David Kattenburg is a name you might have heard over the past few months on places like CBC and the Globe and Mail. He’s in the news because he’s challenged the Liquor Control Board of Ontario about two wines on their shelves, labeled as products of Israel.
When Dave saw the listing, he knew they were not products of Israel. The wines come from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. He knows. He’s been to both wineries. So in July, he filed a complaint with the federal Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The basis of his complaint was that the label “Product of Israel” is false and misleading. The LCBO, which is one of the largest wine, beer and liquor distributors in the world, instructed their outlets to remove the wine from their shelves.
But that didn’t last long. The CFIA reversed their decision a few weeks later. So the wine is still on LCBO shelves. Dave is not giving up, though. On October 24, 2017, he and his lawyer Dmitri Lascaris launched an application for a judicial review of the Canadian Food Inspection’s Agency’s actions.
David Kattenburg is a Winnipeg-based science educator, broadcaster and human rights activist. In this interview, he talks to Victoria Fenner about the court case, what motivated him to launch it, and especially, why he believes this issue is something worth fighting for.
(Disclosure: Victoria is a close personal friend and colleague of David Kattenburg’s but is not involved in this campaign).
You can read the chronology of the story at the website of his lawyer Dmitri Lascaris.
You can read and listen to David Kattenburg’s large collection of stories from the West Bank at his web based magazine The Green Planet Monitor, and contribute to the legal challenge at their GoFundMe page.
Image: David Kattenburg – taken at Psagot Winery, in the unlawful Jewish settlement of Psagot, Occupied West Bank. Used with permission.
