Repast

Today on Repast, Michael and Diana talk with Wudan Yan, an award-winning narrative journalist covering science and society, about an article she published in July of this year about lead-tainted turmeric.  In this article, Wudan looked at the Bangladesh supply chain for turmeric to discuss turmeric adulteration, the battle against this adulteration, and confronting food fraud more broadly.  Michael, Diana, and Wudan discuss the article, Wudan’s process, and the complex problem of food fraud here.Wudan’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, High Country News, The New York Times, New Yorker and beyond and her journalism has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, UC Berkeley's Food and Farming Fellowship, The Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources, among others.  Prior to journalism, Wudan was a cancer biologist studying the pharmacology of drugs for the treatment of solid cancers.   You can read The Vice of Spice: Confronting Lead-Tainted Turmeric here.You can read more about Wudan Yan and explore her work here.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.  

This month, Repast welcomes Adrian Miller.  Known as the Soul Food Scholar, Adrian Miller is a culinary historian, James Beard award-winning food writer, former White House staffer, and a certified BBQ judge.  He is also a recovering lawyer.  Adrian, Diana, and Amber Ward, a 2L at Columbia Law School and the Resnick Center’s summer research assistant, discuss the history of Black cuisine, how the legacy of slavery and segregation has influenced the development of Black cuisine in America, the erasure of Black cuisine from the cultural narrative of American cuisine, and more.   You can read about Adrian Miller and his work here.Amber Ward did her 1L year at UCLA Law School and is now a 2L at Columbia Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Adrian’s book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, the winner of the 2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference and Scholarship, here.You can watch High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America, in which Adrian appears, on Netflix. 

This month, Michael and Diana talk with Professor Ernesto Hernández-López from the Chapman University Fowler School of Law about a recent opinion piece he wrote for Al Jazeera titled “Drop it America and Canada: A Corn Clash with Mexico helps no one.”  Professor Hernández, Michael, and Diana discuss the background for this piece, what is at stake in trade policy and politics, and implications for food law and policy. Ernesto Hernández-López is Professor of Law at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Professor Hernández’s article, “Drop it America and Canada: A Corn Clash with Mexico helps no one” here.  Some other work by Professor Hernández is here: Opinion Pieces·      “Why Seed Companies Fear México,” INTER PRESS SERVICE: NEWS AGENCY, Nov. 18, 2021·      “The Death of Neoliberal Corn,” LATINO REBELS, Oct. 19, 2021·      “Fighting GMO Corn, for Mexico’s Soul,” LATINO REBELS, Sept. 16, 2020Scholarly Pieces·      “Racializing Trade in Corn: México Fights Maíz Imports and GMOs,” 25 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW (JIEL) (2022) ·      “GMO Corn, México, and Coloniality,” 22 VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND TECHNOLOGY LAW 724-783 (2020)·      “Border Brutalism,” 46 Fordham Int'l L.J. 213 (2023).   A link to the book by Michael Fakhri, Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law, mentioned by Professor Hernández is here.    

Repast welcomes University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law Professor Andrea Freeman to discuss her recent article, “Food Oppression in a Pandemic,” published in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.  Professor Freeman wrote this article while participating in the Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives Initiative, and presented it at a convening at UCLA in October 2022 co-sponsored by UCLA’s Health Law and Policy Program, in partnership with ChangeLab Solutions, the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity, and the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine Here, Professor Freeman talks about her theory of food oppression, the racism inherent in the U.S.’s pandemic response, and a possible road forward.  In the podcast, as in all of her work, she emphasizes that racial justice is an aspect of food justice and is a part of every piece of food policy. Andrea Freeman is Professor of Law at the University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law, and will be joining Southwestern Law School in fall 2023. Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Professor Freeman’s article, “Food Oppression in a Pandemic” here. [If you cannot access, please contact Diana Winters.] You can find other articles published as part of the Health Justice Initiative here, and a link to the Health Justice Initiative webpage is here. A link to the webpage for Bite Back 2030, a youth-led UK-based campaign mentioned by Professor Freeman is here. 

