OMNI
VEGETARIAN/VEGAN ACTION NEWSLETTER,
February 17,
2021.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and
Ecology
POTLUCK
WEDNESDAYS POSTPONED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN (2ND WEDNESDAYS).
3274 Lee Ave.
POSTPONED SINCE APRIL, 2020.
CONTENTS
NONVIOLENCE, ANTI-WAR,
AND VEGETARIANISM: DON’T KILL 8-29-20
One of our nation’s
oldest anti-war organizations is the WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE based in NYC. For many years it published a peace calendar. For 2003 the theme was Nourishing the Nonviolent Revolution: Zestful Vegetarian Recipes;
the recipes were contributed by WRL members; and it was edited by Ruth Benn, a
long-time leader of WRL. Recently I
made its excellent chili—with celery, onion, mushrooms, sweet pepper, garlic,
cashews, raisins, tomatoes, kidney beans, and beer! and more. And made some healthy muffins to
accompany. Dick
HEALTH
Jamie Oliver. Ultimate
Veg.
Vegetarian
cooking for all occasions—a few meat-free days a week, living a vegetarian
lifestyle, or just wanting to try some new combinations.
AND JUSTICE
AGAINST THE INEQUITIES IN THE INDUSTRIAL FOOD SYSTEM
THE MEAT INDUSTRY, RACISM, REGENERATIVE AGRI, AND GRASSROOTS
RISING, PETA
It’s impossible to put
out a “newsletter” this week without acknowledging what’s going on in the
streets in so many cities across this country—and how those actions are tied to
the systemic and institutionalized social, environmental and economic injustice
that runs throughout our society.
So we share this video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who sums it up this way:
“The way we end this
[violence], and the way we move through this, is by establishing justice. That is the ultimate way
of creating peace and prosperity.”
Words spoken like a
genuine leader—and perhaps future president?
AOC also this week
called out the hypocrisy of corporations, including fast-food king, McDonald’s,
rejecting what she called “bland statements” of support for Black Lives Matter.
As reported in Common
Dreams, AOC “called out a number of companies which publicly expressed support
for the protests in the past week but sell products that aid racial
discrimination, tolerate racism on their platforms, and fail to support black
families and businesses.”
The Common Dreams
article also included sage advice from Judd Legum, editor of Popular Information:
"If you want to
understand a corporation's values, ignore its tweets, and pay attention to its
FEC filings.”
As the COVID-19 crisis has laid bare, injustice runs rampant
through the U.S. food system—and nowhere has that injustice been more evident
than in the industrial “Big Meat” industry, where thousands of slaughterhouse
workers, forced to return to work, are now infected with the virus.
Ricardo Salvador,
senior scientist and director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union
of Concerned Scientists, lays out how injustice and exploitation runs through our food and farming system in
this recent article (and podcast). From farmers who aren’t paid a fair price,
to slaughterhouse workers forced to work in unsafe conditions, to farmworkers
who are “politically invisible,” what you have is:
“. . . the top of this
pyramid . . . which is essentially the highly concentrated agribusiness sector,
attempting to exploit the moment to cut as many costs as possible . . .”
Whether we’re talking
food system or any other “system” in this country, injustice ultimately leads
to “unrest.”
As AOC says in her
instagram video: “True peace is a just society.”
And as she tweeted
last week,“This moment calls for transformation.”
Watch Rep.
Ocasio-Cortez on peace and justice
Read 'Yes, I Will Name
Names': AOC Leads Charge Against Empty Corporate Claims of #BlackLivesMatter’
Read 'Our Food System
Is Very Much Modeled on Plantation Economics’
https://www.peta.org/living/food/meat-replacements/
MILLIONS AGAINST MONSANTO
Got Glyphosate? Organic Consumers Association. Organic Bytes (8-13-20.
Want to protect your
immune system? Get glyphosate out of your body.
The best way to reduce
your exposure to glyphosate? Switch to an organic diet.
