INTERNATIONAL ROUNDTABLE — GOVERNING THE FOOD INDUSTRY: PROCUREMENT, MARKET POWER, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Session Two -·Governing the Food Industry: Procurement, Market Power, and Accountability

Boston College Law School, the Corporate Crime Observatory, Exeter Law School, and the Global Harmonization Initiative are delighted to invite you to the second session of the two-part International Roundtable Food Industry, Law, and Society: Corporate Power, Public Health, and Accountability, to be held online via Zoom on Friday, 18 September 2026, at 08:00 Boston/New York/Washington · 09:00 São Paulo · 13:00 London · 14:00 Rome/Geneva · 22:00 Melbourne.

Registration is free and open to all: Register here

Full programme, panelist profiles, and topics for discussion: Food Industry, Law, and Society

The roundtable examines a central problem: food-industry harm and accountability cannot be understood adequately through food safety law alone. Some harms arise through conduct already recognized as unlawful, others remain concealed within corporations, contracts, and complex supply chains, while still others may result from products and commercial practices that remain lawful. At the same time, whether these harms are prevented, detected, or remedied depends on how responsibility, corporate power, regulation, enforcement, and accountability are organized. The two sessions therefore move from identifying and exposing different forms of food-industry harm to examining the governance structures and mechanisms through which they may be prevented, constrained, or addressed.

To examine these different problems without collapsing them into a single category, the international roundtable is structured in two connected sessions. Session One, on September 11, 2026, focuses on identifying, understanding, and exposing different forms of food-industry harm. Session Two, on September 18, 2026, turns to the governance question: how law, regulation, enforcement, markets, and institutional arrangements can prevent or respond to the problems identified in the first discussion. The second session will therefore build directly on the issues emerging from the first.

SESSION TWO - GOVERNING THE FOOD INDUSTRY: PROCUREMENT, MARKET POWER, AND ACCOUNTABILITY (September 18, 2026)

Session Two examines how responsibility for food environments is allocated, delegated, exercised, and enforced, how concentrated economic power can become a wider form of social, regulatory, and informational power, and which governance mechanisms are capable of changing corporate conduct in practice. The discussion will move through three connected thematic areas:

1. Public Procurement, School Meals, and Delegated Responsibility. The discussion will examine what responsibilities public and quasi-public institutions bear for the food environments they create or authorize, including schools, hospitals, universities, workplaces, and other institutional settings. It will consider whether procurement, concessions, leases, and catering agreements can be used to advance public-health objectives; what responsibility remains with institutions when food provision is delegated to private operators; how subcontracting and fragmented supply chains can weaken oversight; and how conflicts of interest, procurement irregularities, or other integrity failures may affect the food ultimately provided.

2. Corporate Power, Market Structure, and Antitrust. This part will explore how concentrated corporate power can shape not only market structure but also consumer choice, supplier relationships, regulatory institutions, scientific evidence, and enforcement. The discussion will address acquisitions of competing or differentiated brands, retail gatekeeping and distribution power, buyer power over suppliers and producers, regulatory capture and conflicts of interest, corporate influence over regulatory science, the use of legal process to challenge public-interest regulation, the wider social consequences of food-sector economic crime, and whether the systemic importance of dominant corporations can make meaningful enforcement more difficult.

3. Transparency, Civil Society, and Reform Mechanisms. The final area turns to the mechanisms through which accountability might be strengthened. The discussion will examine when voluntary corporate commitments should become legally enforceable; what distinguishes regulation that changes behavior from rules that generate procedural or cosmetic compliance; whether privately funded certification and assurance systems can provide genuinely independent oversight; why some disclosures produce regulatory or policy consequences while others do not; what litigation can achieve where public enforcement fails; whether mandatory disclosure and due-diligence regimes produce substantive change; how international governance can influence conduct across jurisdictions; and how reforms should be coordinated, designed, and evaluated in order to determine whether they have actually worked.

The session is designed as an interactive, agenda-setting discussion among participants with different forms of professional and disciplinary expertise. The discussion will conclude by asking panelists not only which reforms they consider most important, but also what evidence would demonstrate that those reforms had produced meaningful change in practice, and which questions about food governance remain unresolved and require further investigation.

Session Two: Participants

Moderator: Diane Ring (Boston College Law School) Organizers: Costantino Grasso (University of Exeter), Diana Bogueva (Global Harmonization Initiative), Yasmine Motarjemi, Diane Ring (Boston College Law School)

Panelists:

• Thin Lei Win (Lighthouse Reports)

• Miriam Wells (The Examination)

• Neal Fortin (Michigan State University)

• Christophe Brusset (Author and Food Industry Whistleblower)

• Patti Rundall (Baby Milk Action / IBFAN UK)

• Jean Féminier-Bonhomme (Former Corporate Manager)

• Jonathan Davies (The University of Manchester)

• Benjamin Wood (Deakin University)

• Roberto Caranta (University of Turin)

• Filippa Juul (SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University)

• Paul Dowling (Leigh Day)

• Laurent Gaberell (Public Eye)

• David Michaels (George Washington University, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA)

• Diogo Rosenthal Coutinho (University of São Paulo, Faculty of Law)
  

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