Sessions Information

  • January 8, 2010
    4:00 pm - 5:45 pm
    Session Type: AALS Open Source Programs
    Session Capacity: N/A
    Hotel: N/A
    Room: Fountain Room
    Floor: Third Floor

    4:00 – 4:50 pm

    Food Production beyond Technology: Risks, Fears, Environment, and Labor

     

    A program on food law would naturally begin with food production.  Increasingly, consumers are interested in how food was produced, demonstrating that food production is more than agricultural and scientific techniques.  Food production raises value-laden questions of identity, personal autonomy, and concern for culture.  In addition, advancing technology implicates uncertainty and risk. This panel presents several points of focus on values in food production, approaches to risk and uncertainty in food production, and the appropriate roles for governmental intervention.  The program will follow a traditional format– each panelist speaks for 7 to 10 minutes, followed by about 10 minutes of panel discussion and audience participation.

     

    Food safety regulation development and confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) sitting management may seem to be widely disparate subjects, but Professor Tai will bring these together by focusing on  the tensions between public participation and scientific expertise in these two different contexts.  Rather than providing normative recommendations regarding these issues, however, the focus is on recognizing the implications of public participation structures for the epistemic nature of the scientific information used by agencies in reaching their regulatory decisions.

     

    Agricultural laws affect more than food.  Professor Luna will discuss globalization of the agricultural workforce and its impact on domestic Indians and the Purepecha Indians from Mexico.  The Purepecha are farmworkers residing on the Cahualla Indian Reservation in California and in difficult housing conditions.  The immediate intent is not to lay blame on the tribe housing the farmworkers; but to illustrate how agricultural laws are directly harming both groups with further attendant harm on the environment of an Indian nation. 

     

    Professor Chen will discuss the mass marketing of foods derived from organisms modified through recombinant DNA technology which has put extreme pressure on the interpretation and implementation of the United States' basic food safety law, the venerable Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. In its classic form, the FD&CA reflects its Progressive and New Deal roots. It vests enormous trust in a specialized agency, the Food and Drug Administration, which is presumed to have nonpareil expertise over food safety. The political reality of GM foods, however, has placed the FD&CA and its implementation by the FDA in severe tension with the Organic Foods Production Act and with commercial speech doctrine.

Session Speakers
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law
Moderator and Speaker

Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Moderator

University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law
Speaker

Coit Consulting
Speaker

Drake University Law School
Speaker

Northern Illinois University College of Law
Speaker

University of Arkansas School of Law
Speaker

University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law
Speaker

University of Wisconsin Law School
Speaker

Session Fees

Fees information is not available at this time.