John ja Ocean Robbinsi korraldatud telekonverents FoodRevolution toimus 2012. aasta kevadel. Osalejaid üle 32 000 inimese rohkem kui 100 riigist.
www.foodrevolution.org

Mõned väljavõtted ja ülevaated, mis mulle huvitavad tundusid.
Liisa-Indra Pajuste

DR. CALDWELL ESSELSTYN – surgeon, scientist
Among certain cultures that eat plant-based diets, heart disease is virtually non-existent. If you live there, you’ll have a more lucrative career selling pencils than being a cardiologist.
During World War 2, Germany deprived the countries it occupied of livestock. From 1939 to 1945 in Norway, deaths from heart attacks and strokes plummeted. But as soon as there was a cessation of hostilities – back came the meat, back came the dairy, and back came the heart attacks and the strokes.

DR. JOSEPH MERCOLA – www.mercola.com
He reflected that Monsanto, which makes most of the world’s GMO seeds, has been very effective. They have essentially planted former employees in just about every major US federal agency that is responsible for making GMO decisions on a federal basis. They have corrupted the system, so the only way to fight back is on the state ballot initiative level.
Even if we all become aware of the dangers of genetically engineered foods, we can’t do anything about it if we don’t know which foods are genetically engineered.  So we need to require labeling. That’s why Monsanto is spending $100 million fighting a California ballot initiative that would require labeling. Because they know this could bring down their whole scheme.

DR. VANDANA SHIVA
She spoke of the tragic irony that in the land where Gandhi spun freedom through cotton and the spinning wheel, 95% of the cotton is now controlled by Monsanto.
More than 250,000 farmers in India have committed suicide since Monsanto began to take control of the cotton industry.
Patents on seed mean genocide, and patents on seed mean ecocide. I’m working with 500,000 farmers, mobilizing millions, creating 66 seed banks, training farmers every month, to be fighting for food sovereignty. This isn’t what I wanted for my life, but too much is at stake. Everything’s at stake.

It’s time to label GMO’s, and to expose them for what they are. Long touted as an answer to poverty and hunger, they are turning out to be an attempted consolidation of power and money by big agrichemical companies – with profound and disturbing implications for our soil, our health, and our farmers.

MORGAN SPURLOCK – Supersize Me
Kahju, et ei mõõtnud veresuhkrut filmis, oleks saanud vaadata kuidas läks kokku highs and lows, mis tundis.
McDonald´s feeds 43miljon people in the world every single day, USA is half of that.
McDonald´s really went after the movie, it was like an ad campaign, it was amazing. When Super Size Me came out, McDonald’s offered to give apples to audiences as they exited the movie theaters. Theater owners told McDonald’s what they could do with those apples ;).

Meeletud kampaaniad, reklaamküljed meedias, mis kinnitasid, et the film you are about to see is a lie.

McDonald´s about obesity: they said that we are aware of the problem and we support your action. So Ronald McDonald did an exercise video with obese kinds. And it was nothing more than a commercial again. Of course, the menu at McDonald’s went unchanged.

My son was born after Supersize Me and has never set foot to McDonald´s. I brainwash him as I can. We never eat this type of food together and he never sees his mom and dad eat this kind of food, so I’m very aware of the example we set to him. He sees what other kids are having for lunch and he talks about what they eat but he doesn’t ask for it himself, he knows he could.

We could put taxes to pesticides and junk food and use the revenue to subsidies healthy eating, to provide whole wheat bread even, for example. But the money is so powerful.

I had two or three weeks on this food, 15min after eating it I was starving again, my body didn’t get what it needed. You couldn’t do this with broccoli, asparagus, apples, strawberries or something like that because your cells get food and nutrition they need.

RORY FREEDMAN – Skinny Bitch, bestseller book
Among the first words that children learn are animal words. And then when their parents feed them animal foods, chicken for example, they get addicted and think that it’s not the same chicken.
I got a magazine to my mailbox cause I’d been donating to different organizations and there it was – I had never thought what would happen to the animals I eat. I looked this and I felt so much horror and shame, I couldn´t believe I didn´t know this, I couldn´t belive I didn´t think of this. And that was the end of this.

You don´t wanna see it but you´ll eat it?
Most people doesn´t realize it, it seems like a so much of a sacrifice, but once you take the step you will never go back, there is so much better food out there and you will feel just great.
Just give it a try for a month. Every single person I´ve met says omg, I can´t believe how much lighter and better I feel.

