Vermont Summer Program: Food and Ag Offerings

For more information, contact: 

Laurie Ristino, Director

Center for Agriculture and Food Systems

Vermont Law School

802.831.1230

 lristino@vermontlaw.edu

http://www.vermontlaw.edu/cafs

Professor Nicole Civita Speaks on Legal Issues and Food Recovery

Professor Nicole Civita, Visiting Assistant Professor in the LL.M Program and Director of the Food Recovery Project, participated in the inaugural Food Waste & Hunger Summit on April 5 & 6 at Northwestern University.  Professor Civita is author of the popular publication, Food Recovery: A Legal Guide.

Professor Civita presented an hour-long plenary address on the legal aspects of food recovery and fielded many excellent questions about liability protection, preemption, tax incentives, and state-by-state nuances related to regulation of donated food.

The uniformly positive feedback on this session once again demonstrated the value of educating anti-hunger activists and food recovery advocates about the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.

Below is access to Professor Civita’s interactive presentation slides.

The Food Recovery Project is an initiative funded by two generous gifts from the Women's Giving Circle at the University of Arkansas.  Last year, the Women's Giving Circle funded the drafting of Food Recovery: A Legal Guide and its companion article for lawyers, The Legal Guide to the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act  by James Haley (2013 Ark. L. Notes 1448).  This year, they are funding continued work in this area, including the Food Recovery Project blog.

Internship Opportunities in Agriculture and Food Law

This post summarizes an interesting thread on the Food Law Professors Listserv regarding internship opportunities. In an effort to pull these resources into one area, we've posted them below. Please feel free to share.

Center for Food Safety has occasional internship opportunities, though they might have been filled already.

And there's also Marler Clark, a plaintiff side food safety firm, http://www.marlerclark.com/

The Harvard food law student Association website lists over 500 organizations with jobs.

Google Food Lion internship.

Tuft's comfoodjob listserv often has advocacy and policy internships. The link for subscribing to this service is:
https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/comfoodjobs

Farmers’ Legal Action Group in Saint Paul often uses summer interns. Their website is www.flaginc.org

Harvard's Food Policy Clinic publishes a career guide that may be helpful. Its available at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/foodpolicyinitiative/files/2013/07/Career-Guide_2013.pdf

The LL.M. Program in Agricultural & Food Law runs a blog that posts employment opportunities, and sometimes internships are posted as well.  It is at http://agfoodlawjobs.blogspot.com.

In addition to the Center for Food Safety's offices in Washington, D.C., Oregon and in San Francisco, other suggestions include the following organizations:

- Sierra Club
- PCRM
- Consumer's League
- Food and Water Watch
- Friends of the Earth
- Environmental Integrity Project

Foundations of Food Law & Policy: Ten Years of European Food Safety Authority

We are pleased to announce the publication of Foundations of EU Food Law & Policy: Ten Years of European Food Safety Authority co-edited by Alberto Alemanno and Simone Gabbi.

This volume presents the viewpoints of academics, food lawyers, industry and consumer representatives as well as those of EU policymakers on the first ten years of activity of one of the most prominent European agencies. Its broader purpose, however, is to discuss the future role played by EFSA within the rapidly-evolving area of EU food law and policy. By revisiting and discussing the milestones in the history of EFSA, the collection provides forward-looking views of food leaders and practitioners on the future scientific and regulatory challenges facing the European Union. In particular, by presenting a critical assessment of the agency’s activities within its different areas of work, the book offers readers a set of innovative tools for evaluating policy recommendations and better equips experts and the public to address pressing regulatory issues in this emotive area of law and policy. Despite its celebratory mood, the book’s focus is more about the future than the past of EU food law and policy. Each chapter discusses how EFSA’s role has evolved and identifies what it should have done differently while presenting an overall assessment of how the agency has discharged its mandate.

