Update: Deadline has been extended to December 14, 2009.

Food policy in Canada — it’s a bit of a daunting concept.  In Canada, we are blessed to have a bountiful food supply, very low food costs, and a vast variety to choose from.  But what is our policy about food?  We’ve got regulations about food safety, agricultural policy, and so on.  These are technical interpretations of food. Perhaps more importantly, how do we view food in our daily life, in our culture, and in our social responsibility towards each other — and interpret it all through …

As a Home Economist and a Registered  Dietitian,  I am at times torn between loving food (and I mean ALL food – including the delicious crispy fat on a BBQ’d pork chop;  full fat Brie cheese with white crusty bread;  that yummy icing made out of sugar and lard on bakery cakes) and, well… being a Dietitian!
One  food that conflicts me is “seasoned” pork and chicken, which is not “seasoned” in the sense of having added spices or flavourings, as the name might suggest.  Instead, these products have been injected …

Like many chefs, Martin Kouprie, co-owner of Pangaea Restaurant in Toronto, is always looking for variety on his menus and feels limited in his choice of land animals. “Everyone does beef, lamb, even caribou,” he says. Fine-grained and tender, horsemeat was a natural choice for Kouprie, but he recently pulled it from his restaurant’s menu. Why? Canada lacks a grading system and he can’t find a source that provides food-purpose-bred meat. “Everything available is work or race horse. Or someone’s pet,” Kouprie says.
Kouprie discovered the point-of-origin issues while doing research …

It’s everywhere! “Eat Local” endeavours are touching the country from coast to coast. The ministers of agriculture and aquaculture for the Atlantic provinces just endorsed a rather interesting campaign.
How about a completely vertically integrated large-scale food system as part of the equation? There’s a company that sells the agricultural inputs, even the fuel, then buys the finished product, processes it, and sells it in its own consumer stores. Sound like corporate agriculture, or a grand social experiment? Well, yes. Perhaps a little of each.
“Co-ops are unique in the market, in …

Here’s a topic you won’t see in the food magazines — horsemeat. Chef’s love it, animals lovers balk at the idea and the Japanese want us to ship more.
But this $60-million industry has virtually no regulations and generates a lot of controversy.
To set the record straight, Cuisine Canada’s intrepid Dana McCauley did a lot of digging. In her article Behind the Barn Door: The Hidden Facts about Canada’s Horsemeat Industry, McCauley logs dozens of hours talking to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, meat specialists, the Horse Welfare Alliance of Canada …

These are the practiced hands of Natasha Akiwenzie. She and her husband Andrew own and operate Akiwenzie’s Fish. Their whitefish, pulled responsibly right from Georgian Bay, makes its way to Toronto Farmers’ Markets and onto the menus of top Toronto chefs like Jamie Kennedy. They’re a small. They’re struggling. And I suspect they aren’t alone.
So when I read Taking Stock of Fish in the Wall Street Journal, it got me thinking. Some CSAs in the US are branching into fish. Is this a effective way to support sustainable seafood and …

In a recent speech by Dr. Harvey Anderson, Director of the Program in Food Safety, Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs at the University of Toronto, he suggested that in Canada, “We have no national nutrition policy.” Hearing speakers from around the world at the opening of University of Guelph’s Human Nutraceutical Research Unit, it was easy to see that Canada is nutritionally “all right” as a nation, and that our state of public health was not as bad as many other industrialized countries.  But we could be doing more, and in …

Complaining is always easier than doing anything about the situation. For years, I’ve heard about threats to our oceans, but wasn’t sure what I could do as a consumer. So, taking the path of least resistance, I stopped ordering fish in restaurants and bought salmon only on special occasions. But avoidance isn’t always the answer. Education often is.
Thanks to SeaChoice.org I can now make wise and sustainable choices, learn about the latest salmon ratings and even download a copy of Canada’s Seafood Guide.
Despite knowing the long-term benefits of making sustainable …