Welcome to the The Food Professor podcast episode 11, I’m Michael LeBlanc, and I’m Sylvain Charlebois!Tilling the rich media soil: 1 in 5 Canadians started gardening during the pandemic - Sylvain take us through the latest research results from the Dalhousie Agri-Foods lab, and what does this mean for grocers and 2021?A chilling (or is that Chile) tale of food fraud: talk about the organic raspberry scandal, the scale and scope of food fraud of this sort overall, what your/the Lab's role was in the detective work and any lessons learned on how to catch these criminalsOur special guest: Tareq Hadhad CEO and Founder of Peace by Chocolate!  We talk to Tareq  about his family’s story that is nothing short of incredible. An amazing journey of love and hope chronicled in the new book, Peace By Chocolate.We ask Tareq how has his experience influenced how he runs the company in Antigonish, Nova Scotia,  about how PBC has gone to market, and about the process getting onto the shelves at specialty retailers and a major Canadian retailer like SobeysSylvain wants to know what is so special about Syrian chocolate? What’s unique about the products?Next we talk about the Federal Government moving to ban single use plastics - what comes next for the restaurant and take-out sectorAnd Sylvain remembers the late Percy Schmeiser as we discuss the new movie Percy, staring one of my fav. actors Christopher Walkin about a Saskatchewan farmer, canola and MonsantoOther movies about farmers:Field of DreamsInterstellarThe Martian Finally a Sneak Peek: Canadians shopping and paying for local produce - next study release from the Agri-Food Analytics Lab and Supply Chain 2.0!******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!Have a safe week 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 & eComme