The full content list is available from the Publisher, Ashgate.  The book can be purchased from Amazon.   It has received excellent reviews:

“This book presents a comprehensive review and analysis of the origin, history, and accomplishments of the first decade of the European Food Safety Authority, by an impressive group of experts. It is an essential volume for anyone interested in Food Law and its Politics.”
Peter Barton Hutt, Harvard Law School

“I have found it quite surprising that the EFSA, an institution that is eminently relevant to our everyday life, has remained the domaine reservé of a few researchers. And yet, this is a meeting point for the scientist, the political economist, and the lawyer. The editors of this volume belong to the exclusive club of experts, as they have already produced an impressive volume of rigorous work in this area. It is only natural then, that they gathered around them a ‘dream team’ of policy makers and researchers to produce this unique volume that discusses in exacting manner the EFSA on its own, and through a comparative angle along with institutions in other parts of the world entrusted with similar mandate. The end product offers not only a fresh perspective on the ‘internal’  workings of the EFSA, but also a comprehensive view of the institution as seen from the perspective of other European agencies interacting with EFSA. Alberto Alemanno and Simone Gabbi should be credited for producing an excellent book on the law, policy, and polity of the EFSA. This is a very timely publication, and yet one which will remain actual for many years to come.”
Petros C. Mavroidis, European University Institute, Florence

“This book is a fascinating read for anyone dealing with food law and policy. Its topic represents at the same time a valuable case-study of regulatory and administrative law in action. An impressive team of authors sketches law, procedure, science and multi-level politics surrounding the past decade of food regulation in the EU.  The book focuses on national, European and international regulatory cooperation, as well as it dealing with topics on the fault line of law, scientific based risk regulation and political sensitivities. This combination raises a host of questions relevant well beyond the next decade of food regulation and modern public law.”

Herwig Hoffmann, Professor of EU Law and Transnational Law at the University of Luxembourg

“This comprehensive edited volume makes an important contribution to the study and understanding  of EU food law and the shaping of food policy with a central focus on the European Food Safety Authority.   It contains a unique mixture of in-depth study, practical insights and critical analysis and gives food for thought on future challenges. I strongly recommend this impressive book to all academics and practitioners who study, and work with,  EU food law and policy.”

Ellen Vos, Maastricht Centre for European Law, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. 

Annual AALS Section Meeting: Innovations in Teaching Food Law and Policy

Happy 2014. Thank you to all who attended the very exciting panel held past week at the AALS annual meeting in New York regarding integrating food law into law schools' curricula.  Speakers included Susan A. Schneider (Director, LL.M. Program in Agricultural & Food Law, University of Arkansas), Michael Roberts (Executive Director, Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy, UCLA), Alli Condra (Fellow, Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic). 

Initially, the discussion focused on how each of these programs approaches teaching food law and policy, predominately with a focus on connecting laws governing food production with sustainability and public health concerns. Also flagged was the need for more intensive scholarly work regarding the legal framework of food regulation domestically, the racial and socio-economic impacts of food law, and the implications of food and food systems in the context of laws regulating international trade and export.

One consistent thread emerged: food is everything-- meaning every kind of law, in all types of practice-- and the opportunities to explore food law and policy in the law school setting are varied and compelling. Some schools have taken on helping small food related business through providing practical how-to publications or support through their transactional legal services clinics. Some professors teach food law through courses like administrative law where they draw heavily on food related case law and regulations. Others are engaging with international food law through direct services; at Wake Forest, Barbara Lentz led a team of students this month to Nicaragua to help local farmers meet certification requirements for U.S. food imports.

In addition to a lively and energizing discussion, a few follow up points emerged:

1. CALL FOR SYLLABI: In the Q & A session there was If you teach a food law course, whether survey, seminar, traditional course with a focus on food law, please post your syllabus for interested parties to consult and consider in making up their own classes. 
2. UPCOMING CONFERENCES:  UCLA’s Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy will be hosting a Food Law Litigation Symposium this April, dates to TBD.  The Resnick Program also plans a larger scale conference on food law in the fall of 2014.
3. NEW ASSOCIATION: We are in the early stages of forming a Food Law and Policy Association.  If you are interested in being a founding member, please email Melissa.mortazavi@brooklaw.edu.

Science and Technology in International Economic Law: Balancing Competing Interests

Professor Kuei-Jung Ni, Visiting Scholar, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and Professor of Law at the Institute of Technology Law, at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan is pleased to announce that the book that he co-edited with Professor Bryan Mercurio at the Chinese University of Hong Kong was recently published.

The book, "," was published by Routledge. Professor Ni's article, titled Does Science Speak Clearly and Fairly in Trade and Food Safety Disputes? The Search for an Optimal Response of WTO Adjudication to Problematic International Standard-Making, is included in the book.

Announcing the Food Law Profs reading group!

We're starting a food law professors reading group!  The idea is to focus on books outside the legal arena which may nevertheless inform our views of the food system and to provide an arena for sharing our individual approaches to legal scholarship in the food systems area. 

