Day 1 | Monday, January 25, 2010
8:00 Registration Opens and Coffee Served
9:00 Opening Remarks from the Chair
Laurent Pellerin
President
Canadian Federation of Agriculture
9:15 Strategic Decision-Making To Overcome Market Access Challenges
Part I: Maintaining and Managing Market Access in Light of International Trade Developments
Moderator and Speaker:
Cliff Sosnow
Partner
Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP
Speakers:
JoAnne Buth
President
Canola Council of Canada
Dennis Laycraft
Executive Vice President
Canadian Cattlemen’s Association
Richard Wansbutter
Vice President of Government & Commercial Relations, Viterra and Director
Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance
- Current status of challenges to trade policies affecting Canadian agriculture:
- Investigating U.S. country of origin labeling:
- Developments in Canadian responses to U.S. protectionist measures
- Status of domestic efforts to protect the Canadian hog industry and other key agricultural sub-sectors affected by the COOL laws; steps you can take to ensure that your organization can benefit
- Mitigating the effects of market loss: Practical steps for managing change and uncertainty at the organizational level; top tips for advising senior management
- Anticipating trends in European and other international bans on genetically-modified products:
- Exploring the reality of scientific vs. consumer-driven trade behaviour, and limits to enforcing trade agreements
- Determining steps to respond to international bans: Working with partners within the sector, with government, and with international organizations to increase market share
- Establishing internal systems to cope with increasingly restrictive European agricultural regulatory policies
- Considering GMO regulations and the issue of non-approved events: Exploring the need for adoption of “low level presence” legislation
- Determining the effectiveness of legal remedies under the trade agreements
- Steps to take to prepare for trade challenges
- Understanding changes to Canada’s variety registration program and the legal implications of moving away from “kernel visual distinguishability”
- Making sense of domestic and international legislation affecting agri-food:
- Obtaining the latest developments in efforts to harmonize domestic laws, regulations and standards with international counterparts: What is your organization’s role? What is expected of you?
- Equivalency agreements: Where are we now? Latest update on the U.S.-Canada Organic Equivalency Agreement and other key agreements to increase market access
- Strategies to maximize compliance with and risk manage the impacts of changing domestic and international laws affecting agri-food
- Exploring the impacts of developments in international trade on domestic agricultural support programs
- Determining the factors behind increased fluctuations in international currency exchange and world market prices for farm products:
- Understanding how practices used by new players in the commodity markets affect price volatility and determining what measures can be taken to mitigate the effects of such practices
- Maximizing compliance with key legal obligations under the principal trade agreements:
- Identifying key obligations: What are they? What are the effects along the value-chain?
- Practical tips to ensure you keep compliant
- Considering the benefits of exceeding compliance standards
10:45 Networking and Refreshment Break
11:00 Part II: Increasing Market Access through Scientific Research and Product Innovation
Dr. Lorne Hepworth
President
CropLife Canada
Dr. Peter Jones
Director, Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals
University of Manitoba
Dr. Wilf Keller
President and CEO
Genome Prairie
- Opportunities to expand domestic and international markets through the development of functional foods, nutraceuticals and other new food products:
- Understanding the business case for functional foods and nutraceutical products: The interface between agriculture and health and reducing healthcare costs through agri-food preventative measures
- Determining opportunities to invest in new products
- Strategies to develop sufficient clinical proof of health benefits: What must you have?
- Top tips for working effectively with regulatory agencies for promotion of new products
- Using science and genomics technology to support Canadian innovation: Overview of leading developments across Canada
12:30 Networking Luncheon for Delegates and Speakers
1:45 Part III: Protecting Investments in Innovation and New Product Development
Dr. Paul Arnison
President
Botanical Alternatives Inc.
Dr. John Culley
Director, OIPC
Science Partnerships Directorate Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Dr. Konrad Sechley
Partner
Gowling, Lafleur Henderson LLP
- Review of the current patent landscape in the agri-food sector: Emerging issues and trends for obtaining patents
- Anticipating changes in patent protection for agri-food products:
- Update on the latest developments
- Exploring what the legislation will look like
- Steps to take to prepare for legislative change
- Differentiating Canadian products in the international marketplace:
- What factors can you control? What can you not control?
- Maximizing protections at the domestic and international levels
- Accessing funds for research and development: What new programs are available? Procedure to access funds
- Exploring key legal and business considerations for forming effective research partnerships:
- What do you need to consider when drafting the partnership agreement? What terms do you need to have?
