day 6 wrap up and day 7 lineup

Today’s Food Revolution Summit interviews focused on Healthy, Humane Food For Everybody.

Our three speakers are all doing potent, hands-on work to transform food systems. They spoke from real life experience, and their insights have much to teach all of us.

What did you think? If you heard today’s interviews already, the Summit’s Facebook page is a great place to post comments or questions.

All three of these interviews are still available for free via teleconference and 24 hour web replay – check out the Summit calendar for the details.

Nicolette Hahn Niman Our first interview today was with Nicolette Hahn Niman, a vegetarian cattle rancher. I know, those words don’t often go together. But it’s true! As senior attorney for the organization Waterkeeper, Nicolette exposed and prosecuted the environmental devastation caused by factory farms.

Now Nicolette and her husband, Bill, run a small organic ranch. The author of Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms, Nicolette knows the meat industry from the inside out, and has some compelling observations to share.

“In the beginning of the twentieth century a typical dairy farm had about 20 cows. Today many dairy farms in the United States have over 10,000… The animals were essentially brought indoors, brought in off the grass, they were separated from grass and from natural environments and they were kept in very large and very crowded herds and flocks.”

“We are all citizens… and so we owe it to ourselves and to future generations to be demanding that our governments are actually encouraging good farming practices and farming and food production methods that produce healthy safe food and food that we feel comfortable eating and feeding to our children.”

“(My feeling) is that meat and other foods from animals is something that you don’t have to be consuming nearly as often as most Americans are. But if you are going to consume it, it’s something you should make sure is produced in the best possible way.”

Next we turned out attention to food justice. In the US and many developed nations, consumption of highly processed sugar-laden “junk” foods, white flour, unhealthy fats, and artificial chemicals is highest in low-income communities. Not surprisingly, these same communities suffer from disproportionate rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other health ailments.

Nikki Henderson Nikki Henderson is director of People’s Grocery, a non-profit organization working to increase demand for and access to healthy food in historically underinvested communities. She lives and works in West Oakland, a community of 30,000 residents that has 53 liquor stores and not one grocery store. Interviewed by my dad, John Robbins, she shared some of her key insights from work on the front lines of the food revolution:

“We don’t try to communicate our message the first time we interact with someone. We try to build the relationship first. It is in building the relationship that we can actually figure out what is important to them and where we can align. There are so many ways to interact with someone around healthy foods. If I talk to someone long enough I will be able to find out why healthy food is important to them.”

“Access to good food is a very intersectional concept that includes economic access (so people can afford it)… cultural access (so people can cook it and integrate it into their diet)… and leadership (to help inspire people to take charge of their health).”

“We are rooted very locally and one of the reasons why we wanted to be rooted very locally is because the transformation of historically underinvested communities like West Oakland has to begin with the people who live here. We resource people in the community so that they can create a fully functional local food system.”

Gene Baur Our final interview today was with Gene Baur, the founder of the world’s largest farm animal protection organization, Farm Sanctuary, and a man who has been called the Conscience of the Food Movement. For 25 years Gene has campaigned to raise awareness about the abuses of industrialized factory farming and our food system. He is the author of the bestseller Farm Sanctuary. Some highlights:

“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.”

All three of these amazing interviews are still available on replay for another 16+ hours. To find out how to hear them, and all the other speakers still to come in our program, visit the Food Revolution Summit calendar page.


And Look What’s Coming Next

The theme of tomorrow’s interviews is “The Politics of Dinner — Food Policy for Healthy People.”

Raj Patel We’ll start off with Raj Patel, who brings an international perspective to our increasingly global food systems. He illumines how choices made in one place send ripples around the world – and then come back to us! He is author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, and the international bestseller, The Value of Nothing.

If you care about the social, political, and global impact of your food choices, and if you want to know what it will take to create a world where everyone has enough food, then this is an interview you do not want to miss!

Michele Simon Then my dad, John Robbins, interviews Michele Simon. Michele is one of the world’s leading experts on the politics and practices of the food industry. She is the author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, and president of Eat Drink Politics, an industry watchdog consulting business. In an industry often dominated by big money, Michele is a champion of the public welfare. You will find out her take on the food system and how you can fight back against nutrient-deficient factory-made pseudo-foods.

Elizabeth and Dennis Kucinich For our third interview of the day, we'll be joined by Elizabeth and US Congressman Dennis Kucinich for a look at bringing sanity to public food policy. Elizabeth Kucinich is the director of government affairs for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Her husband, eight term Congressman Dennis Kucinich, has been a leading champion in the United States Congress for the regulation of GMOs and for healthier school lunches, along with many other causes. They work in the heart of politics, and they bring compelling insights to help you understand what’s really going that fuels the crazy food policies coming out of Washington, DC – and more importantly, what you can do about it.

Moving Forward

To get downloadable MP3 recordings and transcripts of the interviews with all 23 of the speakers in this Summit, plus an extraordinary collection of bonus gifts, check out the Empowerment Package.

If you’re interested in volunteering with us to help further the Food Revolution, we invite you to check out our Volunteers page, linked here.

Here is a schedule for today and for the whole Summit.

Ocean Robbins Yours for food systems that help us all thrive,


Ocean Robbins


P.S. - Remember, you can listen to these extraordinary interviews for FREE when they are broadcast twice per day, or via replay for 24 hours after their first broadcast. The instructions and schedule are here (see original posts for links) And don't worry! If you miss the interview you wanted to hear, just go to order the Empowerment Package for all the interviews and transcripts, and a whole bunch of amazing bonus offers!

P.P.S. - It's not too late to invite friends and family to join The Food Revolution! Just forward this email and they can click here for instant access to all the details )see original post)