Our first book will be Weighing In by Julie Guthman. Several of us will be lead discussants, who will present their own thoughts and questions as individual blog posts.

The rest of us (and any of you readers!) will then discuss the books within the comment sections.  We anticipate starting our discussion on January 10, 2014 and to continue for about a week and a half afterwards.

Happy reading!

Special thanks to Professor Steph Tai for getting this initiative organized.  Steph is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and this year is serving as the 2013-14 Supreme Court Fellow assigned to the Federal Judicial Center.

New Food Safety Chapters

Food Law Prof Neal D. Fortin published two chapters in two different books this spring. Both relate to the complex issue of the regulation of imported food. Although I do not have links, citations to the books are provided.

Neal Fortin, Institute for Food Laws & Regulations, Michigan State University, Michigan State University College of Law

Improving U.S. Regulation of Imported Foods, Improving Import Food Safety, pp. 89-109 (Wiley-Blackwell 2013)    

This chapter provides an overview of the amalgamation of disparate elements that make up the food import regulatory system in the United States. This patchwork collection of authorities provides a useful laboratory to observe the effectiveness of the different regulatory approaches. The author discusses how this knowledge could best be used to create a more effective, prevention-based import regulatory system.

Neal D. Fortin, Institute for Food Laws & Regulations, Michigan State University, Michigan State University College of Law

HACCP and Other Regulatory Approaches to Prevention of Foodborne Diseases, Foodborne Infections and Intoxications, Chapter 38, 4 Ed. (Elsevier 2013)

Science-based, preventative regulation was slow in coming to food law. It took more than half a century from the development of HACCP — Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point — in the 1950s, for Congress to direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to apply comprehensive, science-based, preventive controls across the food supply. Full implementation will likely take several years, but the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) signed into law on January 4, 2011, provides FDA with a mandate to shift the focus of the FDA from primarily reacting to food safety problems to prevention. 

FSMA requires that all FDA regulated food companies implement a written hazard analysis and risk-based preventive control plan unless specifically exempt. In addition, FSMA directs FDA to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to propose “science-based minimum standards for the safe production and harvesting” of fruits and vegetables that are raw agricultural commodities for which FDA has determined such standards will minimize the risk of “serious adverse health consequences". The law also provides FDA with new enforcement authorities designed to achieve higher rates of compliance with prevention and risk-based food safety standards. 

This chapter summarizes the evolution of science-based risk control systems into food regulation in the United States beginning with the development of HACCP and finishing with enactment the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2011. Key points of the HACCP regulation for seafood, meats and poultry, juices, and FSMA risk-control plans are covered. Finally, the chapter provides advice on compliance with these control systems. 

The Science, Law and Policy of Neonicotinoids and Bees: A New Test Case for the Precautionary Principle

Another article that is on my summer reading list is the very timely article by Food Law Prof Alberto Alemanno discussing the precautionary principle and the regulation of neonicotinoids.

Alberto Alemanno, HEC Paris - Law Department
The Science, Law and Policy of Neonicotinoids and Bees: A New Test Case for the Precautionary Principle,  European Journal of Risk Regulation, 2/2013

Once more, while facing an analogous risk phenomenon affecting their predominantly homogeneous societal and economic interests, the US and EU authorities seem to adopt diverging stances. Amid the publication of several new studies and a set of EFSA scientific opinions linking the use of the world’s most widely used pesticides to bee decline, the European Union is poised to adopt a temporary ban on their use. While the Commission does not expressly rely on it, its restrictive decision is clearly based on the controversial precautionary principle. Yet, as it is discussed in this article, the conformity of this decision with the requirements that determine the legal invocation of this principle remains doubtful.  

This article proceeds as follow. Part II first introduces the reader to the main features and usages of these controversial insecticides, called neonicotinoids. It then discusses how concerns have arisen around their use and analyses the available science exploring their impact on the sudden decline of bee colonies. Part III identifies and comments the restrictive actions currently undertaken across the European Union both at the national and EU level. Part IV in turn provides an overview of the scientific and regulatory approaches adopted by US authorities vis-à-vis neonicotinoids. By building upon the previous two sections, Part V contrasts the EU scientific and regulatory approach towards the use of these pesticides with that adopted by the US authorities. It then attempts at illustrating the factors explaining the current regulatory divergence across the Atlantic upon the issue of neonicotinoids. In order to provide a legal analysis of the EU restrictive stance over these pesticides, Part VI measures how the EU controversial restrictive measures score under both EU and WTO law. Lastly, some final conclusions provide some recommendations on how to render less controversial the invocation of the precautionary principle in the EU and beyond.

