Photo from Earth’s Promise community garden at the Kalisher Absorption Center.

The World Zionist Organization took major steps to green Israel by approving four resolutions put forth by the Green Zionist Alliance at the World Zionist Congress. The resolutions address a wide swath of environmental concerns, including water, energy and food justice. All of the votes were near unanimous, uniting all religious and political streams of Zionism for the cause of Israel’s environment.

“The resolutions will play a major role in helping shift an environmentally imperiled Israel onto a sustainable path, and provide a greener Israel for future generations,” said Dr. Richard Schwartz, a GZA delegate to the Congress.

The resolutions call for the WZO and its subsidiaries — Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael (KKL / Jewish National Fund in Israel) and the Jewish Agency For Israel (JAFI) — to install energy-generating solar panels and rainwater-savings systems on their buildings’ rooftops and to transition to energy-efficient lighting and fuel-efficient vehicles.

Additionally, JAFI is instructed to incorporate environmental education into the immigrant experience at absorption centers, and to develop community gardens at absorption centers for immigrants’ use.

“Growing food from the land is an incredibly potent way of connecting to the land,” said GZA President David Krantz, head of the GZA delegation to the Congress. “For the first time in the history of the Congress, we have brought the issue of food justice to the Zionist table.”

The resolutions will green the Congress itself by requiring the WZO to offset the carbon released into the atmosphere by the event and by the transportation of its delegates to Jerusalem. They also call for at least half of the food at the Congress to be procured from local and organic producers.

“Ensuring that we serve food that comes from locally grown and organic sources helps ensure sustainability for Israel,” said GZA delegate Aviva Melissa Frank.

The GZA resolutions were written by a team of environmentalists from Israel and North America.

“Because of the resolutions approved today, we will be helping to protect Israel’s land, water and air. This may be the best Congress for Israel’s environment since the KKL was founded in 1901,” Krantz said. “One of the resolutions declares that Jewish environmental education and support for local agriculture are globally important values within the Jewish community. It’s an amazing statement — and we’re backing it up with action.”

By AJWS Director of Advocacy Timi Gerson. Cross-posted on Civil Eats and Food Forever — the AJWS Food Justice Blog.

Monsanto has donated $4 million in seeds to Haiti, sending 60 tons of conventional hybrid corn and vegetable seed, followed by 70 more tons of corn seed last week with an additional 345 tons of corn seed to come during the next year. Yet the number one recommendation of a recent report by Catholic Relief Services on post-earthquake Haiti is to focus on local seed fairs and not to introduce new or �improved� varieties at this time.

Some tough questions need to be asked and answered before we’ll know whether or not Monsanto’s donation will help or hurt long-term efforts to rebuild food sufficiency and sovereignty in Haiti. Here are five of them:

• What do Haitians think? Do rural organizations representing Haiti’s farmers actually want these seeds from Monsanto or not? We know at least one spokesperson for Haitian farmers isn’t interested. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay and the National Peasant Movement of the Papay Congress said in a recent article published by Grassroots International that “if people start sending hybrid, NGO seeds, that’s the end of Haitian agriculture.”

• Will Haitian farmers be able to use existing farming methods with these seeds or do they require a completely different set of techniques � for example, is it possible for these seeds to be banked year to year for use in more than one planting cycle? Hybrid seeds don’t have a great track record for re-planting, which means that farmers typically must buy new seeds every year.

• Does cultivation of these seeds require expensive new inputs and/or chemicals that may negatively impact the environment and soil over the long-term? Hybrids typically require a lot of fertilizers, pesticides, etc. and according to the press release, these will be provided through the USAID’s 5-year WINNER program. When the WINNER program is done, will farmers find themselves reliant on external inputs they can’t afford or access? What will the inputs leave behind in terms of the soil’s condition?

• Will the rest of the Monsanto seeds sent to Haiti over the next year be conventional or genetically modified (GM)? GM seeds are as controversial in Haiti as they are here at home. It is critical that Haitians themselves are in charge of the decision to plant or not plant GM; they first need to know what is being offered to them in the first place.

• Will the Monsanto seeds (whether conventional or GM) affect indigenous seed diversity by mixing with them and contaminating existing seed strains? Large influxes of non-native seeds have touched off controversy and alarmed environmental activists and peasant farmers from Mexico to Malaysia to Mali.

