Upsetting the Apple Cart: Certifying Class Actions for Food Labelling Reform

This essay explores the potential of class actions as a vehicle for Canadian consumers to activate change in the area of food and beverage labelling. Misleading and deceptive food labels negatively affect large numbers of people financially, physically, and emotionally. The cost, complexity, and privacy of individual actions combined with the prospect of low compensatory damages render them unfavourable both in obtaining justice for consumers and in creating substantial change. The use of class actions to rectify misleading, tortious, and anticompetitive conduct, among other transgressions, would largely satisfy the three major goals of class proceedings: access to justice, behaviour modification, and judicial economy. Furthermore, class actions can be used more effectively in lieu of traditional avenues of legislative reform to bring about much-needed regulatory change. This paper strives to be of wide relevance and is written with the intention of being both interesting and accessible to the legal community and to lay consumers alike. In examining different strategies for plaintiffs, particularly with regard to getting over the certification hurdle, this paper will demonstrate that class actions are a viable way for consumers to lead the transformation toward labelling transparency against a defective regulatory regime as well as the exaggerated and sometimes outright deceitful labelling tactics of powerful members of the food industry.