Caroline manages the agency’s representation and positions at international standard-setting bodies, such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission, and its various Committees, and engages with foreign governments on emergency notifications and systems recognition. Caroline is also the former director of the food safety program for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and co-author of Is Our Food Safe? A Consumer’s Guide to Protecting Your Health and the Environment (Three Rivers Press, 2002). She has testified more than 20times as a food safety expert before the UnitedStates Congress and has presented papers on food safety at more than100 scientific and public policy conferences and regularly publishes in scientific and legal journals. Caroline has participated in World Health Organization consultations on food safety, and on FDA, USDA, and CDC food safety advisory panels. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont and of Antioch School of Law.
Tammy Switucha is the Senior Director of Food Safety Requirements with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. She has worked in the Canadian Federal Government for over 25 years and has been with the CFIA for the past 12 years where she has held various executive positions in International Relations and Strategic Policy. She led the Agency’s efforts to modernize its regulatory framework for food safety –the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations –for several years, the development of which began in 2014. This work also involves the development of guidance material for industry stakeholders to assist with readiness for compliance with the regulations. She is now responsible for the overall program implementation and work planning for food safety oversight by the CFIA.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. He is as well the former Dean of the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. While at the University of Guelph, he was also the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Business and Economics.
Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.
He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.
Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. He also has done some work on social licensing, which include public trust assessments and risk communication evaluations. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. He conducts policy analysis, evaluation, and demonstration projects for government agencies and major foundations focusing on agricultural policies and community development both in Canada and in development settings. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre’s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces, in the United States, Brazil, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium, China, Great Britain, Finland and the Netherlands.