Preempting Humanity: Why National Meat Ass'n v. Harris Answered the Wrong Question

I also recommend the following thought-provoking article by Food Law Prof Pamela Vesiland. I am pleased to note that Pamela has agreed to stay with us for another year at the University of Arkansas School of Law, serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Pamela earned her LL.M. degree in Agricultural & Food Law in May.

Pamela Vesiland, Preempting Humanity: Why National Meat Ass'n v. Harris Answered the Wrong Question, 65 Me. L. Rev. 685 (2013).

National Meat Ass’n v. Harris is poised to become a significant legal barrier to industrial animal agriculture reform. Although Congress has historically refrained from setting even minimal protections for animals raised in industrial operations, the Supreme Court’s 2012 opinion laid the foundation for expanding Congress’s Commerce Clause authority to set national limits to state animal welfare standards. National Meat asked whether USDA slaughterhouse and packing plant regulations under the Federal Meat Inspection Act preempted California’s newly-raised standards for handling disabled (or “downed”) livestock. In answering this question, the Court misconstrued federal legislative and regulatory history and improperly conflated the state’s animal cruelty regulations with its food safety regulations and the USDA’s food safety regulations. Taking the resulting opinion to its logical conclusion, Congress and the USDA have unprecedented supremacy to limit state farmed animal welfare and anti-cruelty standards. This unfortunate consequence might have been avoided had National Meat asked a better question: Whether California’s welfare standards for downed livestock violated the “dormant” Commerce Clause. Mounting tensions between meat and dairy corporations and organizations representing animal welfare, food safety, and consumer protection interests will eventually force congressional action. Unless its preemptive authority in the area of farmed animal welfare is correctly defined, Congress will continue to impose artificial limits on state police authority to define what is “humane.”

FDA and the Rise of the Empowered Consumer

I 'd like to highlight some of the articles that our Food Law Professors group are publishing. As member Alberto Alemanno is the editor of the LSN, Food Law & Policy eJournal, his listings are a good way to start. I noticed Lewis Grossman's recent article, described and linked below, and it is now on my "must read list" for the summer.

Note:  it would be wonderful if listserv members would either post themselves or send me titles and abstracts of your recent work for posting. Otherwise, it will just be the articles that I happen across and recommend.

FDA and the Rise of the Empowered Consumer
By Lewis A. Grossman, American University

Presented to the Harvard Law School Petrie Flom Health Law Center Annual Conference: FDA in the 21st Century

This paper traces the historical evolution of a view of consumers as informed, rational, and rights-bearing decision makers, and the corresponding diminution of FDA’s role as a paternalistic gatekeeper acting in conjunction with medical and scientific experts to prevent products and information from reaching the public.  

The relationship between consumers and FDA-regulated products has changed dramatically since the mid-1960s. A half century ago, FDA treated consumers as passive and ignorant. Accordingly, the agency gave them relatively little latitude to make their own choices among products and denied them much of the information they could have used to inform such choices. By comparison, today’s consumers of food and drugs are much more empowered to make their own, unmediated choices among a wider variety of products, guided by a deluge of labeling and advertising information. 

The paper examines this phenomenon against a background of three societal and cultural trends during the past half century: Americans’ declining trust in major institutions, the “rights revolution,” and the dramatic expansion of health care information accessible to consumers. It then examines a variety of specific regulatory developments during this period of change. In a section on food, the paper considers reforms in standards of identity and nutrition labeling, the rise of health claims as facilitated by the First Amendment, and various popular movements for freedom of choice with respect to food ingredients and dietary supplements. The paper then turns to drug regulation, examining the rise of patient labeling and direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, the tidal wave of “switches” from prescription to over-the-counter status, and the birth of social movements seeking to influence FDA drug approval policy. The paper concludes by speculating on whether this new model of consumer is a permanent one.

Yale Food Symposium-Yale University, October 18-19, 2013

Thanks to Melissa Mortazavi, Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School for passing along the information below.


