A new grassroots organization has been launched to provide consumers with accurate information about agriculture.
Canada Food Facts for Consumers (C3FC) plans on educating consumers to counter misinformation.
“Our goal is really to demonstrate that Canadian food and Canadian agriculture and agri-food is world class, sustainable, healthy and delicious,” said Chris Day, one of the founders of C3FC, at a media event.
“We’re going to stand up for the hard-working men and women that grow, produce and manufacture high quality food products.”
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Day said the idea for C3FC started when he was a child and both of his parents worked for Statistics Canada doing agricultural censuses. It then continued with conversations with his friend and colleague, Isabelle Bouchard.
“My friend Isabelle and I had this conversation … about the fact that there were all of these voices that we were seeing more and more get picked up on social media and in traditional media, in some cases that were questioning the world class nature, the sustainability, the helpfulness, the deliciousness, and the value of Canadian food,” Day said.
He said the organization wants to talk to people and different organizations to see how they can make a positive difference.
“We’re doing this as a real sort of grassroots start-up, and we’re hoping to scale it up pretty quickly with some support.”
Day said misinformation in Canada is more prevalent than ever from a variety of different places.
“The misinformation comes from a variety of sources including agenda-driven activists, attention-seeking academics, or other individuals simply spreading it across social media.”
C3FC is committed to spreading truthful information about the agriculture industry and production of food, Day said, and it will source its facts from a variety of resources.
“We get it from all different kinds of sources,” he said. “And so that’s from open-source academic sources, from industry sources, from media…we’re looking at it from all different kinds of perspectives, science-based, fact-based information that is reliable for people.”
Bouchard, co-founder of C3FC, said spreading accurate information about agriculture in Canada is important.
Day said to start, they hope to see people buying Canadian grown and sourced food for the holidays.
