Welcome to the The Food Professor I’m Michael LeBlanc and I’m joined by Dr. Sylvain Charlebois!Slamming the farm gate behind us: we  talk about your latest research Caddle, Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University research on COVID-19, food security and euthanizing animals: https://www.dal.ca/sites/agri-food/research/farmgate-waste.htmlPigs being euthanized on the farms…bacon sales down  - the thick underbelly of the foodservice industry - is no one cooking breakfast and some startling conclusions  - Sylvain suggesting that making discarding managed commodities at farmgate illegal is a type of solution  for at least some commodities.We have a "Bun fight! Stats Canada tells us the cost of centre-of-the-aisle went up - FCPC says their members don't set pricing, RCC says the retailers haven't raised prices: is something else going on? Some examples of commodities in the centre of the isle: Baked beans, +19%; Canned tomatoes, +19%, Canned carrots, +14%;, Canned soup, +12%, Bathroom tissue, +12%....."Half Baked Idea: Janis Stein from the Munk School says that meat processing plants can and should move to almost 100% digital/robots - is this a fantasy or is there any reality to that proposition?Grocery eCommerce: from nothing to something and back again? Or will Canadians finally love shopping online for groceries?Is Something fishy going on? Canadian Government commits $470 Million to fisheries in Canada - some percentage greater than what Agriculture received?    If you liked what you heard you can subscribe on Apple iTunes , Spotify or your favourite podcast platform, please rate and review, and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the grocery, foodservice,  or restaurant industry.    I’m Michael LeBlanc, producer and host of The Voice of Retail podcast and a bunch of other stuff, and I’m Sylvain Charlebois!Stay Safe everyone!!
About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre’s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa.About MichaelMichael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire car