Sylvain Charlebois

Sylvain Charlebois
Born	(1970-03-30) 30 March 1970 (age 51) Farnham, Quebec, Canada
Other names	The Food Professor
Alma mater	Université de Sherbrooke, Université de Montréal, Royal Military College
Occupation	Professor of Management
Employer	Dalhousie University, Canada

Sylvain Charlebois is a Canadian researcher and professor in food distribution and food policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is Dalhousie's past Dean of the Faculty of Management and holds a cross-appointment as professor in the Faculty of Agriculture.^[1] He is currently the Director of the at Dalhousie University.^[2]

Career

Charlebois holds degrees from the Royal Military College of Canada, the Université de Montréal and the Université de Sherbrooke.^[3]

From 2017 Charlebois was Dean of the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University and he holds a cross-appointment as professor in the Faculty of Agriculture.^[1] In 2018, Charlebois became the director of Agri-food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie when he stepped aside as Dean.^[4][5]

Charlebois is a regular opinion contributor to Montreal's La Presse and Toronto's The Globe and Mail newspapers, and writes a blog for Canadian Grocer magazine called "The Food Professor".^[6] It was announced in 2020 that he was joining Le Journal de Montréal as a regular columnist.^[7][8] He is the lead author of Canada's Food Price Report, an annual forecast on food prices and trends.^[9] Charlebois is also a co-host of the podcast titled "The Food Professor".^[10]

Canada's Food Price Report (2010–2021)

Charlebois began publishing Canada's Food Price Report in 2010.^[11] In 2015, the project was recognized as one of the University of Guelph's most significant research accomplishments in the past 50 years.^[12] In July 2020 the University of Saskatchewan and the University of British Columbia also joined the project, contributing to the 2021 edition.^[13]

Studies

In 2008, Charlebois co-authored a study to evaluate the performance of the Canadian Wheat Board’s (CWB) Daily Price Contract (DPC) program. The study suggested that the program provided poor financial returns for farmers.^[14][15] The DPC programme was eventually cancelled when the CWB was decommissioned on 1 August 2012.

In 2011, Charlebois chaired the first international workshop on food safety performance metrics. The idea of comparing countries' food safety policies, risk management, and risk communication practices was controversial at the time.^[16][17][18] Since that seminal workshop, sharing and comparing practices in food safety amongst nations has become more widely accepted. Charlebois argues that the structure of food safety governance favours the advancement of international partnerships and collaboration.

Charlebois speaking in Toronto in 2018

In 2017, Charlebois' team examined legislation involving cannabis in Canada with particular interest in edible cannabis products. Initially, edibles were not included in Canada's Cannabis Act (also known as Bill C-45). Their study, released in September 2017, argued that consumers would be confused over what to do with cannabis-infused food products, and argued that the legalization of edible cannabis products should occur concurrently with smokable products.^[19] Weeks after the study was released, Bill C-45 was amended to include edibles.^[20] In 2019, a second study released by Charlebois' team explored how the black market for cannabis-infused food products in the country could expand if Canada's regulatory framework does not adapt to meet its growth and evolution.^[21][22]

In 2019, Charlebois' team released a cost analysis of Canada's Food Guide, a nutrition guide produced by Health Canada.^[23] While the report lauded the Guide's increased recommendations for the consumption of plant-based proteins, fresh fruits, and vegetables, it suggested the rising cost of these food items could push more Canadian families into food insecurity should they try to follow the recommendations.^[24]

In 2020, Charlebois and his team created a new index, the Global Food Innovation Index which compared factors contributing to innovation in the food, beverage and agri-food industries across many countries.^[25]

One 2018 study released by Charlebois showed that Canadians "overwhelmingly believe that GMO food products should be labelled". He is a supporter of genetically modified food ingredients, advocating for more transparency by way of strict labeling rules for consumers, but with a strong belief in the inherent safety of food products which include GMOs.^[26][27]

