Welcome to a special bonus episode celebrating the 29th ANNUAL CANADIAN GRAND PRIX NEW PRODUCT AWARDSSylvain and I are thrilled to be a sponsor of these prestigious awards for the third year in a row and have the chance to hand out the hardware on the stage to the winners in person for the first time!We had the opportunity to meet and get to know many fantastic food innovators and entrepreneurs, creators and makers - from consumer brands to private retail labels.   These are their stories.In this episode, meet Scott Spencer,  Chief Operating Officer at Island Abbey Food Science Ltd. Thanks for joining us on this special bonus episode of The Food Professor. Stay tuned for plenty of great interviews of the finalists from the Retail Council of Canada's Canadian Grand Prix New Product Awards. And stay tuned for our regular full-length episodes available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google - wherever you enjoy your podcasts today.   About ScottAs the President and Chief Operations Officer of Island Abbey Foods, Scott is responsible for all company functions including the Supply Chain from Procurement through Production, Packaging and Distribution as well as Sales and Marketing for Honibe® Canada. In addition, his duties include organizational design, strategic and financial planning and S&OP. Scott also serves as the primary liaison with the community and local government agencies. Prior to joining IAF, Scott held the position of VP, Engineering and Continuous Improvement at The Nature’s Bounty Company, the United States #1 provider of vitamins and supplements. In that role he was responsible for Engineering, Maintenance, Environmental Health and Safety, Project Management and the company’s TPM based Continuous Improvement Program. Prior to joining TNBC, he was the Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) Early Management Pillar Leader for C&S Wholesale Grocers. In that capacity, he implemented TPM based Engineering tools in the design, construction and operation of fully automated mixed selection warehousing and distribution systems. In his previous role as Director of Engineering at Snyder’s-Lance, Scott was responsible for the Engineering and Maintenance functions over 13 manufacturing sites focused on project execution, equipment and infrastructure reliability and organizational development through the implementation of TPM tools. Scott also spent eight years at General Mills, holding multiple roles in Operations, Maintenance and Engineering. He began his career as a Nuclear Power Officer in the US Navy, successfully conducting two West Pack tours in the Arabian gulf onboard the USS CALIFORNIA (CGN 36) and defueled and decommissioned her two 250 MW nuclear reactors when the ship was retired. Scott earned a B.S. and M.S in Chemical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Scott lives on Prince Edward Island, with his wife, Kimberly and rescue pit bull Missy.About UsDr. Sylvain CharleboisDr. 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 Bos