Culinary Careers: The Food Fraud Lawyer

You remember the seafood stink this past summer, right? A widely reported study by the Toronto-based conservation organization Oceana Canada found that 44 per cent of seafood it tested in five Canadian cities this year and last was mislabelled. The study found that three-quarters of those mislabelled samples were actually cheaper fish being sold as more expensive varieties.

It was one of those stories that might have stuck in our throats at the time but, life being what it is, most of us moved on, likely continuing to shop the way we always had.

For someone such as Glenford Jameson, such hoodwinking is less easily forgotten. Jameson is a Toronto-based food lawyer. Food fraud is top of mind for him.

“Here’s the scary part about food fraud,” he says. “Generally it’s done in such a way that most consumers would not realize, and because of that, it’s tough to measure. It’s not like people are opening boxes of Laura Secord chocolates and they’re filled with caramel-flavoured wax from South America. It’s not that blatant.”

He cites olive oil as an example. In 2017, the Montreal firm Les Entreprises Simon & Nolan pled guilty to cutting extra-virgin olive oil and two additional products with other vegetable oils, and the company was fined $20,000. The case grew out of an investigation by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which enforces Canada’s food laws.

There were earlier, similar cases in Canada and the U.S. For instance, in a 2016 program on the topic, the CBS newsmagazine program 60 Minutes alleged mafia connections to olive oil fraud.

However, Jameson says that because most of us aren’t oliveoil experts, we wouldn’t recognize the “highly counterfeited” product as such.

Canadians are legally protected against food fraud under section 5(1) of the Food and Drugs Act, which makes it illegal to “label, package, treat, process, sell or advertise any food in a manner that is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression regarding its character, value, quantity, composition, merit or safety.”

Laws notwithstanding, food fraud has taken new twists and turns thanks to our increased concern with and knowledge about our food.

Whereas we once focused on whether the price of hamburger was 10 cents more a pound than the previous week, Jameson says that more and more we are now asking questions such as whether an animal was raised ethically and sustainably and if those involved in getting it to market are receiving a fair wage.

That concern opens new opportunities for fraud.

Case in point: The 2016 prosecution of Cericola Farms Inc., a southern Ontario poultry processor supplying some of the country’s largest grocers. The company was fined $400,000 and sentenced to one year of probation after an investigation by the CFIA determined that conventionally raised chicken was being mislabelled as “certified organic.”

Jameson says the case went public after an employee blew the whistle.

In other cases, there may be no whistle blower — another reason it’s hard to get a handle on the amount of fraud or mislabelling in the food sector.

Violations of trust such as the organic chicken caper clearly get Jameson’s goat.

“You’re spending money on your conscience and your belief in a food system and how animals should be treated, and so you’re put in a fundamentally unfair position where you’re never able to figure this out.”

Even though he had nothing to do directly with this or other food fraud cases — “I’m a solicitor, so I’m never in court prosecuting or defending,” he says — Jameson stays on top of such cases as part of his practice. Most of his work is actually done for food companies, advising them, for instance, on how the operation of the CFIA affects their business or the implications if they were to be caught in the wrong or even had a rogue employee.

“(Fraud) comes up for my clients in a variety of ways... Let’s say they were purchasing products from any of these defendants who pled guilty to these food fraud issues. What recourse would they have so they’re not left holding the bag in the case of an investigation?”

When it comes to labelling and other aspects of food law, he says his clients want to be compliant.

“Generally speaking, the regulatory affairs teams in place at major supermarkets and the third-party auditing firms that those supermarkets require of their suppliers are stringent, as are their supplier warranty agreements. These tools allow supermarkets to discharge their duties relating to traceability and most liability.”

He says corporations are aware that violations could lead to their being shut out of foreign markets or the imposition of new licencing frameworks.

Businesses that do commit food fraud find themselves increasingly penalized in Canada, according to Jameson.

In the past, he says, violators often faced a small fine or licence suspension. That’s no longer the case, as Mucci Farms in Kingsville, Ont. discovered a couple of years ago.

The family-owned greenhouse operation had to pony up fines totalling $1.5 million for selling foreign-sourced vegetables, most of them from Mexico, that were falsely labelled as being from Canada. The CFIA says the business sold more than $1 million of falsely labelled vegetables to large Ontario retailers.

The penalty included fines of $150,000 each levied against two company executives.

“Over the last three years, there’s been a series of prosecutions by CFIA to take guys (like this) to task,” Jameson says.

He adds, “In the last few years, we’ve seen a massive decrease in public trust in food. It’s similar to public distrust in the media. We’ve come to a place where folks have wild takes on what’s safe and what’s not safe, and GMOs, and farming practices and ethics, and allergens. It’s a difficult space to be for any Canadian consumer right now. I think that the CFIA is acknowledging that there’s a public trust issue by deciding to prosecute a bunch of these files. What’s been heartening to watch is that they’re becoming much better at prosecuting them.”

Not that prosecution, like identifying fraud in the first place, is easy. Even though advances in analytical chemistry have made product-testing faster, Jameson says the Crown has to expend considerable effort and resources putting together a case, including conducting forensic analysis and establishing intent.

When he’s discussing all this, Jameson is wholly engaged. He obviously not only thrives on the legal aspects of food, but loves the subject of food itself.

That love stretches back to his early teenage years, when he worked in restaurants. That work continued through university, when he worked as server, bartender and wine steward.

As a practising lawyer (he graduated in 2011 from Dalhousie Law School), Jameson worked for a firm that did corporate/ commercial and regulatory work with the food industry. “I found the work very interesting and kind of quirky and it had some really big problems that I liked,” he says. He has focused expressly on food law since 2013.

That expertise includes teaching Canadian food law and regulations at Michigan State University, which has had a foodlaw program for the past couple of decades, well before such programs started catching on in other universities.

“Food has always been an important part of my life,” he says. “When we talk about product quality and sourcing and fraud, there’s a part of me that says, ‘You’re professional and you have to be completely dispassionate about issues,’ but there’s certainly a part of me where this hits home. If I were a consumer buying a premium product and it turned out it was not a premium product, I’d be pretty incensed.”

G.S. Jameson & Company
43 Front St. E., Suite 400, Toronto, Ont.
food.gsjameson.com | 647.638.3994