Nobody talks about food, plans food, research about food than a vegan – we just love food! ;)
People ask me: why don´t you care about people too, why just animals? It´s funny, so many people I know who help animals and are vegan work with so many humanity organizations too. They are just very caring and compassionate human beings. I became a much better human being all around when I became a vegetarian. It´s about human suffering also.

What ever your walk in life is, you can do it with compassion and you can encourage others to do the same thing.

Know the ingredients that are in your food, don´t be a garbage can, know what you are putting inside your body. Transition the way you are comfortable with. Cows and pigs and fish was easy to let go. It took me 10 years to stop eating cheese!

John Robbins: the hardest thing was ice-cream for me, the flavor, when I wanted to feel close to my dad I ate ice-cream because we used to do that together. When I tried coconut frozen deserts I liked them even better!

If there is misery in our menu it can´t be good to our bodys, to our souls, to our environment.
18 years of that I´ve been a vegetarian, I´ve seen so much better food.

What keeps you going?  -> The animals. Seen one animal suffering is too many.

JEFFREY SMITH – GMO´s
The animals that were fed the same GMO´s that we eat were having problems with immune system, reproductive organs, were having accelerated ageing, on top of that problems with insulin, pancreas. Live stock put to GMO´s and back – behavior changes, still born goes down, medications goes down, death rates goes down, allergies go down.

In the 80s a GMO drug that caused 100 deaths and many (ei jäänud kõrva mitu, mingi hundreds) were disabled for life. An drug where a GMO bacteria was to produce amino acids for insomnia.

It took 4 years to discover that the epidemic was taking place, to find the symptoms. The disease was new, acute and fast acting.

The statement that GMO´s hasn´t caused any trouble means that they haven´t look into it, there has not been clinical trials, no post GMO surveillance, no long term animal-feeding studies.

Russian scientist Irina Urbakova (written as heard) discovered that when she fed the female rats GM food more that half of their babies died within 3weeks, were sterile, were also quite a bit smaller. She told me that her boss, under the pressure of his boss, forbid her to further do any GMO research. There were lessons trying to intimidate her – documents stolen from her laboratory and burned on her desk, samples stolen. She is one of numerous scientist that have been through this. One scientist I know was being suppressed to talk in a big public event about Monsatos herbicide RoundUp effects on reproductive organs, the massive defects it produces, his close family was threatened if he does so.

Monsato got convicted for false advertising saying that RounUp was biodegradable, that was NY court. Then they did the same thing in Europe until French court nailed them for the same thing.

RoundUp is linked to a smaller sperm count, dead sperm, cancer etc. It binds nutrients and does not make them available to plants. And so when it´s sprayed on the plants it prevents them to get nutrients and makes them weaker.

Largest amount of live stock in the US is on crop – soy, corn, canola, sugar beet etc. They are eating nutrient deficient crops and there are an universal deficiencies among them. We eat those nutrient deficient and sick animals, we eat the nutrient deficient crops. It can also accumulate or bind the nutrients in our body depriving us of those very important nutrients.

RoundUp is now found in air samples, rain samples, water samples, in our urine, in our blood, it´s found in the blood of our fetuses. It´s been researched that it kills gut bacteria.

John Robbins: Herbicide tolerant wheats even more worse – Agent Oringe a new herbicide.

Shortly after GM soy was introduced in the UK, food allergies shot up by 50%.
GMO´s are leading to a massive increase in human exposure both to the Roundup herbicide, and to the bt toxin that has been genetically engineered into every cell of corn and other plants.
When mice were feed GM soy it caused damage to their pancreatic cells, digestive system, reproductive system.

Bt toxin in RoundUp and therefore in GMO´s.
Research from last month show: pokes holes to our cells, first thought did that only to insects but it does so to humans too! Bt toxin is naturally made and then extracted, the gene transforms to our gut bacteria that make it over and over again, our guts become a living pesticide factory. The lining to our intestinal wall is damaged – leaky gut syndrome, undigested food particles go into the bloodstream which can lead to allergic reactions, autoimmune disease, some people link it to autism as well – there is a huge amount of research on that.

The Biotech industry also claims that Bt toxin is destroyed in the gut. But that was until last month a study from Canada showed that 90% of pregnant women had Bt toxin in their blood and 80% of their unborn fetuses did as well.

John Robbins: the insustification that Monsato says is that we need this crops to feed people. If you tell a big lie often enough people believe it.

