Tag: Food Law Student Network

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Surviving the Squeeze – Nov. 11.2024 6PM-7PM ET

The event is TODAY (11/11) from 6pm-7pm ET over Zoom. We’ll also host a watch party in the CAFS conference room (with snacks!). We share this because it’s an interesting and pressing issue in the food law and policy arena AND it’s organized by none other than Julia Wickham and Nicole Renna!

Overview: This virtual panel will explore the challenges faced by rural grocers and the impact of consolidation on food security in their communities. By 2023, just four grocery chains control nearly 70% of the market, a sharp increase from 42% in 2000. At the same time, family grocery bills have risen by 25% since the pandemic. The rapid expansion of dollar stores in rural areas, has further strained independent grocers, who are 5% more likely to close when a dollar store opens nearby. With grocery price gouging spotlighted in Vice President Harris’ economic plan, the recent FTC trial to block the Kroger-Albertson’s merger, and reports from institutions like the University of Chicago highlighting disparities in food access, this is a timely and urgent discussion. Join us as we delve into the forces shaping food availability and affordability in rural America.

Who are our panelists?

  • Justin Stofferahn – Antimonopoly Director, Minnesota Farmers Union
  • Ron Knox – Senior Researcher, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
  • Liz Mashie – Corporate Compliance Director, Walmart
  • Moderated by: Alex Spring – Vermont Assistant Attorney General

See below for the flyer and a detailed description of the event.
Hope to see you there!

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Another Semester, Another Chance to Start a Food Law Society

foodWritten by: Rebecca Gobeil, Boston College Law School 3L, 2017-2018 Vice President of FLSN

Starting a Food Law organization at a law school is not always easy. While the field of Food and Agriculture law is extremely fascinating and many folks would be interested in it; it is hard to get folks excited about something they know nothing about. Food law interacts with so many other areas of the law: immigration law, labor law, environmental law as well as laws and policy to do with government and regulation; and approaching it this way can garner interest in the food law society at your school. Another way to start is to find an area or issue that is small enough to tackle locally so folks can feel that you are effecting real change and they are excited to get involved.

I have been brainstorming along with some others interested in food law about what can garner others interest in the field of study. One of the major ways is to connect these fields addressed earlier with food law. Invite an immigration lawyer who has worked with migrant farmers to speak with your law school so they can understand that the fields greatly interact. Similarly invite a labor lawyer interested in helping folks within the restaurant industry – particularly someone involved with the Sanctuary Restaurant movement; a movement where folks are committed to protecting those working in the restaurant industry no matter their background or immigration status. There is also so much room for crossover between food law and environmental law; whether that be concerning food waste, pesticides, waste water, air pollution or any other number of crossover topics. These crossover areas allow folks committed to other areas of the law to understand that food law is intermingled so closely to their chosen fields and it is an area that should be paid attention to and closely followed.

The other way to garner interest and start an organization is to start small. At my law school myself and another student interested in food law are looking at policies involving food waste at our school. We are hoping that taking steps to effect real change at our own school will lead others to be interested in food law and how it can affect the future of not only our school but our environment. When looking at an issue such as food waste we as students will look to regulations as well as school and local politics. Effecting real change is something nearly everyone in law school can get behind and get excited about.

What I have learned through law school and through life is that the most important thing to do is to start. So if there is no food law presence at your school but you are passionate about it take a small step. Talk to your friend group about how prevalent it is in other fields of law; focus on a small topic that affects your community; talk to your environmental/immigration/labor law community about bringing in a speaker that deals with food law. Just start, you never know whose attention and what excitement you will draw!

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The Agricultural and Food Law LL.M. at the University of Arkansas

booksWritten by: Erika Dunyak, LL.M. Student at the University of Arkansas

Hello Food Law Student Network Members!

I am an alumnus of the Network, myself, and am currently a student in the Agricultural and Food Law LL.M. at the University of Arkansas. The LL.M. is a great option for students or practitioners interested in expanding their understanding of food or agricultural law.

My experience with the program has been incredibly engaging and exciting. I have been able to take courses in the subjects that really matter to me. The experience to engage in coursework, rather than reading on my own time, has been stimulating. Courses at UArk are taught by leaders in their respective fields. Here’s just a taste of the courses I’ve been able to take:

  • Food Justice
  • Agricultural Cooperatives and Local Foods
  • Right to Food
  • Agricultural Policy and the Federal Budget
  • Food, Farming and Sustainability
  • Food Safety Litigation Strategies
  • Agriculture and the Environment
  • Special Issues in Indigenous Food and Agriculture
  • Urban Agriculture
  • Food Labeling
  • Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Human Rights in the Food and Agricultural Sector
  • Independent Research in Agricultural Labor
  • Food Safety

LL.M. courses are only 1-2 credit hours, meaning you can cram a lot of material into the 24 credit hour program.