A study published this
week in the journal Environmental Research supports previous research showing
that an organic diet is an effective way to reduce the burden of glyphosate in
your body.
AGAINST PROCESSED FOOD AND THE INDUSTRIAL FOOD SYSTEM
'Food Fix': How to Save Our Health,
Our Economy, Our Communities and Our Planet—One Bite at a Time
August 25, 2020
Organic Consumers
Association
EDITOR'S
NOTE: This is the introduction to Dr. Mark Hyman's latest book, "Food
Fix." To purchase the book, click here.
It is a wonderful feeling to
recognize the unity of a complex of phenomena that to direct observation appear
to be quite separate things.
— Albert Einstein
It is . . . our apparent
reluctance to recognize the interrelated nature of the problems and therefore
the solutions that lies at the heart of our predicament and certainly on our
ability to determine the future of food.
— Prince Charles
There is
one place that nearly everything that matters in the world today converges: our
food and our food system — the complex web of how we grow food, how we produce,
distribute, and promote it; what we eat, what we waste, and the policies that
perpetuate unimaginable suffering and destruction across the globe that deplete
our human, social, economic, and natural capital.
Food is
the nexus of most of our world’s health, economic, environmental, climate,
social, and even political crises. While this may seem like an exaggeration, it
is not. The problem is much worse than we think. After reading Food Fix you will be able to connect the
dots of this largely invisible crisis and understand why fixing our food system
is central to the health and well-being of our population, our environment, our
climate, our economy, and our very survival as a species. You will also
understand the forces, businesses, and policies driving the catastrophe, and
the people, businesses, and governments that are providing hope and a path to
fixing our dysfunctional food system.
But why
would a doctor be so interested in food, the system that produces it, and food
policy?
As a
doctor, my oath is to relieve suffering and illness and to do no harm. As a
functional medicine physician, I was trained to focus on the root causes of
disease and to think of our body as one interconnected ecosystem.
Our diet
is the number one cause of death, disability, and suffering in the world. Our
food has dramatically transformed over the last 100 years, and even more
radically over the last 40 years, as we have eaten a diet of increasingly
ultraprocessed foods made from a handful of crops (wheat, corn, soy). If poor
diet is the biggest killer on the planet, I was forced to ask, what is the
cause of our food and the system that produces it? This led to a deep
exploration of the entire food chain, from seed to field to fork to landfill,
and the harm caused at each step of the journey. The story of food shocked me,
frightened me, and drove me to tell this story and to find the possibility of redemption
from the broken system that is slowly destroying the people and things we love
most.
Our most
powerful tool to reverse the global epidemic of chronic disease, heal the
environment, reverse climate change, end poverty and social injustice, reform politics,
and revive economies is food. The food we grow, how we grow it, and the food we
eat have tremendous implications not just for our waistlines but also for our
communities, the planet, and the global economy.
Chronic
disease is now the single biggest threat to global economic development.
Lifestyle-caused diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer now kill
nearly 50 million people a year, more than twice as many as die from infectious
disease. Two billion people go to bed overweight and 800 million go to bed
hungry in the world today. One in two Americans and one in four teenagers have
pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.
Lobbyists’
influence over policy makers has put corporations, not citizens, at the center
of every aspect of our food system, from what and how food is grown to what is
manufactured, marketed, and sold. When money rules politics, it results in our
current uncoordinated and conflicting food policies, which subsidize and
protect and facilitate Big
Food’s and Big Ag’s domination
of our food system to the detriment of our population and our environment. Big
Ag and Big Food co-opt politicians, public health groups, grassroots advocacy groups, scientists,
and schools and pollute science and public opinion with vast amounts of dollars and misinformation campaigns. The consolidation and monopolization of the
food industry over the last 40 years from hundreds of different processed-food
companies, seed companies, and chemical and fertilizer companies into just a few dozen companies make it
the largest collective industry in the world, valued at
approximately $15 trillion, or about 17 percent of the entire
world’s economy. And it is controlled by a few dozen
CEOs who determine what food is grown and how it is grown, processed, distributed, and sold. This affects every
single human on the planet.