BILL MCKIBBEN – 350.org
We’re beginning to get across the notion that the radicals in this situation aren’t us. The radicals are the oil companies who want to alter the composition of the atmosphere.
Asked about the UN Food and Agriculture Organization report that says 18% — or more — of the entire world’s greenhouse gas emissions stems from livestock production, Bill answered: “Yes.  It is clearly a big problem. It comes from cutting down forests in order to get more pasture land. It comes from the emissions of animals themselves, belching methane… and on and on and on.”

For 20 years in the US, we’ve had a perfect bipartisan record of accomplishing nothing on climate change…. It’s pretty clear that left to its own devices, the system won’t produce change, so we can’t leave it to its own devices.

RONNIE CUMMINS – Organic Consumers Association
Many consumers purchase ‘natural’ products and think they are like organic but just cheaper. But natural means very little in the marketplace. Most so-called ‘natural’ foods are not only grown or produced using pesticides, but also contain genetically engineered ingredients.

The USDA is supposed to represent all of the people of the United States, and it has a $100 billion budget. That is our money that they are using. But almost nothing in that budget is geared towards organics, sustainable farming, or traditional farming. We need to stop subsidizing unsustainable industrialized agriculture.

Is organic agriculture capable of providing the bountiful harvests that we need? In the developing world, where a majority of the world’s people live, organic farms are 2-5 times more productive than chemical-intensive agriculture, and in the industrialized world we can produce about the same yield per acre, without all the chemicals.
There used to be 2-3 times as much carbon matter in the soil as there is right now.  A lot of that is now up in the atmosphere, altering our global climate!

There are now more than 400 “dead zones” in the oceans – the direct result of pouring chemicals on our farms, and also the runoff from factory farms.

FRANCES MOORE LAPPE – Diet for a Small Planet, bestseller
Washington now has roughly two-dozen lobbyists for every person that Americans elect to represent us there.
We don’t have a shortage of food, we have a shortage of justice. As we shift to focus on our relationships with each other, and with the earth, as we align our lives and our economy with what is true about our nature and is harmonious with the wellbeing of nature, we find answers to so many of the questions we face today.

I am neither an optimist not a pessimist. I am a possiblist. I believe in working for what is possible.

Hope is not what we find in evidence, it’s what we become in action.

We need to seek out others who are in action, already engaged, and believe that we will become more like them as we work shoulder to shoulder. If we want to become more courageous, we have to hang out with courage.

DR. NEAL BARNARD – Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
NIH (National Institute of Health) grant 350 thousand dollars to research low fat vegan diet on diabetes. Low fat vegan diet approved and cured diabetes.

The clinical advise is that don´t eat carbs and sweet starches. But when you look to Asia, the Asians have had rice for so long but they started to have problems when fast food came in, when high fat came in.

Ametlikult tunnistatakse, et low-fat vegan muudab diabeedi kulgu, võimaldab loobuda enamustest ravimitest, seda pöörata tagasi ning üleüldse vältida.

John Robbins räägib oma isast, kel 70aastasena diagnoositi raskekujuline diabeet, muutsid veganiks ja ta ei vajanud enam süste.

Diet changes really are powerful. Preventive medicine means good nutrition.

When Robert Atkins died there was a controversy with his medical report. He said you can eat high cholesterol and high fat food and it´s ok. What he hide from the public was that he had quite severe cardio-vascular problem.
It´s important to know that. It´s really critical to know that it´s not safe to eat this way.

Is soy safe?
Isoflavons in legumes. They look similar to estrogens, they are similar but they are not the same. There has been done a lot of research on these things. It´s very clear that in Asia where people eat a lot of these things there has been no problem with feminism, no changes in sperm counts, no problem with fertility.
And then when you look at girls that are eating soy products and then follow them later on it comes clear that their risk for breast cancer is actually 30% less than girls that don´t consume soy.
We now have three research studies – 2US, 1China – that show when women consume soy, their risk of breast cancer is reduced by about 30%. And women who have had cancer and consume soy have a 30% reduction in their rates of the cancer coming back.

So many people don´t know what leads to cancer until they get it diagnosed. Nutrition plays a crucial role.
It surprises me that almost every school children are starting to ask vegan or plant based choices for their food.
It surprises me that Bill Clinton, who we have been seeing to jog to closest fast food chain is now an advocate for a vegan diet. It shows that people do change that they can change.

We eat a million animals in an hour in the United States.

What would happen if corporate America recognized the health insurance savings that could be realized by encouraging healthy food choices? Could it save money and improve employee productivity? Could it help to reduce skyrocketing healthcare costs, make businesses more competitive, and even improve the economy?