Welcome to 2023 and Season 3 of Repast!  This month, Michael and Diana talk with UCLA Law Professor Taimie Bryant about her important new article, “Novel Food Ingredients: Food Safety Law, Animal Testing, and Consumer Perspectives,” published in the Marquette Law Review.  They discuss animal testing, science and the law, consumer trust in regulation, and the capacity of the FDA, among other things. Taimie L. Bryant is Professor of Law at UCLA Law and the Director of the UCLA Animal Law and Policy Small Grants Program.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Professor Bryant’s article here.A list of her other work can be found here.

In this month’s very special episode of Repast, Michael and Diana talk with Peter Barton Hutt, who is one of the premier figures in the modern development of food and drug law, and who has significantly shaped the field.  Hutt is senior counsel at Covington and Burling LLP; he was Chief Counsel for the Food and Drug Administration from 1971 to 1975; he is co-author of Food and Drug Law: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, 1st edition 1980, 2d edition 1991, 3d edition 2007, 4th edition 2014, 5th edition 2022); he has taught Food and Drug Law annually at Harvard Law since 1994; and he is the author of more than 175 book chapters and articles on Food and Drug Law and on health policy.  Here, Miuchael, Diana, and Peter discuss Hutt’s leadership at FDA and some of the major obstacles and milestones he encountered, his teaching and his impact on his many students, his scholarship and how it has shaped the world of food and drug law, and his practice.  Peter Barton Hutt is a senior counsel in the Washington, DC law firm of Covington & Burling LLP.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Mr. Hutt’s bio and representative publications here.  You can find the latest version of his Food and Drug Law casebook here.

Today on Repast, Diana talks with Resnick Center Executive Director Michael T. Roberts about his new publication, “International and national regulatory strategies to counter food fraud,” which he wrote in conjunction with authors from the law department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  They discuss the long history of food fraud, the intractable nature of the problem, the roots of the problem in the complexities of supply chains, and some possible solutions. Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Professor Roberts’s publication here.  His other work can be found here.Information about the Food and Drug Law Institute's previous Food Advertising, Labeling, and Litigation Conference is here.

In this episode of Repast, Michael and Diana talk with Professor Timothy Lytton, Professor of Law at Georgia State University about his new article, “Using Insurance to Regulate Food Safety: Field Notes From the Produce Sector,” published in the New Mexico Law Review.  They discuss the management of risk in food safety, gaps in food safety regulation, and the potential of the insurance industry to partially fill these gaps.  Professor Lytton also talks about his process, and what is next in his scholarship.  Timothy D. Lytton is Associate Dean for Research & Faculty Development, Distinguished University Professor, and Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find Professor Lytton’s new article here.  His other work can be found here.

This month on Repast, Michael and Diana talk with a very special guest, Dr. Sara Bleich, the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity for the Food and Nutrition Service, USDA.   Dr. Bleich is leading the department’s work to counter food and nutrition insecurity in the United States.  In this episode, Dr. Bleich discusses the USDA’s Actions on Nutrition Security, the difference between food security and nutrition security, health equity, structural racism, the upcoming historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, and much more.Dr. Sara Bleich is on leave from her tenured position as a Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  She is a well-regarded public health policy expert specializing in food and nutrition policy and the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications. Her research centers on food insecurity, as well as racial injustice within the social safety net. Dr. Bleich holds a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia University.In the first year of the Biden administration, Dr. Bleich served as Senior Advisor for COVID-19 in the Office of the Secretary. In January 2022, she transitioned to her new role as the first Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity at the Food and Nutrition Service at USDA.  She will elaborate more on this role today.  From 2015-2016, she served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration, where she worked in USDA as a Senior Policy Advisor for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services and with the First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative.  Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.  For more on the USDA’s Actions on Nutrition Security, see here.See here for Secretary Vilsack’s address on the USDA’s Actions on Nutrition Security.See here for the USDA’s new blog series on nutrition security.Look here for information about the upcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.  

