COVID-19 Researcher Videos Transcripts

Hi, my name is Phil Loring. I'm the Arrell Chair in Food, Policy and Society at the University of Guelph. I want to talk to you today about seafood and how this global pandemic is impacting both your dinner plate and the fishermen and women around the world.

No doubt you've noticed that some foods are just less available now and seafood is definitely one of them. Not only is it harder to get fresh in-season seafood at the grocer but most restaurants are also closed, meaning that unless you're really good with butter and hot oil, you're probably not ordering fish and chips anytime soon.

Now, not only is this pandemic impacting our lives through our meals, it's also impacting the livelihoods of the people who catch seafood. Major fisheries around North America, such as the Maine lobster fishery and Great Lakes fisheries have all ground to a halt.

In Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to the world's largest wild sockeye salmon run, communities and tribal councils are calling for their fishery to be closed. And the Ontario Commercial Fisheries Association, who represents commercial fishers on the Great Lakes, recently called this a matter of survival for fishing families and small communities in Ontario.

So there are challenges no doubt but there are many fishers out there who are trying their best to adapt to find new and alternative ways to get their fish to you and your family. Many small-scale fishers for example, who previously catered to restaurants, are finding their inboxes overwhelmed by individuals wanting to buy their seafood direct and they are doing what they can to fill these orders.

The fishers who are leading the industry in adapting to this challenge are those engaged in what we call Community Supported Fisheries or CSFs. CSFs are locally operated and organized individuals or groups of fishers who have opted out of the mainstream ways of getting seafood into stores. Instead,they take over the entire supply chain.

They catch it, they clean it and, in many cases, they distribute it right to your door, CSFs emerged as away for fishers to reduce operating costs to pay better wages and provide high-quality food that is harvested in a way that matches the social and environmental values of many consumers. There are hundreds of CSFs in North America.

The Local Catch organization for example, has over 400 CSFs in their network of small-scale harvesters, They represented overall a small segment of fisheries in North America, but the business model they have has proven to be very resilient in a way that large-scale fishing operations cannot.

They're an excellent example of why diversity and shorter supply chains can be so important to sustainable food systems. Now, more than ever, there will be short, medium and long-term impacts of this pandemic on all of our lives and certainly on our food systems.

But things are going to be OK and how fishermen and women respond is linked to how we respond as well. These small-scale fishers who are getting us their fish are among those who have been most negatively impacted by the consolidation and industrialization of our food systems over the years.

So to thrive they need more than just a reinvigorated customer base. COVID-19 has already exposed holes in our health care, the economy and land-based food systems. Perhaps the disruptive power of this pandemic in combination with how seafood producers are adapting will create a space for a more resilient model of fisheries and community food systems to emerge.

Thank you very much for listening. If you'd like to learn more about our work on fisheries and coastal communities, please visit CoastalRoutes.org. That's CoastalRoutes.org, where we will be profiling how fishers are responding during this tumultuous time. Be well.

Hi, my name is Jess Haines and I'm an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Guelph and also the co-director of the Guelph Family Health Study. At the Guelph Family Health Study we are testing ways to help families develop healthy routines regarding eating, physical activity, screen time and sleep.

Given that the COVID-19 outbreak has caused a huge upheaval in all of our lives, parents have been asking about how they can maintain some of their health routines in these very unusual and challenging times. So, I thought it might be useful to talk just briefly about what routines I think we should try to hang on to in our families during this time, and which ones we might be able to loosen up on a bit.

So, the first routine I think we should try to hang on to is a bedtime routine. We all know that we can handle challenges and stressors better if we have a good night's sleep. And these are very challenging times, so I suggest that families may want to keep up with their child's bedtime routine and regular bedtime.

We've seen that research has shown us that when you have a routine, kids are more likely to settle and fall asleep quicker and also have better quality sleep. So, keeping up this routine will help them sleep better. And getting kids to sleep earlier can also give parents a few hours of alone time in the evening, which these days is pretty golden. So, there's a benefit for parents, too.

The second routine I think we should try to continue is moving our bodies every day. This is a great way to release some of the stress we're experiencing, and if we move our bodies throughout the day it's very likely that we'll often sleep better at night.

Now, finding ways to be active can be challenging right now because many of the ways we used to be active with our kids are no longer available to us - so, things like playing in parks. But replacing some of those activities with dance parties or walks around the neighborhood can be ways that we can continue to move our bodies in ways we enjoy, hopefully, while still maintaining physical distancing.

The third routine I think we should try to hang on to you is having family dinner together. And you might be saying to yourself, 'are you crazy? The last thing I need, Jess, is more family time. But a family dinner each evening is actually a really predictable way for kids to end their day. And it can also be a helpful time to check in and see just how everybody's doing and weathering this challenging time.

Now, the one routine I think we can relax a bit during this time is screen time or limiting screen time. I think it's really difficult for parents to get their own home and work tasks done. Now, we have to educate our kids and manage our own stress, as well as our children's stress.

I think it's difficult to do all of these tasks and roles while ensuring our kids get you know between one and two hours of screen time per day. I think it's fine to relax right now regarding the amount of screen time our children get.

Allowing more screen time, but also balancing this time with screen-free family time allows our kids to learn a bit about how to manage their own screen time and how to balance it with other activities. And this is really a skill we need them to develop in order for them to manage their own screen time throughout their lives.

So think of this time as a really good time to practice this balance of having more screen time than we might want, but also balancing it with some of these screen-free family activities. Lastly, I just want to mention that I think we need to be kind to ourselves as parents during this time.

These are absolutely not ideal times, so we're not always going to hit our parenting ideals regarding some of our health behaviours. Once this outbreak passes, and it will pass, we'll have plenty of time to get back to our ideal routines. But right now I think it's important to be kind and take care of yourselves and your families. Thanks.

Hi, my name is Evan Fraser and I work at the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. My goodness - the last few weeks have been crazy for the food system. COVID-19 has caused problem after problem, and our farmers, our processors, our retailers, our distributors have had to respond with Herculean efforts to keep our food system running.

It all began at the beginning of the crisis with that 'panic buying,' as people like me went out and bought a few extra groceries in order to stock up at home. Well, that cause a spike in demand that, quite frankly, grocery stores had trouble maintaiining inventor on their shelves. 

With that said, I've actually been really impressed to a large extent, grocery store inventories have gone back to fairly normal, not perfect of course, but fairly normal. And I would like to say thank you to all those people who are working in grocery stores and running our supply chains, that they've done a huge effort to keep ourselves fed.

I think we're now into what might be seen of as 'phase two' of the COVID-19's effect on our food systems, which is probably a reorganization of demand. Back before the crisis, Canadians bought a huge amount of food outside of their homes. They bought restaurant meals, they went to cafeterias, they bought coffee at coffee shops, they were at universities with food courts.

Well, today, none of that's happening. All of that buying is now happening out of the house and through grocery stores. And this means that food chains have had to reorganize very, very quickly to respond to these changing buying patterns. So, just last week, I was reading a terrible story about dairy farmers having to dump milk because their contract with coffee shops had wound up and weren't being renewed as coffee shops shuttered.

What's the farmer to do with that case because they're producing milk every single day and if they can't sell it to their buyers, they have to get rid of it. My suspicion that phase two of the COVID-19 crisis will take a few more weeks to work itself through, but ultimately, we'll be okay in that our supply chains will likely reorganize to relect this new reality. 

I'm sure we'll see other effects of COVID-19 in the days and weeks to come, and perhaps in future videos like this one I'll be able to reflect on those, but for now, thank you very much for listening. Once again, my name is Evan Fraser and I work at the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.