We want to stop food deserts by limiting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps program to cover foods that are healthy. That will force retailers to stock healthy foods in low income communities.

46 million Americans now depend on the SNAP program. Many of the convenience stores in low income neighborhoods stock only highly processed and packaged foods with long shelf lives. If SNAP was amended to exclude purchases of junk food, just as it already excludes purchases of alcohol and tobacco, the health outcomes for the lowest income communities could improve dramatically.

I hope that animals would be treated better in the future. I saw a man the other day smoking a cigarette in front of the building. And I thought that may be in the future he would finish up his chicken wing before he would be allowed to go back to his vegan office building.

DAVID WOLFE – raw vegan activist for over 20 years
The big food related issue is the grain growing culture. Not that those can´t be good for us but they need to be in their natural state. Us mowing down trees and making places for them is wrong.
I became a vegetarian because of you, John.

Every plant eaten is one less animal eaten. Every time we choose a plant food we save an animal.

For me it´s a spiritual choice, I don´t want to take a life of an animal, I don´t want that on my back.
Every time you take on a dogma, this is right and everything else is wrong, I think we need to take that off and see other options.

Raw food and vegan food make you more connected to the nature. Nature-based spirituality and training your body to be more connected to the world of nature. That´s how I got envolved to shamanism. The shamans in the Andies glow, they are such pure people.

I´ve been a raw foodist for over 20 years.

Some say you are what you eat. Others say you are what you think.
The subtle energy of your food becomes your mind.

Fresh green vegetable juice is critical, it´s nature best medicine, it´s kidney flusher, detoxifier, blood builder, heavy metal flusher. Cucumber+sellery+citrus – you see your nails grow thicker…

It’s easier to maintain a positive mental attitude if you’re drinking wheat grass juice than if you’re drinking soda pop. If you eat well and you eat healthy, you will have an easier time holding energy and vibrations, and you’ll perform better.

Rudolf Steiner said that when you eat too many apples (could be taken as fruits in general) it makes you an egomaniak – you become fudametalist, everybody else is wrong you are right.

Eventually it causes osteoporosis because of the sugar, neurological disorders, gall bladder problems, sodium deficency. Fast oxidizing problems, you´ll need more fat and protein to get energy.

Calcification. If you get calcium supplements you are going to calcify yourself, your body can´t transmute it, it can´t get to your bones like that. There is very good research on that. What you really need is magnesium, silica, sodium and potassium (all alkaline minerals by the way – LIP).

There are two forces – levity and gravity. Why is a spring coming out up in the mountain not down in the ground if the only force we have is gravity?

Love.

A food is planted with love, it´s watered with love, it´s picked with love, it´s handled with love. A pray is said and then it´s eaten.

DR T. COLIN CAMPBELL – The China Study (largest and most comprehensive study of diet and disease in world history; authored more than 300 research papers).
My view of dairy products? Don’t use them! Especially in the early life. I see no redeeming value in consuming that food from a nutritional perspective. Dairy products are a pretty potent producer of higher cholesterol levels, cardiovascular problems, and a host of other problems.

Mother’s milk is perfect food for human babies. Cows milk is perfect food for baby calves.

Cancer is one response to the way you´ve been living. We need more quality research on diet and protein and the development in cancer. Protein consumed in excess of the amount that we need, and most of us do consume more than we need, actually has some pretty serious consequences. It has been documented in peer reviewed literature.

Dr. Campbell’s bottom line recommendation?
A whole food plant based diet with vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes.
Eat the foods as they have been prepared in the nature. Without excess oil and sugar. It is most comfortable by doing mostly raw diet. I´m am not a proponent for 100% raw food diet for many reasons.

We have research to prove that the omega fats don´t work as we thought they would. We have 59 different studies that came to the same conclusion. The risk of type 2 diabetes.
Those supplements are recommended by 30 billion dollar industry, it´s a good illustrasion how market trumps science.
But foods that contain omega-3s are mostly good foods, found in greens. Omega-3/omega-6 ratio is what matters.

Is there a place for vitamin supplements?
I never have been taking vitamin supplements. I know that vitamin B12 is commonly asked in the field that we are in. And I think that vitamin D is too hyped up as a supplement. There are questions that hasn´t been asked and that need to be asked, or they´re been ignored. The level that is recommended keeps going up.
The vegans, for example, their B12 levels seems to be too low and needs to be raised. And it leads to an idea that we need to get some animal foods in order to get some B12 or take tablets. I´ve tried to look more carefully how firm is that evidence. Deficiencies are more common in omnivores than in vegetarians and in vegans.