- Balancing the interests of each partner within the agreement and clarifying rights to the products of the partnership
- Overcoming legal risks: Ensuring that you have the right patent for your technology; overcoming barriers to access to the technology; legal considerations in licencing technology
- Strategies to maximize the value of the Canadian domestic market:
- Determining trends in Canadian consumer demand for new, safer, and healthier products: Key risks and opportunities for existing agri-food entities
- Effective communication with domestic and international stakeholders and consumers; legal limitations over what you can claim
3:00 Networking and Refreshment Break
3:45 Part IV: Determining Key Legal and Business Factors in Meeting the Challenges of Sustainable Agriculture through Biotechnology
Glyn Chancey
Executive Director, Plant Health and Biosecurity Directorate
Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Dr. Randal Giroux
Science and Regulatory Leader – Agricultural Biotechnology
Cargill Incorporated
- Understanding the status and implications of Bills C-353 (the Terminator Seeds Ban Act) and C-370 (An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods))
- Uncovering developments in genetically-modified agri-food products: Update on Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety:
- Latest initiatives and lessons learned to date
- Legal implications of the Protocol on agri-food product labeling: What you need to do to keep compliant
- Best practices to ensure compliance with international regulation of GM products: Documentation needed to alert a country that a product is GM
- Identifying key legal issues associated with GM affecting the Canadian agri-food supply chain: Determining who along the value-chain is responsible for the escape of a GM product into the environment
- Top tips for balancing compliance with domestic regulation, key international requirements and rules imposed by some buyers on GM products:
- Best practices for managing the marketing and public relations challenge
- Evaluating key liability exposures in the event of non-compliance
- Managing the interplay between legal requirements, what is scientifically possible, and what is socially acceptable: Examples of strategies to balance regulatory compliance with reputation management and innovation
- Top tips for communicating with and educating stakeholders and consumers about GM products
5:00 Conference Adjourns
Day 2 | Tuesday, January 26, 2010
8:00 Coffee Served
9:00 Opening Remarks from the Chair
9:15 Anticipating And Managing Risks In Agri-Food Emergences And The Impacts Of Litigation
Kristine Kring
Counsel
Bayer CropScience LP
Dr. Wayne Lees
Chief Veterinary Officer
Manitoba Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs
Rory McAlpine
Vice President, Government & Industry Relations
Maple Leaf Foods
- Where are the waves of litigation coming from? Top tips to anticipate litigation and what you can do about it now to minimize litigation exposures
- Top tips to minimize the impacts of litigation along the agri-food supply chain:
- Effectively working with your supply chain partners to reduce risk
- Steps to be taken along the supply chain
- Exploring strategies to manage financial exposure and minimize business and reputational damage:
- Examining the pros and cons of acknowledging responsibility: At what point do you admit that you have a problem?
- Strategies to manage media response to the crisis
- Exploring key recommendations arising from the Final Report of the Independent Investigator into the Listeriosis Outbreak and the Report of the Subcommittee of Food Safety established by the standing committee on agriculture and agri-food
- Determining the current status of Bill C-6 (An Act respecting the safety of consumer products (Canada Consumer Product Safety Act)) and anticipating its major impacts on agri-food business and legal strategy
10:45 Networking and Refreshment Break
11:00 Using Traceability To Anticipate And Overcome Key Risks At The Primary Agriculture Level
Jeff Clark
Manager, National Traceability Program
Canadian Pork Council
Daniel Lutz
Director, Integrated Traceability
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Chi Mai Vu
Directrice adjointe, Institut National de Santé Animale, Agriculture
Pêcheries et Alimentation Québec
- Methods to detect potential problems with food safety before they happen: Understanding developments in science to be able to identify inherent risks at the genetic level in agricultural products
- Managing risk in sourcing components on an international basis: Best practices to ensure the quality of components, and balancing legal risk management with cost
- Using traceability to minimize market-related product risks:
- Cross-Canada update on legislative developments in traceability
- Exploring traceability requirements in Quebec, and the latest developments in Alberta
- Determining traceability requirements among Canada’s leading trading partners:
- What should Canadian companies and suppliers be compliant with?
- Top tips to maximize compliance
- Considering developments in jurisdictional hurdles to traceability: Who may collect the information? Who has the responsibility to run a traceability program at the governmental level?
- Traceability as a factor in establishing
- Integrating traceability into an overall crisis management and quality management process
- Exploring issues and opportunites for working with different levels of government, producer organizations, and partners along the supply chain on traceability
- Best practices for documenting traceability along the supply chain
12:15 Networking Luncheon for Delegates and Speakers
1:30 Responding To Environmental Sustainability Challenges In The Agri-Food Sector
Part I: Legal and Business Developments in Water and Nutrient Waste Management
Dr. John Fitzgibbon
Professor of Planning, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development
University of Guelph
Chris Attema
Water Quality Specialist
Ontario Cattlemen’s Association
- Update on legislative and case law developments affecting watershed and nutrient waste management in the agri-food sector
- Cross-Canada overview and update of nutrient waste management regulations:
- Exposing the legal risks of non-compliance
- Understanding the full extent of risks to competitiveness resulting from nutrient waste legislation on key jurisdictions
- Considering key impacts of nutrient waste regulation on the hog and beef industries and chemical and fertilizer agricultural inputs
- Determining the latest developments in access to compensation for major changes to agricultural production resulting from regulatory policy:
- What compensation programs are available?
- What is required to access funds?
- Overview of new nutrient waste treatment tools and techniques: Gaining access to new technologies and how to pay for the cost of integrating their use
- Understanding the relevance to your business of the relationship between public interest in water and private impacts on land:
- Anticipating changes in regulatory measures in respect of water and nutrient waste management
- Ensuring adequate controls to manage bacterial loading under increasingly stringent regulatory measures
- Top tips for working with the public to ensure water quality and watershed protection
2:45 Networking and Refreshment Break
3:00 Part II: Exploring Opportunities through Agricultural Carbon Trading
Elizabeth DeMarco
Partner
Macleod Dixon LLP
Paul Manning
Partner
Willms & Shier Environmental Lawyers LLP
Don McCabe
Environment Committee, Canadian Federation of Agriculture and Vice-President
Ontario Federation of Agriculture
- Update on the status of carbon trading regimes at provincial and federal levels across Canada and in the U.S.:
- Key considerations under Alberta’s carbon trading legislation for the agricultural sector; developments in B.C., Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia
- Latest developments under the Western Climate Initiative
- Impact of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 on Canadian carbon trading initiatives and implications for the agri-food sector
- Determining opportunities for carbon trading within different agricultural sub-sectors
- Developments in methods to capture and value carbon sequestration in agricultural processes: Getting primed for the carbon-trading boom
- Top tips for factoring carbon emissions management and trading into project management decisions
4:30 Closing Remarks from the Chair
Conference Concludes
Conference Details
