022).

Habitual consumption across one or more generations is therefore considered capable of supporting facilitated market access for foods that are regarded as novel. Over that period, production systems undergo significant transformations, which in turn require food law to evolve taking into account the specificities of the sector and enabling it to respond to the complex challenges posed by scientific and technological innovation.

Kelsie Dale, Ministry of Health - Saskatchewan and Colleen Ryan, Department of Agriculture - Nova Scotia

Implementing Food Safety Law on the Ground: A Practitioner’s Analysis of Select Provincial Food Safety Regulation in Canada: Food safety regulation in Canada is constitutionally shared, with provinces playing a central role in the interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of food law. While federal frameworks establish baseline standards, provincial systems differ in their legislative instruments, institutional arrangements, and regulatory practices. These differences provide an important opportunity to examine how food safety governance evolves across jurisdictions and time.
This presentation offers a practitioner-informed analysis of food safety law and policy, with examples from Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia. Drawing on extensive experience in environmental public health practice, provincial government policy and program development, food safety inspection, and regulatory consulting, the presenters explore how provincial systems operationalize food safety legislation in practice. The discussion situates current regulatory approaches within their historical development, highlighting how each province has adapted its inspection models, enforcement strategies, and risk-based decision-making frameworks over time.
Key themes include differences and similarities in inspection systems, compliance and enforcement tools, policy levers and structures, and administrative decision-making processes. The presentation further examines how institutional history, public health infrastructure, geography, and resource allocation shape regulatory practice in each jurisdiction. Attention is also given to the evolving balance between education, enforcement, and risk-based regulation, as well as the operational realities faced by environmental public health professionals implementing food law on the ground.
By situating provincial regulatory systems within a broader temporal and interjurisdictional context, this session provides insight into how food safety law is interpreted and applied in practice. The presentation will be of interest to lawyers, law students, policymakers, and regulators seeking to understand the evolution, diversity, and lived implementation of food safety governance in Canada.