Lower lever is one thing but absorbsion is another thing.

Animal protein is not doing the job that we thought it might be doing in terms of creating health. Animal food in general, creates a sort of metabolic acidosis, which in turn can have a major influence on the activities of various enzymes.
The research tells us that a whole foods plant based diet is a really smart way to go. The central thing is to derive as much of our carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals from plant sources as possible.

GENEEN ROTH – health books author
In my 20s with extreme dieting I got down to 82 pounds (37,19 kg). But with every diet, there’s an equal and opposite binge. I went on an extreme diet, and then I doubled my weight in a couple months and became suicidal. If you believe you’re not worthy of the life you’ve been given, then you take what you can in any form you can get it in. So I took food in that way.

The suicide was days away and I was sitting in front of the bookstore and I understood just then that I never had been curious about food and my relationship whit it, it´s impact on me.

Eventually I decided to try living as if I was worth it. Living as if I was worth a basic amount of kindness. And my life changed.

Chances are, if you treat yourself with disrespect, that you’ll also treat other people like that. If you feel like you’re not getting your basic needs met, your precious self isn’t being cared for, then you’ll be less likely to care about the Earth and the impact of your food on the Earth.

Just because you’re working and living in an insane culture doesn’t mean that you need to be insane. Most of our thoughts are based on our history and our conditioning.

The way you eat is inseparable from the core believes of your life. The relationship with food is an expression of what we believe. We are always transmitting our believes to everything we do.

We are numbing our bodies with food because we can´t or won´t express ourselves.

Are you eating rushing around, are you eating in your car, are you eating behind your desk… Where is your attention and are you worthy of your attention?

The excuse is that my life is such and I don´t have time to nourish myself. I´m not placing myself first here. But you are not paying attention to how hungry you are, to the flavor, pleasure and nourishing yourself.

Love and be kind to yourself.
The awareness of the food we are putting in to our bodies and our bodies relationship with Earth. The world is on your plate.

How important is kindness! From the book The Help, where one women tells to a little girl every day: “You are good, you are kind, you are important”. What if we would tell that to ourselves every day.

What you pay attention to, grows.
The first thing on your mind when you wake up: I didn´t get enough sleep.
The last thing on your mind when you go to sleep: I didn´t get enough done.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON – spiritual author and lecturer
A situation has to be accepted fully before you can have the power to change it. That has to be extended to our bodies and weight levels. Every person no matter what size, shape or form, should be respected. At the same time, no one should pretend that carrying around an extra 50 or 60 pounds is good for your breathing, your liver, or your arteries. Obesity is not just a vanity issue for people who want to lose 10 pounds at the beach. This is a serious and life-threatening condition.

When you realize that your body is an extraordinary gift, then you want to treat it well.  Food is a gift, and eating chemically processed food can begin to be recognized as an act of violence against yourself.
When you start to meditate and bring consciousness to your body, you want to treat it better.

In parenting, you have to know when to hold and when to fold. As parents, we are responsible for what food we have in our homes, and what we feed our children. It can be hard for a lot of people who have even the best of intentions to fill their homes with healthy food.

We are disconected from our natural food, we are disconnected from each other, we are disconnected from god, we are disconnected from Earth – it´s just all systems breakdown.

Kui jumal pani meid siia valitsema loomade ja looduse üle, siis me pole teinud väga head tööd.

John Robbins: mul on kaks poega. Kui ma lähen kodust ära ja ütlen vanemale pojale, et sina nüüd vaatad noorema venna üle. Ja ütlen nooremale pojale, et kuula vanema venna sõna, tema vaatab sinu üle. Kui ma koju tagasi tulen, siis eeldan, et vanem poeg oli noorema venna suhtes heatahtlik ja austav, ma ei eelda, et ta on oma noorema venna ära grillinud.

KATHY FRESTON – author, healthy living and conscious eating, holistic
How can we say we’re striving to spiritually evolve without considering how the food we’re consuming got to be on our plates?
I want to align my life with the good, the true, and the beautiful.

When we open our hearts, that translates across the board in our lives. When we feel compassion, empathy, or like we want to do something positive, that bleeds over and makes us feel like more powerful beings. We are smarter. We are more aware. We are on the forward edge of human evolution.

That is going to translate to being better partners in our relationships, and attracting better people into our lives, because we are vibrating at a higher level. We’ll feel more directed in work because we’ll be energized and able to accomplish more because we have a sense of the bigger picture.