Over the years, Charlebois has coined a few expressions to explain food trends, including "protein wars," which refers to tensions between existing animal protein sources and plant-based alternatives for consumers,^[28][29] and the term "food category appropriation," which involves companies using well-known food descriptors such as cheese and meat but applying them to alternative products using different ingredients.^[30]

Criticism of Supply Management

Charlebois is a critic of Supply management (Canada), the country's quota system for poultry, eggs and dairy, and has advocated for major reforms to the system for more than two decades, both in academic journals^[31][32] and the popular press in both official languages.^[33][34] He co-wrote a report released by both Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph in October 2020, which presented a 20-year roadmap, called Supply Management 2.0, purportedly to help the dairy industry become more competitive.^[35]

Wally Smith, past president of Dairy Farmers of Canada a lobby an advocacy group,^[36] accuses him of false premises and says "his argument goes completely off the rails" while he suggests that "maybe ‘The Food Professor’ should become a student again and enroll in some statistical analysis courses!" Smith praises the model family farm in contradistinction to the large factory farms, and indicates that supply management is one reason for their propagation. Smith remarks that the gain in Canadian productive efficiency without the use of growth hormones like rBST over 40 years put to shame producers in the US, UK and New Zealand. Smith contends that the average herd size in Canada is 77, whereas in the US it is 500. Smith concludes that "The reality is that abandoning supply management would lead to the same type of dominance by big producers that we see in the US, and would force most of our family farms out of business."^[37]

Charlebois has always argued leaders like Smith are outdated and the system is short-sighted and would need to be much more transparent for Canadians. Charlebois also made a point that supply management supports an agenda which doesn't embrace diversity as most people controlling the dairy sector are white men.^[38][39][40]

Food tracking and food safety

A significant portion of Charlebois' research is devoted to the comparison of global food safety and traceability systems.^[41] In 2011, he chaired the first international workshop on food safety performance metrics and risk intelligence in Helsinki, Finland, in which representatives of 21 countries participated.^[42] In 2013, he was interested in allergens and their labelling.^[43] He has also served as project lead for the World Ranking Food Safety Performance Report in 2008, 2010, and 2014.^[44][45][46]

Consumer advocacy

In an op-ed published on 21 February 2021, Charlebois suggested that the social contract between dairy producers and dairy consumers was breached given that Canadians protect and compensate dairy farmers in exchange for a quota supply management system.^[47] He remarked on the industry's use of palmitic acid (a palm oil derivative^[48]) as a supplement to cow feed in order to augment the output of butterfat.^[47][48][49] Some consumers were dismayed as many noticed that physical characteristics of the dairy products had undergone a significant change, notably in increased hardness and increased melting point. Charlebois noted that this was not beneficial to the consumers, who were surprised and had not been notified of the variation in the social contract. The incident was also known as "ButterGate".^[47][48] The newsworthy item was picked up by NPR, an American broadcaster, twice in February 2021.^[48][49]

Publications

Charlebois is the author or co-author of five books on global food systems, food security, and safety.^{[citation needed]}

• Michael R. Solomon; Greg W. Marshall; Elnora W. Stuart; J. Brock Smith; Sylvain Charlebois; Bhupesh Shah (15 February 2012). Marketing: Real People, Real Decisions. Pearson Education Canada. ISBN 978-0-13-262631-6. A textbook devoted to the real-world exploration of marketing research and execution.
• Charlebois, Sylvain (2017). Food safety, risk intelligence and benchmarking. Chichester: UK Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-119-07112-9. OCLC 982031485.

In 2020 Charlebois became an Editor of journal Trends in Food Science and Technology ^[50]

Other

In May 2018, Dalhousie University opened an investigation into complaints of bullying and harassment allegedly perpetrated by Charlebois during his tenure as Dean of the Faculty of Management. The University hired an external investigator to assess the complaints and to provide a written report to its President.^[51]

References