Our children’s future is threatened by an achievement gap caused in large part by their inability to learn on a diet of processed foods
and sugar served in schools. Fifty percent of schools serve brand-name fast food in their cafeterias and 80 percent have contracts with soda
companies. Food companies target children and minorities with billions
in marketing of the worst “foods.”
Poverty,
social injustice, and violence are perpetuated by the harmful effects of our
nutritionally toxic and depleted food environment on children’s intellectual
development, mood, and behavior. Violent prison crime can be dramatically
reduced by providing a healthy diet to prisoners. Our national security is
threatened because our young adults are not fit to fight and not eligible for
service, and many of our soldiers are overweight.
We are
also depleting nature’s capital — capital that, once destroyed, may only be
able to be partially reclaimed. The threat is not only to our health and our
children’s future, but also to the health of the planet that sustains us. Our
industrial agricultural and food system (including food waste) is the single
biggest cause of climate change, exceeding all use of fossil fuels. Current
farming practices may cause us to run out of soil and fresh water in this
century. We are destroying our rivers, lakes, and oceans by the runoff of
nitrogen-based fertilizers, which is creating vast swaths of marine dead zones.
We waste 40 percent of the food we produce, costing more than $2.6 trillion a
year in global impact.
There is
a solution, a food fix. Across the globe there are governments, businesses,
grassroots efforts, and individuals who are reimagining our food system,
creating solutions that address the challenges we face across the landscape of
our food system. This book both defines the problems and maps out the policies,
business innovations, and grassroots solutions, providing ideas for what we can
each do to improve our health and the health of our communities and the planet.
The
imperative to transform our food system is not just medical, moral, or
environmental, but economic. Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, the dean of Tufts School
of Nutrition Science and Policy, injects hope into what may seem like an
overwhelming problem and highlights the “waves of innovation and capital now
sweeping food and allied disciplines, from agriculture to processing to
restaurants and retail, and in healthcare, personalization, mobile tech, and
employee wellness. Catalyzing this multi-billion-dollar revolution, and
ensuring its rapid trajectory is evidence-based and mission-oriented, is an
essential opportunity and challenge.”
As a
doctor, it is increasingly clear to me that the health of our citizens, the
health of our society and our planet, depends on disruptive innovations that
decentralize and democratize food production and consumption, innovations that
produce real food at scale, that restore the health of soils, water, air, and
the biodiversity of our planet, and that reverse climate change. I cannot cure
obesity and diabetes in my office. It is cured on the farm, in the grocery
store, in the restaurant, in our kitchens, schools, workplaces, and faith-based
communities.
All these
things and more can provide the seeds for the type of transformation needed to
solve one of the central problems of our time — the quality of what we put on
our fork every day. We have to take back our health one kitchen, one home, one
family, one community, one farm at a time! Changes to our own diet are
necessary but not sufficient to truly create the shifts needed to create a
healthy, sustainable, just world.
The
policies and businesses that drive our current system must change to support a
reimagined food system from field to fork and beyond. If we were to identify
one big lever to pull to improve global health, create economic abundance,
reduce social injustice and mental illness, restore environmental health, and
reverse climate change, it would be transforming our entire food system. That is
the most important work of our time — work that must begin now.
Reprinted
with permission from "Food Fix" by Mark Hyman, copyright © 2020
ORGANIC CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION, 7-4-20
Dear Dick,
Industrial agriculture, with its toxic chemicals, monocultures,
drugs and deforestation, is destroying the natural resources needed to sustain
life on earth.
Will we reverse this trend, before it’s too late?
Growing millions of acres of GMO monoculture crops, doused with
cancer-causing and soil-destroying chemicals is not natural.
Cramming billions of farm animals into filthy barns and cages,
pumping them full of growth hormones and antibiotics, is not natural.
Feeding the masses with over-processed, contaminant-filled junk
food is not natural.