I have found the professional and academic support at the UArk LL.M. to be second to none. I have had the opportunity to have near-weekly meetings with Susan Schneider and have developed a close professional relationship with her. For those of you who don’t know Susan, she is one of the founders of food law and a long-time agricultural law scholar.

The program is flexible and students can participate at a distance. However, students in residence may be eligible for graduate assistantships that cover tuition and a small stipend.

This video technology also works the other way. The program has been able to get in experts in to teach courses through the program’s video technology. Professors can video in to a cutting-edge video conference enabled classroom. The other option allows for condensed courses. In these courses, are all-day for about three days.

The program has an unbelievable network — you’ve almost certainly already come across some of its graduates if you’re this far into your food law interest.

But, for me, the biggest benefit of the program was not having to settle. I knew that I wanted to practice food law. I applied to the LL.M. and was accepted for a graduate assistantship in January of my 3L year. I knew that I had some plan that would get me working on food law issues. I was freed up to only apply for food law jobs. I didn’t have to take the job that I didn’t want working at my county’s prosecutor’s office until I could find something that was food related. The LL.M. has provided me with the opportunity to build my resume, get published, make connects, be a part of an amazing alumni network, and essentially hit the employment search running, rather than from the standstill of 3L.

Finally, Fayetteville is an amazing town tucked in the Ozark mountains. It is a great place to live and play and work. There is good food, great bars, great local theatre, beautiful scenery and Northwest Arkansas is home to one of the premiere modern and American art museums in the country.

Please get in touch with me if you have any questions about the program or about Fayetteville. Feel free to shoot me an email to EDunyak@uark.edu!

Cheers!

Erika Dunyak

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What to do When Your Food Law Society Doesn’t Get Funding

Written by: Kristina Ellis- a 2L at University of Denver

DU Food Law Society Volunteer Day
DU Food Law Society Volunteer Day

The Budget Requests have been turned in, the semester begins, and your Student Bar Association (SBA) issues your budget. You open the email to find out that you’ve received no funding for the year. Suddenly the planning of every event, lunch talk, and happy hour comes to a screeching halt. This year the University of Denver- Food Law Society (DUFLS) faced this fate. Getting our budget for the school year with felt like a death sentence. Our budget was spent the second we received it. The entire budget of $125 for the year was spent on supplies for an upcoming student organization fair for 1Ls.

Realizing that your student organization doesn’t have any money to put on fun events for the school year isn’t a death sentence. It’s actually a blessing. Once our executive board sat down and discussed our lack of funding, we were able to start brainstorming some creative, free or low-cost events. Events at DU usually involve putting on a happy hour in the school or providing lunch with a panel talk. A lot of student orgs in the law school tend to be very successful in drawing in 1Ls to their organization.

Last year, we took this approach in the spring. We held one lunch panel, with great food, and speakers from different parts of food law. The event had about 25 attendees, mainly there for the free food. Most of the students who attended the lunch panel sat with their laptops open doing work for their afternoon classes or responding to emails. The typical law school student org events don’t always work. Our team, without a budget, was tasked with finding events to break the mold. And here’s what we came up with:

  • Volunteering at a Food Bank
  • Volunteering at a Local Urban Garden
  • Exhibit on Food Deserts and Tour of a Local Food Desert
  • Tour of Local Brewery
  • Ask a Local Firm to Host Lunch or a Happy Hour
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Handsome Brook Farm, LLC v. Humane Farm Animal Care, Inc. — Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

Written by: Hannah Catt- a 3L at University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

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Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket: Court Affirms Humane Farm Animal Care’s Email was False Advertising

Handsome Brook Farm, LLC, is an egg producer that distributes its products in grocery stores in the United States. Humane Farm Animal Care, Inc. (HFAC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that offers certifications for egg producers that meet HFAC’s standards for humane treatment of laying hens. As a non-profit, HFAC receives a portion of the sales (plus other fees) from products with its “Certified Humane” label. Having the HFAC label on a product may make it more appealing to consumers who value animal welfare in food production, because HFAC sets its own standards for how animals must be treated.