In this episode of Repast, Michael and Diana chat with Michael L. Baum and Pedram Esfandiary from the national law firm, Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, about their current work in the ongoing toxic baby food litigation. In these cases, Baum and Esfandiary represent families whose children developed autism and ADHD after consuming baby foods contaminated with high levels of toxic heavy metals.  In addition to discussing this litigation, Winters, Roberts, Baum, and Esfandiary talk about the role of litigation in filling regulatory gaps, the role of science in the law and their work in particular, and how students can get involved in these issues. Michael L. Baum is the Senior Managing Shareholder and President of the national law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, based in Los Angeles. He is proud to be a UCLA undergraduate and law school alum.  With 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical litigation and biological products’ litigation, Michael concentrates on litigating plaintiff product liability consumer products, pharmaceutical cases and consumer class actions.Pedram Esfandiary is an attorney at Baum Hedlund in Los Angeles and works on many of the firm’s mass tort cases. By the age of 26, Pedram had worked on the first three historic Roundup cancer Monsanto trials with Michael and UCLA alum Brent Wisner, resulting in verdicts of $2.42 billion.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find information about Baum Hedlund’s toxic baby food litigation, including links to important documents, here.The 2021 Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy Report on tainted baby food can be found here.Information about the Kiss the Ground documentary can be found here. 

In this month on Repast, Michael and Diana talk with Neil Hamilton, Professor Emeritus and Former Director of the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University.  Professor Hamilton has been a professor at Drake since 1983.  Among other things, he is a Member of the Board of Directors for the Iowa National Heritage Foundation and a past president of the American Agricultural Law Association.  He was the Chair of the Iowa Food Policy Council (2000-2007), the Chair of the Agriculture Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and the Vice chair of the USDA Small Farms Advisory Committee (1997-2000).  Hamilton is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Land Remains—A Midwestern Perspective on Our Past and Future, which he discusses here. Neil Hamilton is Professor Emeritus at Drake University Law School. Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can buy The Land Remains—A Midwestern Perspective on Our Past and Future here.

In this episode of Repast, Michael and Diana talk with Susan Schneider, the William H. Enfield Professor of Law and the Director of the LL.M. Program in Agricultural & Food Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law.  Professor Schneider is a pioneer in the academic study of food and agricultural law, and among many other publications, is the author of Food, Farming, and Sustainability, Readings in Agricultural Law.  Here she talks about the past, present, and future of the discipline.  Susan Schneider is Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can find more information about the LL.M. Program in Agricultural & Food Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law here.Food, Farming, and Sustainability, Readings in Agricultural Law is linked here.

Today on Repast, Michael and Diana talk with Evan Graham Arango, the owner, founder and farmer at Ojai Roots Farm in Ojai, CA. Evan graduated UCLA Law in 2020 specializing in environmental law and taking courses in food and agricultural law and policy. He is a Research Affiliate with the Resnick Center and is on the advisory board of UCLA Law's Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.Evan, Michael, and Diana talk about Ojai Roots, making a difference at the local level, regenerative agriculture, policy obstacles and visions, and much more.   Evan Graham Arango is the owner and founder of, and the farmer at Ojai Roots Farm.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.  

This month on Repast, Diana Winters and Beth Kent, a fellow in environmental law and policy at the Emmett Institute at UCLA Law, talk with Jamiah Hargins, founder of Crop Swap LA and the Asante Microfarm, about healthy food access, the need to keep things local, and why Crop Swap LA is actually a lifestyle company.  Jamiah, Diana, and Beth discuss the intricacies of growing and distributing food in L.A., L.A. food policy, and exciting Crop Swap LA and microfarm developments.  Jamiah also points to meaningful volunteer opportunities for students and others looking to make a difference in healthy food access, community development, and food policy.Jamiah Hargins is the founder of Crop Swap LA.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Beth Kent is an Emmett/Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at UCLA Law.Crop Swap LA's website is here.You can find a L.A. Times article about Jamiah here, and one in Food and Wine here.