We can change how we produce food and nourish not only
ourselves, but the resources we depend on for health and life . . . but
only if we muster the courage and the political will to stand up to
powerful corporations that profit from a degenerative food system.
As writer and naturalist Edward Abbey warned:
“A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild,
the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying
the principle of civilization itself.”
As long as we are able, we will fight back against the corrupt
corporations and their beholden politicians who view nature as nothing more
than a commodity to be exploited for profit.
Farro is an extremely
nutritious grain. It's an excellent source of protein, fiber and nutrients like
magnesium, zinc and some B vitamins. It's a much healthier alternative
to white rice or other refined grains. One-fourth cup (47
grams) of organic, whole grain emmer farro contains (1, 2 ):Jan 28, 2017
5 Benefits of Farro, A Healthy and Nutritious Ancient
Grain - Healthline
What Is
Escarole and How Is It Used?-
www.thespruceeats.com ›
... › Ingredient Glossary
Escarole (pronounced
"ES-ka-roll") is a leafy green vegetable and member of the chicory
family along with frisée, endive, and Belgian endive. Like other chicories, it
is popular in Italian cuisine and can be served either raw or cooked.
What Are the 3 Main Kinds of ... · Italian Wedding Soup · Frisée
Joe Yonan. (The Washington Post.) ”The Edible Seed Is Making a Comeback,
Buoyed by Plant-based Cooking.” NADG (3-18-20), 1E. BEANS!
Deena Shanker (Bloomberg News
(WPNS). “Fake-meat Firm Cuts Prices to
Compete.” NADG (1-10-2021). Higher price is apparently the main
hurdle to plant-based meat alternatives, but prices are descending.
ANIMALS
GUIDE TO PLANT-BASED” MEAT “
Your Meatless Match: A Personal Guide to the Best Vegetarian
Meat Substitute for You BY JESS THOMSON. JAN
24, 2020
Vegan Meat Brands That Are Changing Everything
Why factory
farming needs a fresh look following the COVID-19 pandemic. mronline.org
Taking
a fresh look at animal production also involves considering its effect on world
hunger. | more…
Justice for Animals
Justice for
Animals - In Defense of Animals
www.idausa.org › campaign
› justice-for-animals
Animal cruelty has no boundaries, whether through neglect or
intentional acts of violence. Our Justice for Animals campaign rises to the challenge.
Justice For Animals
justiceforanimals.org ›
JFA_Wiki_Home_Page
Jun 25, 2020
- The Justice For Animals Wiki (JFA Wiki) covers topics related to
animal rights and veganism in a manner useful for advocacy and outreach.
Eating Animals
View more editions
BUY FROM
NOW A FEATURE DOCUMENTARY FILM NARRATED BY NATALIE PORTMAN
To reduce risk of pandemics for ourselves, our
gaze needs to turn to the health of animals.
From the bestselling author of the essential new 2019 book on animal
agriculture and climate crisis: We are the Weather
Discover Jonathan Safran Foer's eye-opening and life-changing
account of the meat we eat
'Should be compulsory reading. A genuine masterwork. Read this book. It will
change you' Time Out
Eating Animals is the most original and urgent book on the subject of food
written this century. It will change the way you think, and change the way you
eat. For good.
Whether you're flirting with veganuary, trying
to cut back on animal consumption, or a lifelong meat-eater, you need to read
this book.