In April 2016, the employee of another egg producer contacted HFAC, saying he knew people at a facility that packed Handsome Brook eggs. The employee further reported that the eggs “were not pasture raised, but were being packed in cartons with pasture raised labeling.” Unrelated to the claims made by the employee, HFAC audited the facility one month later. The HFAC auditor filed a report saying Handsome Brook’s certifications were expired.

On May 20, 2016, the Executive Director of HFAC, Adele Douglass, sent an email to thirty-six large retailers, including Costco, Harris Teeter, Kroger, Publix, Safeway, Target, and Whole Foods. These businesses either had a partnership with HFAC or were considering carrying Handsome Brook eggs. The email said that HFAC was prompted by a whistleblower complaint to inspect a facility that packed HFAC “Certified Humane” eggs, in addition to Handsome Brook eggs. The email continued that the “Pasture Raised” statement on Handsome Brook cartons could not be validated, and that none of the eggs being packed at the time of the inspection were pasture raised nor were they “American Humane Certified.” The email also reported that Handsome Brook’s organic certification was not up-to-date. The email closed by urging the stores to “reconsider changing suppliers.”

Before sending the email, HFAC did not contact Handsome Brook’s certifiers or make attempts to confirm the truth of the audit report. Because of the email, stores pulled Handsome Brook’s eggs, temporarily or indefinitely, and a proposed retail partner delayed its introduction of the product.

Handsome Brook initiated suit, claiming the email was false advertising under the Lanham Act. With its complaint, it included current organic certifications from the three egg producers it worked with, in addition to affidavits from the American Humane Association confirming that Handsome Brook and its affiliated producers had passed timely audits. The District Court initially provided Handsome Brook with a temporary restraining order, but later granted a preliminary injunction as well, and required HFAC to publish a retraction email.

The Fourth Circuit reviewed the granting of the preliminary injunction for abuse of discretion. A preliminary injunction is properly granted if (1) the plaintiff will likely succeed on the merits, (2) the plaintiff will likely suffer irreparable harm if the preliminary injunction is denied, (3) the balance of equities favors granting a preliminary injunction, and (4) the public interest counsels

in favor of granting the preliminary injunction. Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008).

The court first considered language in the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §1125(a)(1)(B), which forbids untrue or deceptive statements “in commercial advertising or promotion” that improperly represent another’s product. Because the Lanham Act does not provide a definition for “commercial advertising or promotion,” the court turned to a test out of the Southern District of New York. In that test, commercial advertising or promotion is defined as (1) commercial speech (2) by a defendant in commercial competition with the plaintiff (3) for the purpose of influencing consumers to buy goods or services, and the representations (4) must be sufficiently disseminated to the relevant purchasing public to constitute advertising or promotion within that industry. Gordon & Breach Sci. Publishers v. Am. Inst. Of Physics, 859 F. Supp. 1521, 1536 (S.D.N.Y. 1994). The Fourth Circuit has adopted a modified version of this test which excludes the second factor.

Commercial speech receives less protection under the First Amendment. The court found that HFAC was primarily motivated by commercial interests when it sent its email. This conclusion was based on the fact that the recipients of the email were grocers that could sell HFAC-certified products. Additionally, the email mentioned HFAC’s certification, comparing it to others in a way that presented it as superior.

The court further found that Handsome Brook suffered irreparable harm and would continue to if its injunction was denied. Handsome Brook’s allegations, found to be true by the district court, were that two grocers had stopped selling Handsome Brook Eggs and one had postponed a rollout of the product. Additionally, the contents of the email had been shared outside of the recipients, and one individual heard it being discussed at a trade show.

In coming to its conclusion, the court rejected HFAC’s defenses of truth, unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, and improperly compelled speech. The email could not be considered true where, among other things, HFAC did not conduct its audit based on the “whistleblower” report. Additionally, as the court noted, prior restraints are constitutionally permissible to stop false and misleading commercial speech. Finally, the State has an interest in protecting consumers from false and misleading speech. Thus, where the nature of the speech in this case is commercial, the compulsion is allowable.

The full opinion may be found at http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Unpublished/161813.U.pdf

Full case summary on the ABA 4th Circuit blog may be found at https://apps.americanbar.org/ababoards/blog/blogpost.cfm?threadid=34255&catid=14913

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The Florida Gubernatorial Fellows Program

Written by: Mallory Newman- 3L at Florida State University 

Image- Mallory FLSN

 

Hello FLSN members! I am Mallory Neumann a 3L at Florida State University College of Law and a Careers Co-Chair for FLSN. As Careers Co-Chairs, Zoe Grant and I plan to share internship and career opportunities in food law with FLSN members. Today, I would like to share an exciting experience that I am currently participating in.

