Conference Announcement: "Transparency in the Global Food System: How Much Information and to What Ends?"

Dates: October 24-25, 2014  

Location: UCLA Faculty Center

The Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law and The Food Law Lab at Harvard Law School have partnered to host the UCLA-Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Conference, a joint annual conference that will focus on transparency issues in the food system from a legal perspective.

Event Description:

Every day brings increasing media coverage, intensified citizen concern and political focus to the problems of our food system, accompanied by a building consensus on the need to address the known challenges. But, the factors shaping our current food system and their implications are often opaque and difficult to analyze, due to both the complexity and lack of transparency in our system. This conference will examine these issues: the meaning of transparency in food law and policy, how consumers use and misuse information about the food system, and the limits of information as a policy tool.

Dr. David A. Kessler, former Commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration and currently a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School, will deliver the conference keynote address on October 24th. In addition, as part of UCLA Food Day events, a screening and panel discussion of the documentary Food Chains will be held in the evening following the conference.

Closing the event, an academic workshop, spearheaded by presentations by Professors Susan A. Schneider, Neil Hamilton, and Steven D. Sugarman, will be held on Saturday, October 25th to discuss the future of food law teaching and scholarship.

Limited travel stipends of up to $200 are available to professors or fellows on on a first-come, first-served basis. If you are interested, please email Randi Kusumi, Kusumi@law.ucla.edu<mailto:Kusumi@law.ucla.edu>, as soon as possible.