'Shocking, incandescent, brilliant' The Times
'Everyone who eats flesh should read this book' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
'Universally compelling. Jonathan Safran Foer's book changed me' Natalie
Portman
'Gripping [and] original. A brilliant synthesis of argument,
science and storytelling. One of the finest books ever written on the
subject of eating animals' Times Literary Supplement
'If you eat meat and fish, you should read this book. Even if you don't, you
should. It might bring the beginning of a change of heart about all living
things' Joanna Lumley
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VIDEO OF THE WEEK 8-13-20 Global Meat Machine If you eat meat, you
need to read this article. Investigative
journalist Andrew Wasley spent more than 15 years, traveling to
far corners of the world, to uncover the story of how the production of cheap
meat harms animals, the ecosystem and human health. Wasley’s
investigation is global, comprehensive and shocking. And chock full of
reasons to #BoycottBigMeat. This is
investigative journalism at its best. And it doesn’t come without risks. As
Wasley writes: “In Brazil, one
undercover investigator, examining the impacts of the export-led cattle
industry, was outed in a chilling advert placed in a local newspaper and had
to quickly flee the region. His safety—and that of colleagues—was judged to
be under threat." Wasley’s story is so
compelling, we invited him to do an interview with us—you can watch it here. Watch OCA’s interview with
Andrew Wasley Read '15 Years Undercover on the
Trail of the Global Meat’ Industry' TAKE ACTION to ban factory
farms! Tell Congress to pass the Farm System Reform Act of 2019 |
CLIMATE
Noam Chomsky, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New
Deal (2020). “Industrial meat production, even aside from
ethical considerations, should not be tolerated because of its substantial
contribution to global warming. We have
to find ways to shift to plant-based diets derived from sustainable
agricultural practices….” (86).
Can the Green New Deal
help end factory farming? Join the discussion!
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Oct 7, 2020, 11:51 AM (1 day ago) |
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Grassroots
Rising - Organic Consumers Association
www.organicconsumers.org ›
grassroots-risingIn
his new book, Grassroots Rising: A
Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal by Ronnie Cummings lays out plan for doing just that.
The Playbook We Need.
Organic Consumers Assoc. Organic Bytes (6-5-20)
“Regenerative agriculture is going to be a key phrase in the
decades ahead—and this book will get you in on the ground floor, so to speak.
Not much could be more important!”— Bill McKibben, author of “Falter”
When Ronnie started this book, COVID-19 wasn’t on his mind.
But during this unprecedented global crisis, Grassroots Rising is the playbook we all
need.
We’re guessing most of you—except those of you who are the
pandemic frontline heroes providing essential services—probably have more time
to read, or listen, to books right now.
And you’re probably in dire need of any message that offers
hope—and concrete action steps for creating a better world.
Ronnie’s new book, your “good news” instruction manual for
fixing our broken food and farming system and our broken climate, is now
available on audible.com. You can also order the paperback online.
Fortunately, we’re planning an online book tour. Stay tuned for
details!
In the meantime, stay healthy, stay sane and above all, stay
engaged.
Listen up! ‘Grassroots Rising’ now available on audible.com
Listen (free) to the first 17 minutes of Ronnie's book
Buy your copy of ‘Grassroots Rising’
TAKE ACTION: Donate $100 or more and get a copy of Ronnie’s book.
Sign up for Regeneration International’s newsletter.
SIGN THE PETITION: Consumers Want a Regenerative Green New Deal!
Organic Consumers Association campaigns@organicconsumers.org via
us.e-activist.com
Sailesh Rao is the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, a non-profit
dedicated towards healing the Earth’s climate. A systems specialist with a Ph.
D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA,
conferred in 1986, Sailesh worked on the Internet communications infrastructure
for twenty years after graduation. In 2006, he switched careers and became
deeply immersed, full-time, in the spiritual and environmental crises affecting
humanity. He is the author of the 2011 book, Carbon
Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies and the 2016 book, Carbon Yoga: The Vegan Metamorphosis. He is the
Co-Executive Producer of the trilogy of documentaries, The Human Experiment (2013), Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014) and What The Health (2017), which explore the systemic causes of human
and environmental ill health and of the forthcoming documentary, The Compassion Project.
www.climatehealers.org ›
sailesh-rao
Sailesh Rao has over three decades of professional experience and is
the Founder and Executive Director of Climate
Healers, a non-profit dedicated towards healing the
Earth's climate. A
systems specialist with a Ph. ... Rao worked on the internet communications infrastructure for
twenty years after graduation.
END VEGETARIAN
ACTION, February 17, 2021
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