I am a member of Class XIII of the Florida Gubernatorial Fellows Program. The program was created by a past governor to provide students with the ability to learn from top officials in state government. Fellows participate in a weekly lecture series with state leadership, policy trips around the state, and work part-time at a state agency. Fellows are placed at an agency and work on a project that aligns with their interests. As a law student interested in food and agricultural issues, I was placed at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Office of General Counsel. Fellows also engage in an independent comprehensive research project to identify and propose solutions to an issue facing Florida.

At the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, I am working on implementing the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) at the state level. FSMA was signed into law by President Obama in 2011 in response to major foodborne illness outbreaks and bioterrorism concerns. The law attempts to shift the focus to prevention of contamination before it reaches the consumer instead of reaction to outbreaks. The FDA has promulgated major rules to implement FSMA including the Produce Safety Rule, Preventive Controls for Human Food, and Preventive Controls for Food for Animals.

My fellowship centers primarily on assisting the Department in implementing the Produce Safety Rule since Florida is a significant producer of fruits and vegetables. Florida ranks first in the United States for production value of oranges, fresh tomatoes, watermelons, grapefruit, sugarcane, fresh snap beans, and fresh cucumbers and ranks second for bell peppers, strawberries, fresh sweet corn, spring potatoes, peanuts, tangerines, and avocados. Many of these produce growers are subject to the science-based minimum standards required by the Produce Safety Rule and look to the Department to assist them in complying. Through the fellowship, I assist the Department’s Office of General Counsel and Division of Fruit and Vegetables in identifying the legal and policy implications of the Department’s decisions in choosing how to implement the rule.

I believe that the Gubernatorial Fellows Program is a unique opportunity because I have the ability to gain both legal and public policy experience. The Program is open to undergraduate and graduate students in any discipline, which provides a broader experience than other legal internships. The independent research project is also a unique opportunity because Fellows have access to government data and experts to determine the most appropriate solution to the identified issue.

I highly encourage students interested in public policy to seek out similar opportunities in their state. If your state does not have a similar program, seek out opportunities through your state legislature by contacting a representative or committee that deals with food and agricultural issues. Not only will you be able to gain legal experience, but you will have the opportunity to understand the policy implications behind government regulations. These internships are also beneficial because you will feel gratified in giving back to your community and will feel the effects firsthand from the policies you help to implement.

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Starting a New Food Law Society 101 – A Step by Step Guide

Written by Zoe Grant- J.D. Candidate 2019 (University of Oregon)

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(Photo from the University of Surrey’s Webpage)

 

A Food Law Society can be a great way to collaborate with other students interested in practicing Food Law and make professional connections. Unfortunately, many law schools do not have any Food oriented organizations readily available to join. No problem! Be a trailblazer! Here are some tips that will be helpful for those interested in starting a new Food Law Society at their law school:

1) Talk to Your Peers – While Food Law may be a niche practice area, interest in the field is growing fast. All of us eat food and most of us love the opportunity to talk about it as well. Food is a common denominator across all of humanity and it is likely that your fellow law students have strong opinions on the topic that they will be willing to voice given a platform. Look for students who recognize the basic necessity of sustainable food systems and the legal frameworks to support them to get the conversation started.

2) Find a Faculty Advisor – Reach out to professors from your law school that have done research relating to Food Law (even if it’s only tangentially related). Chances are they will be interested in working with students who share their academic interests. Ask if they would be willing to support your new Food Law Society in an advisory capacity. They may contribute ideas for future activities or have professional contacts that could be speakers at your next Food Law Society meeting.

3) Throw a Potluck – Potlucks are a fantastic way to bring students together and they can also be stimulating conversation starters. There is no better way to kick off a constructive discussion of Food Policy than by sharing a meal together! Potlucks can be a great backdrop for a first meeting or can be regularly scheduled events.

4) Meet with your Student Bar Association – Your law school’s SBA will likely be a great resource in establishing your new Food Law society. They can tell you what steps are required to be officially recognized and may even have some funds available to support future events your Food Law Society wants to host.

5) Establish a Mentorship Program – This last point is key. Once your Food Law Society has been founded it is important to build mechanisms to ensure membership stays strong, otherwise enthusiasm can quickly diminish. Try pairing interested first year students with 2Ls and 3Ls. A mentorship program within a Food Law Society is a great way to engage 1Ls early on and grow a new generation of leaders to keep you Food Society running for years to come.