Glenford Jameson

Principal, G. S. Jameson & Company
Called to the bar in 2012

Are crickets safe to eat? That’s the sort of legal question that gets Glenford Jameson excited. One of his clients, an Ontario cricket producer (seriously, it’s a thing), needed to prove that they are, in order to secure approval to sell its brand of edible crickets. “The problem is that no one in the developed world eats them, so there’s no scientific data or existing set of regulations,” says Jameson. “But crickets are a common source of food in the developing world.” He dove into a sea of ethnobiological research — for instance, on the Aka people of Central Africa in the 1980s — and showed that humans have safely ingested crickets for millennia. His client won approval, and the crickets will soon be at major grocery stores.

Jameson, a 34-year-old lawyer in his fourth year of solo practice, is already a leading expert in food law. The area is booming: in recent years, the number of new specialty foods for sale has exploded.

Much of his job, then, is to help everyone from big-name retailers to farm-to-table growers navigate the laws that regulate how their products are produced, labelled and sold. “Retailers and producers are both struggling to keep up,” he says.

Jameson is lucky: he’s found a way to merge his lifelong foodieism with work. He lives in Little India with his fiancée, Elizabeth Cavaliere, and they keep close tabs on the local restaurant scene. He also launched a monthly podcast, Welcome to the Food Court, last summer. It’s important to him to share his food-law knowledge — on topics like micro-batch whiskey and fraudulent fish — with the public. His enthusiasm is boundless. “It’s way easier to stay motivated when you do something you care about.”

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Photography by Lorne Bridgman, hair and makeup by Shawna Lee, shot on location at the Aga Khan Museum.