Welcome to the The Food Professor podcast episode 21,  I’m Michael LeBlanc along with Sylvain Charlebois!The Food Professor is presented  by omNovos the digital customer engagement solution for grocery and restaurant marketers, helping you solve your customer’s most daunting questions:  what should I eat today? Find out how you can get personal and grow sales with omNovos at www.realcustomerengagement.comWell Sylvain episode 21 - I guess we’re an adult now!  And we have a fantastic guest for this episode, Mark Taylor, President and CEO of Lactalis Canada!  Great timing, we have so much to talk about, they just closed their deal for Agropur’s yogourt business,   We talk about his stellar career in the dairy industry - starting where it all begins, with dairy cows - his global experience  in the industry, perspectives around the Canadian business and industry and the trends, innovations and path forward in CanadaWe jump right in….with #Buttergate - the past two weeks events, and the  learnings and implications to the dairy industry and  beyond.We also talk about McCain's investment in vertical farming, and cricket farms for protein in London, Ontario. ******Thanks again to the folks at omNovos for being our presenting sponsor! 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 & 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 career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2024