The Palais des congrès de Montréal honoured five McGill professors at its 2024 ambassadors’ gala for their exceptional contributions to the city’s economic and societal growth. Although there are a few other professors among the total of 14, McGill alone can boast of multiple honourees.
The basis for earning the kudos is the ability to organize large-scale events in Montreal.
Congratulations to School of Human Nutrition PhD candidate Manon Fantino, winner of McGill’s francophone 3-Minute Thesis (MT180) competition! Manon will represent McGill at the Concours ACFAS MT180 Nationals in Ottawa on May 15th.
Although Zoey Li, BSc(NutrSc)’17, always had an interest in business, she never expected to launch a company that helps people take charge of their health.
Li, who was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in the food and beverage category, built her success on her ability to find opportunities, develop new skills and make connections, as an undergraduate and afterward.
Macdonald community members gathered at the Ceilidh on Wednesday, April 3, to celebrate the Gold Key Recipients for 2024. Students, staff, friends, and family listened in as Daniil Batanau, Henry Cordoba Novoa, Sara Kosumi, Philippe Leblond, and Henry Lee shared their inspiring stories of how they became involved in community life at Macdonald Campus and how rewarding it has been for them to give back to their fellow students.
Student engagement was high at the Future of Food Conference in Ottawa, as youth turned out to hear panellists and keynote speeches by stakeholders from across the agriculture value chain.
Several student groups from Queen’s, McGill and the University of Ottawa heard about sustainability, innovation and politics in agriculture at the February event.
McGill Farm Management and Technology student Aidan Velthuis, who grew up on a dairy farm south of Ottawa, attended the conference.
It’s possible animals — pets and wildlife alike — will behave unusually during Quebec’s total solar eclipse on April 8 , according to experts on their behaviour.
David Bird, emeritus professor of wildlife biology at McGill University, told the Montreal Gazette that birds, insects and bats are the main groups expected to be affected, or “the main ones that everybody’s sort of keeping an eye on.”
Imagine cows roaming freely in a barn equipped with cameras and sensors linked to artificial intelligence in a system that predicts their mood and lifespan. Implementing such a system is the mission of the new Research and Innovation Chair in Animal Welfare and Artificial Intelligence (WELL-E), created jointly by McGill University and UQAM thanks to $5 million in funding over five years.
McGill Farm Management and Technology Program Director Pascal Thériault spoke to Radio-Canada's Le Café Show about what regenerative agriculture is, how it can improve water retention in the soil—an increasingly important consideration as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of drought in the prairies, and its role in carbon capture.
Rising costs of cocoa due to drought and disease affecting crop yields is proof of how global warming is hitting our pocketbooks, agronomist and economist Pascal Thériault, McGill Farm Management and Technology Program Director, told CBC.
The food system "relies on stability, and what climate change does is it creates situations where nothing is stable," he said.
In the University-wide 3MT/MT180 competition, graduate students have the chance to showcase their leading-edge research before a live audience. With only three minutes and a single slide, students must engage their audience and convey the complexities of their work to a diverse, non-expert audience. Participants may present their research in English or in French and winners will advance to regional and national competitions.
Representatives from student groups across campus and beyond gathered in the University Centre for a Food Security Summit on March 15 to discuss ways to improve the sustainability, accessibility, and affordability of food systems at McGill. The summit included presentations, “visioning sessions” where attendees exchanged ideas on discussion questions in smaller groups, and a free lunch.
Large retailers are reducing their formats to cut production costs in a period of high food inflation.
Shrinkflation is not sparing the private labels that consumers love to save money on, Radio-Canada reports. Already in the spotlight for their record profits, Canada's major food retailers are in turn reducing the formats of their new products.
With its burps and farts, a dairy cow emits as much methane every year as a car driven 20,000 kilometers. Ottawa has just authorized the marketing of a feed additive that could transform the fight against global warming on the farm. 3-NOP could reduce methane emissions from dairy cows by an average of 30%, and from beef cattle by an average of 45%.
Methane is formed in cows' rumen—the front compartment of their stomach—during digestion.
According to the Shanghai Global Ranking 2023, McGill now ranks number one among Canadian universities by the “Food Science & Technology” academic subject. This trend is remarkable, as McGill University has consistently risen in the global ranking year after year.
Food Science & Technology is also one the best ranked subjects at McGill.
Three teams of McGill Food Science students (food product development class-U3) have been selected as finalists in three different Institute of Food Technologists Student Association (IFTSA) competitions. They will attend the annual IFT FIRST event and expo in Chicago in July 2024, where they will compete with the other teams for cash prizes.