Agricultural development is critical for Haiti and was even before the earthquake. Lambi Fund of Haiti, a partner organization of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), has been working with rural communities to create indigenous seed banks, building expertise in farming techniques and using environmentally-friendly methods to renew depleted Haitian soil.

Advocates for common sense food aid, including AJWS, are asking Congress to spend the $150 million dollars requested by the Obama Administration for Food Aid to Haiti on resources that will help Haiti feed itself for the long-term. You can make your voice heard by signing this petition.

Monsanto’s donation � just like the US government’s in-kind food aid donations � should empower rather than dis-empower the rural communities working to grow food for their country over the long term. More to the point, the communities most affected by these donations should decide whether they want this aid at all and if so, what they want and when they want it. It’s unclear in this case if Monsanto or anyone else has asked them.

The iridescent colors reflected off an oil slick are like a twisted and distorted rainbow.

There is a special correlation between this week�s Torah portion and the rainbow covenant of Noah�s time. And there is a foreboding contrast between the rainbow covenant and what�s happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The tension between these dynamic relationships in many ways defines the predicament of our time.

Just as this week is the week we read about the central covenant of the Torah encoded in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, it is also the week when the anniversary of the rainbow covenant falls. It is no random happenstance: the covenant represented by the Jubilee is in many ways a response to the covenant with Noah and the animals.

How so? The covenant of Noah�s time�the first covenant recorded in the Torah�includes the land and the animals as covenant partners with God alongside the human family. This is also the case with the Jubilee covenant: the land is promised her Sabbaths as a condition for the Israelites to settle upon the land, while the people are required in the Sabbatical year, when the land is resting, to open their fences to allow the wild animals in to eat their fill.

The first condition�to let the land rest�is a fulfillment of the promise in the rainbow covenant that God will no longer destroy the land because of humanity: here God promises to exile humanity in order to save the land from being destroyed. The second condition�allowing the wild animals into the fields�is a tikkun for what happened after the rainbow covenant: even though the animals were partners in God�s covenantal promise not to destroy the earth, they afterwards became fodder for the humans (�like green plants I give you them all�).

Instead, here, in the Sabbatical year, the humans are required to allow their agriculture to go wild and to invite the wild animals to share what grows. This is not only a tikkun for the permission granted to human beings to eat animals. It is also a return to the Garden of Eden, where animals and human beings shared the same food.

And the Gulf of Mexico? In the rainbow covenant God promised not to destroy the Earth because of us, but God did not promise that we wouldn�t destroy the Earth. As the oil laps at the shore and threatens vast ecosystems, important food sources, and endangered species, we must realize that God�s covenant is not enough to save us. The iridescent colors reflected off an oil slick are like a twisted and distorted rainbow. The tragedy and horror of this accident remind us that we have reached a point where we can undo God�s rainbow covenant at the expense of our own lives and the lives of other creatures.

These are the worst of times, because the threat is that close and that enormous. And these are the best of times, because we can wake up to our potential for love and righteousness and create a sustainable world, a world that reflects the rainbow covenant as it was meant to be: a promise to honor and cherish all beings, as God does, and so to act in God�s image.

Then, to quote a medieval prayer (from Pri Eitz Hadar), may we be privileged to see �the whole return to its original strength�and to see the rainbow, joyful and beautified with his colors.� Yashuv hakol l�eitano ha rishon, v�niratah hakeshet, sas umitpa�er b�govanin.

David Seidenberg is the creator of neohasid.org and a teacher of Judaism and ecology.

Let me be the first to say that I�m all for fighting for justice the little guy and when necessary, boycotting the big evil corporations of the world. But because we live in the age of �astroturfing,�� �Tea Parties,� and� �Birthers� there is plenty of false, misleading and sometimes offensive information presented in the guise of educational materials or concerned citizenship.� Needless to say, I�ve grown cynical enough not just to swallow every bit of Michael-Moore-like corporate bashing I come across.

Take for example a recent report by the Cornucopia Institute a Wisconsin-based think tank that according to their website is a group �seeking economic justice for the family-scale farming community.�� It wasn�t their mission that caused me pause as much as their vehement attacks on certain brands of soy products readily found in most grocery stores.

It first started out with my boyfriend�s favorite brand of chocolate soymilk � Silk.� One day he came home from shopping and said, �The co-op isn�t selling Silk anymore.�� Curious he tried to figure out why.� �Oh, I guess there is a question about their organic soy products.� They are not using all organic soybeans like they used to and the company has not been very forthcoming about it.�� The information that sparked the change in product availability at our co-op had come from the Cornucopia Institute�s report Behind the Bean: The Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry.