Today on Repast, Michael and Diana interview Professor Jennifer Chacón, Professor of Law at Berkeley Law, and previously a Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, about immigration enforcement in meatpacking and poultry processing plants.  They discuss her chapter, “Spectacular Immigration Enforcement in Hidden Spaces,” from the forthcoming book, Carceral Logics: Connections Between Human Incarceration and Animal Confinement, edited by Lori Gruen and Justin Marceau.  Among other things, they talk about the history of working conditions in the meatpacking industry, the concept of deportability and its relationship with racism, the hidden nature of meat and poultry production and the exploitation of workers, and some Biden administration policy proposals to address several of these issues.Jennifer Chacón is Professor of Law at UC Berkeley.Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. More of Professor Chacón’s publications are here. And here are some additional sources, selected by Professor Chacón, on topics discussed today: Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, DEPORTED: IMMIGRANT POLICING, DISPOSABLE LABOR, AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM (2015) Justin Marceau, BEYOND CAGES: ANIMAL PROTECTION AND CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT (Cambridge 2019)Angela Streusse, SCRATCHING OUT A LIVING: LATINOS, RACE, AND WORK IN THE DEEP SOUTH (2016)Nicolas de Genova, Migrant "Illegality" and Deportability in Everyday Life, 31 Annual Review of Anthopology (2002) Kristy Nabhan-Warren, MEATPACKING AMERICA: HOW MIGRATION, WORK, AND FAITH UNITE AND DIVIDE THE HEARTLAND (forthcoming 2022)   

In this episode of Repast, Michael sits down with Joshua Hofheimer, a partner at Sidley, whose practice focuses on representing clients in the agribusiness and food and information technology sectors, among other areas.  Michael and Josh discuss the tremendous amount of innovation that has taken place in agribusiness over the last few years, driven by a new generation of entrepreneurs and talent.  They discuss specific areas of innovation, including GE foods and CRISPR technology, and chat about the future of agribusiness. Joshua Hofheimer is a partner at Sidley.  Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. 

This month, Michael and Diana talk with Dr. Robert Lustig about his new book, Metabolical, The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine.  They talk about the health harms caused by processed foods and the massive increase in sugar consumption over the last several decades; possible societal interventions to address these problems; how the processed food public health battle is like the battle over tobacco; and more, including Dr. Lustig’s personal advice to all of us as to what healthy foods do: “Protect the liver, feed the gut.” Dr. Robert Lustig is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He specializes in the field of neuroendocrinology, with an emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. You can order Dr. Lustig’s new book, Metabolical, here.You can find Dr. Lustig’s previous book, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains, here, and his book, Fat Chance, here.

In this episode of Repast, Diana Winters and Nancy E. Roman, President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), discuss Nancy’s journey to transforming the food landscape, and look at some of PHA’s most significant campaigns.  These include Pass the Love with Waffles + Mochi, a food equity campaign held in conjunction with Michelle Obama’s Netflix show about good food, and its Healthy Hunger Relief initiative, where PHA is working to improve the nutritional profile at our nation’s food banks.Nancy and Diana also discuss some of the most important food system action items Nancy would like to see happen in both the Biden administration and on a global scale, and look forward to the upcoming PHA Summit as well as the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit, a potentially transformative moment in food systems reform. Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Nancy E. Roman is the President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America. You can read Nancy E. Roman’s latest blog post on reforming the food system here.You can register for the PHA 2021 Summit, to be held virtually on May 12, 2021, at 10am PT/1pm EST, here.You can find more information about the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit here.

In this episode of Repast, Diana Winters interviews Paula Daniels on Los Angeles food policy, the L.A. Food Policy Council, which she founded, the Center for Good Food Purchasing, and a forthcoming book, True Cost Accounting for Food: Balancing the Scale, that she edited and in which she has a chapter.  Paula and Diana discuss true cost accounting, which Paula distills with the following Oscar Wilde quote:“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  And a sentimentalist . . . is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.”For more on true cost accounting, listen now.  Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law. Paula Daniels is Co-founder and Chair of the Center for Good Food Purchasing, a social enterprise non-profit founded in July of 2015 as a national spin-off from the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, which Paula founded in 2011.   You can pre-order True Cost Accounting for Food here.     Music by Ike Winters.  

In this episode of Repast, Michael Roberts interviews Senator Tom Harkin on his years in Congress and his significant impact on food policy, the Harkin Institute and its focus on wellness and nutrition--including the Institute's upcoming symposium on food as medicine--and the opportunities Senator Harkin sees for food policy with the Biden administration .Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.Senator Tom Harkin represented Iowa in the United States Congress for more than four decades.  He served Iowa’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1985, and was a U.S. Senator from 1985 to 2015.You can read about and register for the 2021 Harkin on Wellness Symposium on March 8-9, 2021 here.Music by Ike Winters.