By Charlotte Morritt-Jacobs - (@morrittjacobs on Twitter)

A Holistic Approach To Labeling Local

Oct 17, 2016 | 6:50 AM

ALBERTA – Meghan Dear wants more Canadians to demand more from their grocers when it comes to identifying local food products and manufacturing methods.

That’s why this entrepreneur launched “Localize,” a company which works with food suppliers to build a data base that tracks local products. The company then creates identification shelf labels for food that in turn are sold to grocers through a subscription.

The Edmonton entrepreneur comes from a farming background and served for the Alberta Agriculture Council doing crop research and working in Africa in agriculture development.

Dear she was inspired to take real action when she found it difficult to locate local products in Alberta super markets, and was well aware of the complex work behind the scenes in the Canadian food sector.

“Our goal is to get every possible local and regional product identified correct. We identify those produces right into the shelf edge right by the price tag. Things like where it was grown, raised and manufactured and where the ingredients come from, especially if it’s a processed product.”

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She said that current the labels out there from competitor’s state that a product is “local,” but that limited title does not quite tell the whole story of who the operator is and where the money flows back to.

“Being a very Alberta centric company, the data base of products is very well developed in this province and throughout western Canada. For example, dry goods make up 70 per-cent of our data base. That’s just because it is Alberta and that 30 per-cent totals the products we think of more commonly as local which is meat and fresh products.”

Working with over 300 grocers in western Canada alone, Dear said that she hopes to move beyond labeling where food is coming from but also provide information on processing processes to celebrate the technological advancements used by farmers.

“It’s a lot of outreach and communication; we now have been around since 2011 but one of our challenges is to prove that we have a solution to balancing the needs of all stakeholders: grocers, food producers and shoppers.”

For more information visit: www.localizeyourfood.com.