Then last week, that same boyfriend said, �Oh man, now veggie-burgers are going to kill me.��� It turns out that the Cornucopia report also lists a number of popular soy products that contain trace amounts of hexane � a hazardous air pollutant according to the EPA also known to cause nervous system failure and skin disorders in humans.

So who are these Cornucopia people, and why do they seem to hate soy so much?� Sure, I�m used to grass-roots groups and unions bashing huge companies like Wal-Mart and Sodexo but something felt a little odd about a think-tank I had never heard of attacking soy milk and veggie burgers. With a little Internet research I quickly found a few suggestions of conflicts of interest associated with the Cornucopia Institute.

• After the �hexane in your soyburgers� story came out, other stories were published claiming that the report had actually been funded in part by a pro-meat anti-soy company.� This however was quickly debunked by a Mother Jones reporter who talked to Mark Kastel, the Director of the Cornucopia Institute who denied any such funding for the report.

• Prior to his work at the Cornucopia Institute, Mark Kastel had been the President of M.A. Kastel and Associates, Inc., which had at one time represented Organic Valley � a competitor to brands like Silk.� Kastel denies any existing relationship with Organic Valley.

So, despite initially rubbing me the wrong way, the Cornucopia Institute doesn�t really appear to be thinly veiled front group set up to bash the competition for other corporate interests.� And some good apparently has come from their work.� After the Cornucopia Institute�s inclusion of Amy�s on the bad list of companies, Amy�s website now reads, �Because of concerns around soy protein extracted with hexane, we have eliminated the use of any soy protein ingredient that uses hexane in its processing.�� In return, the Cornucopia Institute has modified its list.

Perhaps more so than other issues, food policy advocacy is difficult and terribly nuanced work.� There are very few, very large corporate entities that own most everything you can buy in a grocery store.� So it is understandable to want to know who is really behind any group that has an ax to grind against popular food products.� I want there to be watchdogs in the world willing to fight against the shenanigans of large corporations, but I also want to know if these groups have any ulterior motives.

Sam Kass, White House assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator, wore a green tie – it was appropriate since the meeting was on St. Patrick’s Day. Twenty-eight community and faith-based organizations (CFBO) from around the country, including Hazon represented by yours truly, had gathered for a one-day meeting to discuss First Lady Michelle Obama’s ambitious initiative, Let’s Move, to combat childhood obesity in one generation. Kass and Jocelyn Frye, the First Lady’s Policy Director started the day by talking about the meaningful role that faith-based organizations play in their communities. The White House is seeking a comprehensive strategy to tackle the dual problem of hunger and obesity and they see faith-based organizations as uniquely positioned to do this work by allowing children to connect body, mind and spirit. Kass spoke of the need for simple ways for people to transform their lives and to then become leaders for others to make healthy changes, too.

I learned that the Let’s Move Initiative is based on four pillars: Healthy Choices; Healthier Schools; Physical Activity; and Affordable & Accessible Healthy Food. The day focused around two main questions: What actions can CFBO take to implement these pillars? What CFBOs already run successful programs addressing this pillar? Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships directors lead the program – they included Joshua DuBois from the White House, Alexia Kelley from Health and Human Services (HHS), Max Finberg from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Peter Groff from US Department of Education (DoED), and John Kelly Senior Advisory for the Partnership. Organizations shared success storied – check out the work that the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and Come to the Table are doing – and challenges. The Partnership was seeking input from the people on the ground about what ideas are most relevant, what resources are most needed, and what partnerships can be created to help make this happen.

What is amazing is that this was the first time Hazon sat at the table while government officials sought direction and input for a national policy campaign. As the only Jewish organization at the table that is already engaged in this work, Hazon is uniquely positioned to continue to be a resource and an ally in the mission to eradicate childhood obesity in a generation. It is inspiring — and I look forward to keeping you all updated.

In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa. USDA failed to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS) before deregulating the crop. An EIS is a rigorous analysis of the potential significant impacts of a federal decision. The federal courts sided with CFS and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of the GE plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in an EIS.

USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009.
A 60-day comment period is now open until February 16, 2010. CFS has begun analyzing the EIS and it is clear that the USDA has not taken the concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, organic dairies, or consumers seriously. Instead, USDA has completely dismissed the fact that GE contamination will threaten export and domestic markets and organic meat and dairy products. And, incredibly, USDA is claiming that there is no evidence that consumers care about such GE contamination (also known as transgenic contamination or biological pollution) of organic. USDA’s preliminary determination is to once again deregulate GE alfalfa without any limitations or protections for farmers or the environment.

CLICK HERE to Review the draft EIS:

Review Supplemental documents here:

CFS is spearheading a campaign to ensure that all affected parties are involved in the public process and have the opportunity to submit public comments. This is the first time the USDA has done this analysis for any GE crop. Therefore, the final version (and resulting decision) will have broad implications for all GE crops. The failure of the agency to address the environmental and related economic impacts of GE alfalfa will have far-reaching consequences for organic and conventional agriculture and food producers.

Consumer/Organic Outreach Talking Points
*Tell USDA That You Care About GE Contamination of Organic Crops and Food:

USDA claims that there is no evidence that consumers care about contamination of organic alfalfa and alfalfa-derived foods with Monsanto’s GE Roundup Ready alfalfa.

- Prohibition of genetic engineering (GE) is a fundamental tenet of the Organic Standard. In fact, USDA’s failure to exclude GE crops from the first version of the organic rule was one of the main reasons that 275,000 people filed public comments in 1997– the largest outpouring of public participation in the history of U.S. administrative procedure. Consumers care deeply about organic integrity, and genetic engineering is fundamentally at odds with organic. More than 75% of consumers believe that they are purchasing products without GE ingredients when they buy organic.

*Tell USDA You Will Reject GE Contaminated Alfalfa and Alfalfa-Derived Foods:

USDA claims that consumers will not reject GE contamination of organic alfalfa if the contamination is unintentional or if the GE material is not transmitted to the end milk or meat product.

- The Organic Standard requires that livestock feed for animals used for meat, milk, eggs, and other animal products is 100 percent organic. Protecting organic alfalfa, the main source of feed for the organic dairy industry, is crucial to the health of that important sector of U.S. agriculture. Additionally, as the Court found in the lawsuit that required this EIS, to “farmers and consumers organic means not genetically engineered, even if the farmer did not intend for his crop to be so engineered.” Whether or not the end product is impacted is not the issue. Farmers’ fundamental right to sow the crop of their choice is eliminated when it is contaminated with transgenes, and so is the public’s ability to support meaningful organic food and feed production. The public’s trust in the integrity of the organic label is essential to the continued vitality of the organic foods industry. Tell USDA you reject GE contamination of organic by any means or at any stage of sustainable food production.

*Tell USDA to Protect Organic Farmers and All Farmers Who Wish to Choose to Grow Non-GE Crops:

Although USDA says it supports “coexistence” of all types of agriculture, USDA refuses to even consider any future for alfalfa that would include protections from contamination for organic and conventional farmers and exporters.

- USDA can approve GE crops in whole or in part. Partial approval could include use restrictions, geographic limitations or planting isolation distances. Yet, in the court-ordered analysis, USDA analyzed only two options: 1) Full approval, allowing GE alfalfa to be grown and sold without restriction like any other crop; and 2) No action, meaning GE alfalfa could only be grown under USDA permit, as at present. USDA’s “all or nothing” approach leaves un-analyzed any potential options to protect farmers. This is contrary to law and logic. USDA’s basic mission is “protecting American agriculture.” Yet, USDA refused to even consider any options that might protect organic and conventional agriculture from contamination and the resulting loss of markets and ability to sow the crop of their choice.

*Tell USDA That Protecting Farmers is Its Job and That Relying Solely on Monsanto’s Business as Usual “Best Practices” Ensures Widespread GE Contamination:

USDA claims that Monsanto’s seed contracts require measures sufficient to prevent GE contamination, and that there is no evidence to the contrary.

- In the lawsuit requiring the EIS, the Court found that GE contamination had already occurred in the fields of several Western states with these same business-as-usual practices in place!

- The EIS itself acknowledges that GE contamination may happen and includes studies that honey bees can cross-pollinate at distances over 6 miles, and Alkali bees at 4-5 miles, much further than any distances under Monsanto’s “best practices.”

