Upcoming Seminar I Will Be Teaching on Food Law & Policy

Since moving here to Port Townsend to live full-time, by travel has decreased significantly, which was all part of the plan. When I was full-time litigator based in Seattle, I handled lawsuits filed all over the country, and it was an unusual week where I was not headed to the airport to fly somewhere for a court hearing, deposition, client-meeting, or innumerable other tasks that come with being an attorney who handles lawsuits. Now, I do not handle lawsuits much anymore, preferring to advise businesses and non-profits to AVOID disputes that turn into lawsuits. And, I am no longer a full-time professor either. But I still teach from time to time. AND I get to travel occasionally when the speech or seminar I am presenting takes me somewhere beyond Port Townsend.

Well, this Friday, I will be traveling to to the law school at University of Arkansas ~ Fayetteville, where I will be teaching a seminar at the 2020 Food Law Student Leadership Summit, which is sponsored by the Harvard Law School Food Law & Policy Clinic. I actually had the honor of doing a panel-presentation at Harvard Law School at a conference in 2014, where I presented a paper I was then working on, entitled “Turning a Black Swan White: Questioning the Need for Regulation of Non-Industrial.” A link to the conference agenda, as well as a link to a video of my presentation, can be found here: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/new-directions-for-food-safety

At the upcoming Food Summit, I the title of my seminar is: “Home Cooks and Food Safety: Deciding what pathogens are allowed in food.” Here is a description of what I will be addressing:

In the early 70’s, a public health organization tried to force USDA to affix a warning label to meat and poultry that said, in part, “This product may contain bacteria which can cause food-poisoning.” In opposing this effort, USDA asserted that “the American consumer knows that raw meat and poultry are not sterile and, if handled improperly, perhaps could cause illness.” The court ruling on the dispute, summarized the Agency’s position as follows: “In other words, American housewives and cooks normally are not ignorant or stupid and their methods of preparing and cooking of food do not ordinarily result in salmonellosis.” The seminar will look at the statutory definitions of what constitutes unlawful “adulteration,” and how presumptions about consumer behavior are used both for and against efforts to prohibit the presence of certain pathogens from meat or poultry.

Although I do not always love leaving Port Townsend (or my family here), I do love to teach, and I do love to make people think about important issues related to food. Thus, I am looking forward to my upcoming trip…almost as much I am looking forward to returning to Port Townsend.