It’s all about leaning into it, leaning forward. I just take one step at a time, and keep moving in a good direction. Most people have maybe seven to ten things that we cook over and over again. So I would just take one thing I would make each week that I wanted to replace, and I would switch it for something new and healthier. I’d make a dinner that looked pretty much like what I grew up with, but it was a healthier version, with no cholesterol, low fat, high protein, and delicious.

We either like the messenger, or we shut down and reject their message.

So as ambassadors of this food awakening, it’s beholden on us to be kind, to be warm to be patient, to be generous with our spirit and our information.

RAJ PATEL – passionate advocate for social justice in food policy
People should be free to consume what they like. But if you’re serious about that, then why is it that the playing field is so tilted towards processed foods from the largest corporations? Why is it so much cheaper to buy the least healthy foods?

One of the reasons that factory farming is possible is that the farms don’t have to pay the real costs of the pollution they produce. The costs of the waste and contamination, the environmental and social costs associated with the production of meat today enables the industry to be profitable precisely because the industry is able to escape the consequences of their actions.

To some extent the extra cash that was left over from the oil and housing bubbles bursting went to (investment in) food (commodities), which drove up the price of food.  So you had speculators on Wall Street betting on an increase in the price of food. And you saw retailers seeing if they could get away with an increase in their price of food, too.

Higher food prices have had an important impact in terms of political instability around the world. The Arab Spring movement actually started in Algeria with street demonstrations protesting the rising price of wheat.

Can we ever end hunger? Yes we can. But it’s going to take political will to end poverty, rather than just providing more food on the bread line. We need to make sure that everyone can eat, and live in dignity.

ELIZABETH and congressman DENNIS KUCINICH
Elizabeth is director of government affairs for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Her husband Dennis Kucinich is an 8-term member of the United States Congress and a leading champion for the regulation of GMOs and for healthier school lunches, along with many other causes.

Dennis: (The genetic engineering struggle) reminds me so much of the battles that were going on over tobacco, where people were actually told in another era that tobacco is good for you, smoking cigarettes was healthy.

Independent studies show that genetically engineered food has the ability to create new, unintended toxins and increase allergens and other health problems. In a 2011 study out of Canada, researchers found that 93% of blood samples and 80% of fetal cord blood samples contain a toxic found in a genetically engineered corn, Bt corn, that produces its own pesticides.

Elizabeth: Immediately after the Haitian earthquake Monsanto offered to donate hundreds of tons of GMO seeds to Haitian farmers. The Peasant Farmers Movement actually got together and 10,000 strong demonstrated in the streets and symbolically burned the seeds in protest. They understand the effects (the GMO direction would have on) seed supply, food sovereignty, and the pesticides and artificial fertilizers that would be necessitated by growth of these crops.

Dennis: We need a serious discussion in America about the impact of monopolies in agriculture. The horizontal and vertical monopolies that have taken place have created a monolith that includes pharmaceuticals, the chemical and biotech industries, and it includes banks that back them up. We learned that when banks were too big to fail, they brought down our economy. Monopolies in agriculture present a threat not just to our freedom but our ability to survive because you have to have food to eat.  Monopolies in agriculture and banking have destroyed family farmers and made America a less democratic nation.

GENE BAUR – founder of the world’s largest farm animal protection organization, Farm Sanctuary
Most people would be appalled by the conditions that are commonplace on today’s factory farms. In fact, the industry is trying to pass legislation to make it illegal to take pictures and videotape of the conditions of these facilities. That says an awful lot about just how bad the conditions are and the fact that they are unacceptable in our society.

What we believe is that most people are humane. Most people oppose cruelty. Most people do not think it is right to treat these animals with such wanton disregard.

People are getting a whiff of factory farming and they don’t like it. In response a lot of animal producers are now starting to label their products as if the animals are being treated well but unfortunately those labels tend to sound a lot better than they really are. In the case of “free range” for example, access to the outdoors is not defined, so what it means in many instances is you have basically a factory farm warehouse with thousands of animals in it with a small door that goes to a crummy little paddock outside. So that is technically access to the outdoors but the animals never use it and they are basically confined in a factory farm. That is an example of free range.

In the case of ‘natural’, that says nothing about how the animals are raised. It only describes the processing after the animals are killed. You can have beef cattle for example that are raised in a feedlot, given hormones and fattened for slaughter just like other factory farmed animals and then their meat can be sold as natural. So these terms unfortunately mislead consumers.