-In general, where other GE crops were approved without restriction, contamination of organic and conventional seeds and crops is widespread and has been documented around the world. A recent report documented 39 cases in 2007 and more than 200 in the last decade. The harms incurred by organic farmers and food companies from GE contamination are many and include: lost markets, lost sales, lower prices, negative publicity, withdrawal of organic certification, expensive testing and prevention measures, and product recalls. In at least one case, pervasive GE contamination eliminated an entire organic sector. According to an article in the journal Nature Biotechnology: “[T]he introduction of GEherbicide-tolerant canola in Western Canada destroyed the growing, albeit limited, market for organic canola.”

*Tell USDA That GE Alfalfa Would Significantly Increase Pesticide Use and Thereby Harm Human Health and the Environment:

USDA admits (correctly) that introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase Roundup use. However, USDA’s claims that the increase is not significant and that Roundup will replace other, more toxic herbicides are flat-out wrong.

- The great majority of GE crops grown today are Roundup Ready, and their widespread introduction has vastly increased Roundup use and fostered an epidemic of Roundup-resistant weeds. To kill Roundup-resistant weeds requires higher doses of Roundup, often in combination with other toxic herbicides. Over the past 13 years, Roundup Ready crops have significantly increased overall herbicide use on corn, soybeans and cotton – by 383 million pounds – and Roundup Ready alfalfa will only make matters worse.

- As the agency’s own studies here show, the great majority of alfalfa is currently grown without the use of any herbicides at all. So Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase Roundup use and exacerbate the resistant weed epidemic without displacing other herbicides on most alfalfa farms.

- Roundup has been associated with increased rates of several cancers in pesticide applicators (e.g. non-Hodgkin’s & multiple myeloma), and is highly toxic to frogs at field-relevant concentrations. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently re-assessing the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, for the first time in over 15 years. USDA should wait for this new EPA assessment before it considers approving GE alfalfa.

*Tell USDA That Harm to Small and Organic Farmers is Significant:

USDA concludes that GE alfalfa will cause production to shift to larger farms (that can afford built-in isolation distances) and conventional growers who are not threatened by GE contamination, but that these economic shifts are not significant.

- Small, family farmers are the backbone and future of American agriculture and must be protected. Organic agriculture provides many benefits to society: healthy foods for consumers, economic opportunities for family farmers and urban and rural communities, and a farming system that improves the quality of the environment. However, the continued vitality of this sector is imperiled by the complete absence of measures to protect organic production systems from GE contamination and subsequent environmental, consumer, and economic losses.

Comments can be filed online HERE:

Comments are due February 16, 2010. For written, mailed comments please send two copies of your comment to Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238. Please state that your comment refers to Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044.

Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).

The upcoming election in Bolivia is stirring some interesting dynamics between an indigenous plant and a popular president. So, too, it is re-asserting the interconnectedness of politics, agriculture, indigenous culture and economic security in the developing world. A BBC news article reports that as Bolivian President Evo Morales campaigns for re-election, indigenous growers of coca—a leaf used in food, traditional medicine, tea, cosmetics and, most infamously, in cocaine—are backing him financially. Coca unions and “cocaleros” (coca growers) know the coca leaf as an intrinsic part of Bolivia’s indigenous culture and economy. Coca unions are joining forces and taking money out of their harvests to put into Morales’s campaign.

Here’s one testimony that captures the identity politics at play:

“I am backing President Morales with everything I can because he is one of us – an indigenous peasant, a coca grower, who knows what suffering means,” says coca grower and trade unionist, Emilio Mamani, cupping a bunch of shiny green leaves. “He is fighting for the rights of the indigenous poor, the peasants, that for centuries here were, basically, shadowed people.”

Farmers in today’s developing world rarely ever see their own lives and struggles reflected in the platform of a national leader, so the alliance between Bolivia’s coca growers and Morales is rather interesting. The BBC reports that since the mid-1980s, Bolivian coca growers have been increasingly at the forefront of the political struggle in Bolivia and have been instrumental to President Morales’s success. And yet, the situation has its flaws: Morales’s presidency, his re-election campaign and coca producers at large have come under scrutiny as a result of an increase in Bolivia’s illegal cocaine production, sharply dividing indigenous and non-indigenous people. Learn more here.

Late on Friday we received the following letter from Pete Cohon, founder and moderator of VeggieJews, an international, real-world and online, Jewish, vegetarian organization.  He has been a vegan and animal rights activist for 22 years and a vegetarian for 27 years.  A former San Francisco trial lawyer, Pete now lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Below his letter is the response from Hazon.  We encourage a vibrant debate, but please ask commentators to refrain from personal attacks on any views.  We reserve the right to remove  any comments that violate our Community Guidelines.