Yale Food Systems Symposium
Yale University, October 18-19, 2013

The parallel forces of urbanization and globalization are transforming our planet. They are bringing unprecedented changes to food production and distribution, livelihoods, communities, and the environment. While the pace of this transformation presents significant challenges to the creation of just and sustainable food systems, it may also create powerful opportunities: to support ecological stewardship, promote economic sustainability, cultivate human health, and ensure social justice. Currently, divergent food system paradigms compete for validity. How can these diverse perspectives be negotiated? How can we synchronize the efforts of research, policy, and practice?
The Yale Food Systems Symposium will bring emerging and established scholars and practitioners to work together in action-oriented sessions that address the complex ecological and socio-economic processes of food production, consumption, climate change and rapid urbanization. A variety of session formats will encourage transdisciplinary dialogue and an active exchange of ideas. We seek a diversity of proposal formats: panels, working groups, roundtables, poster presentations, and papers. We welcome perspectives from the natural and social sciences, from applied disciplines, and from community practitioners. Proposals that bring scholars and practitioners together, work across disciplines, or partner emerging and established researchers are especially encouraged.

Topic areas include, but are not limited to:

Climate change and the food system
Urbanization, land use change, and food systems planning
Politics, policies, and governance across scales
Agricultural biodiversity and issues of genetic property
Sustainable intensification, multi-functional agriculture
Urban-rural linkages
Public and market-based approaches to regulating the food system
Alternative food networks
The right to food, food justice, and food sovereignty movements
Industrial ecology approaches to food systems analysis
Sustainable diets and assessing and forecasting nutrition trends
Sustainable supply chains
University-community partnerships
Research methods, participatory practice, and frameworks for collaboration

Submission form and deadlines:

Deadline for submission is July 1, 2013. Abstracts & workshop proposals should be 150-200 words and include a title and keywords. Please submit online using our abstract submission form. Accepted proposals will be notified by August 15, 2013.

Questions about proposal submission and registration may be directed to yalefoodsymposium@gmail.com.

Maine Law Review Food System Conference: Articles Available

Announcement from the Maine Law Review (edited for this post):

On February 23, 2013, the Maine Law Review organized a day-long conference in Portland, Maine devoted to discussing emerging issues in food law and policy.  This conference, Colloquium:  Local Food, Global Food:  Do We Have What It Takes to Reinvent the U.S. Food System? brought together more than a dozen legal scholars from around the country, including some from our Food Law Professors network. The audience was comprised of members of the legal community, policymakers, farmers, and community organizers.  The conference became a forum for exploring the many ways in which people are challenging conventional thinking about U.S. food systems, and the hurdles they face in so doing.

To continue to facilitate the exchange of ideas about these important and relevant issues, the Maine Law Review has devoted much of Volume 65:2 to legal scholarship on food law and policy. The spring volume, which includes sixteen essays on a diverse range of food law and policy topics, is now published and available online on the Maine Law Review website.

 To purchase a paper copy, please e-mail mlreditor@maine.edu.

Maine Law Review
University of Maine School of Law
246 Deering Avenue
Portland, ME 04102

Food Law Clinical Work at Stanford

A while back, we put out a call for information about teaching experiences in Food Law & Policy classes.  Professor Jay Mitchell at Stanford responded with some information about the food law work he is doing through the Organization and Transactions Clinic at Stanford.  The clinic that he runs represents a number of organizations active in sustainable agriculture, small-scale farming, food security, and food system reform.  Jay provided a one-page description of the clinic, the work it does, and a summary of recent "food and ag" projects.

A couple years ago, Jay published an article in the Journal of Food Law and Policy, Getting in the Field, about why ag clients are great project sources for clinics and other law school experiential education programs.  Helpful and inspiring article -  thanks, Jay.

USDA ERS Report on Use of Nutrition & Health Claims (1989-2010)

I just came across an interesting report that the USDA ERS issued in February 2013, Introduction of New Products With Voluntary Health- and Nutrition-Related Claims (1989-2010). It reviews the use of health and nutrition related claims on food packaging over the years covered, noting trends.  For example, it notes that that food companies made these types of claims on 43.1 percent of new products introduced in 2010.  The report tracks health- and nutrition-related claims displayed on new products from 1989 to 2010 and delineates the claims by product category and type of claim. It also attempts to evaluate sales and average nutrient content of all new food and beverage products carrying at least 1 of the top 10 health- and nutrition-related claims from 2010.  It's available in a free download from the publication's USDA ERS page.