An open letter to Nigel Savage, Executive Director of Hazon, and the groups members:

The Hazon group claims that it works to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community, fight climate change and promote a more sustainable world for all.  I understand that the group even hosts vegetarian meals at which it promotes its programs.

That sounds great.  But I’m concerned that Hazon is not living up to the promise.

Three years ago, during your group’s 2007 Jewish Food Conference, Hazon publicly slaughtered three goats despite numerous appeals that the cruel demonstration of shechita be canceled.  I am disappointed that Hazon remains unapologetic for its cruel and unnecessary slaughter.  But I am truly offended that you are planning a similar demonstration again at this year’s Jewish Food Conference which will begin on December 24 near Monterey, California.

According to Hazon’s Web site, this year’s conference will include:

Chicken Shechita at Green Oaks Creek Farm:

We will meet on the farm early in the morning on Wednesday, December 23 to observe the shechita (ritual slaughter) and to help pluck, clean, soak, and salt pasture-raised chickens.  If you are old enough to be a bar or bat mitzvah, you are old enough to volunteer.  No experience is necessary.  Wear warm work clothes and be prepared to get your hands dirty.

In other words, Hazon is again promoting unnecessary animal cruelty in the name of Jewish environmentalism.

It looks like, contrary to its claims, Hazon is not really a Jewish environmental group at all.

While claiming to fight climate change and support a more sustainable environment, Hazon completely ignores the 2006 report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization that found animal agriculture responsible for almost 1/5 of all global warming.

Hazon also continues to ignore the 2009 report of the NGO World Watch, which found that the UN’s figures were incorrectly tabulated and that the actual contribution of animal agriculture to global warming is 51%.

But, apparently, Hazon doesn’t care about the facts.  Your group continues to pretend to be a Jewish environmental organization  and even hosts misleading vegetarian events to promote itself while also continuing to promote cruel and environmentally unsustainable lifestyles.  If Hazon believes that a few chickens running around freely on small, sustainable farms can feed the demand of billions and billions of people living mostly in urban areas on this planet, then Hazon is truly living in a dream world.  As long as people eat animals, mass production of animal foods will require massive operations that cannot  possibly be environmentally sustainable.

Please be advised that your planned slaughter of chickens at this year’s Jewish Food Conference is unacceptable.  The conference will only encourage the continuation of a meat-based diet despite the negative health, environmental and ethical consequences.  I urge you to stop the bloodletting and start healing the planet by promoting to the Jewish community a diet based solely on plant-based foods.  It’s time for Hazon to include compassion for animals in its mission as well as real-world environmental sanity.

- – -

Dear Pete,

Thank you for your thoughtful response to our work.  Nigel is out of town this weekend, but he wanted to make sure we responded to you.

Before I go into Hazon’s pedagogy, I want to comment on your climate change comments.  As you note, animal husbandry is a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.  We know that data and have used it to guide aspects of our Jewish Climate Change Campaign.  In this campaign, we ask Jews to reduce their meat intake by 50% within the next shmita cycle – September 2015.

But we go past the concerns of climate change.  Hazon engages on the issues that arise from the industrialization of our food – period.  We examine how we eat all foods and what we’re eating.  Through the Hazon CSA (community supported agriculture) program, hundreds of Jewish families across the US are sourcing their weekly vegetables from local organic farmers.  Countless people have been inspired by Hazon to shop at their local farmer’s market.

Now, to address the issue of shechting animals at the Food Conference.  I am not going to address whether shechita is cruel – that is a conversation on Jewish tradition that I will not address here.  But I will address how participating in the shechita process impacts the community that has become the Food Conference participants.  Hazon does not tell people how to be Jews, let alone how to be environmentalists.  We do provide the richness of education and experience that enables and empowers personal decision.  For too many people, animal consumption is disguised by neat packaging and the neutral term “meat.” By shechting animals at the Food Conference, we provide the space for people to engage with the intimate reality of eating animal flesh. And that experience has proven, time and time again, to do more to influence long-term changes in personal consumption behavior.

Again, thank you for taking the time to engage us on this important issue.

All the best,

Liore
Assistant to the Executive Director
Hazon