Podcasts about Farm Forward

In this episode of 'The Biggest Table,' I welcome Reverend Dr. Christopher Carter to discuss the intricate connections between food, identity, and justice. Dr. Carter, an expert in black, womanist, and environmental ethics, shares insights from his upbringing in Michigan, where food insecurity during his childhood shaped his understanding of food's importance. We delve into Dr. Carter's book, 'The Spirit of Soul Food,' which explores ancestral food traditions and the concept of black veganism. Highlighting the intersectionality of race, food, and non-human animals, Dr. Carter argues for ethical eating practices that honor sacred worth and oppose oppressive systems like factory farming. He emphasizes the importance of context-specific and agent-specific actions in aligning one's diet with ethical and spiritual values. Dr. Carter also calls for systemic changes and personal compassion in the pursuit of justice for both human and non-human communities.Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter's research, teaching, and activist interests are in Black, Womanist, and Environmental ethics, with a particular focus on race, food, and nonhuman animals. His publications include “Race, Animals, as a New Vision of the Beloved Community” in Animals and Religion (Routledge, 2024), The Spirit of Soul Food (University of Illinois Press, December 2021), and “Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism” in The Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature (Bloomsbury, 2018). In them, he explores the intersectional oppressions experienced by people of color, non-human nature, and animals. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Theology, Ecology, and Race at Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Lead Pastor of The Loft at Westwood United Methodist Church, and he is also on the board of directors of Farm Forward, an anti-factory farming non-profit. He is married to Dr. Gabrielle Carter, a small animal veterinary oncologist, and while their son Isaiah is not a doctor of any sort, he definitely believes he is more intelligent than his parents.Christopher Carter's websiteProgressive Christian Podcast on Apple PodcastsThis episode of the Biggest Table is brought to you in part by Wild Goose Coffee. Since 2008, Wild Goose has sought to build better communities through coffee. For our listeners, Wild Goose is offering a special promotion of 20% off a one time order using the code TABLE at checkout. To learn more and to order coffee, please visit wildgoosecoffee.com. 

In today's show Mark previews the Farm Forward conference from Iowa Soybean Association with Matt Herman, Dustin continues the conversation with Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig, and Riley speaks to the interim CEO of the Food Bank of Iowa, Tami Nielsen, about a donation from Hy-Vee.

In this week's episode of Weekend Ag Matters Mark Magnuson runs down the news headlines, Riley Smith speaks with Matt Roberts of Syverson-Strege, Dustin Hoffmann is joined by Ted Perry of Purina, Mark previews Farm Forward with Matt Herman of the Iowa Soybean Association, and Russ provides his faith-based segment.

What if embracing veganism could also be an act of solidarity with marginalized communities? In this episode, Dr. Christopher Carter guides us through the multifaceted intersections of veganism, race, and spirituality. Christopher shares a deeply personal narrative that connects their transformative path to veganism with their family's historical struggles, drawing powerful parallels between the exploitation of migrant farm workers today and the harsh realities of the Jim Crow South. As we explore these connections, we challenge listeners to rethink ethical eating as a profound statement of unity and resistance against systemic injustices. We further untangle the complex threads linking cultural identity and dietary choices, shedding light on how historical diets have been manipulated to signify sophistication and power. Through engaging stories of resilience and adaptability, we discover the rich tapestry of vegan soul food and its ability to nourish both body and heritage. Inspired by the work of earlier trailblazers, our conversation emphasizes that aligning one's cultural identity with vegan values doesn't mean losing touch with one's roots but rather finding innovative ways to celebrate them. The episode also takes a deep dive into the radical compassion inherent in Christianity, questioning if teachings can inspire a modern spiritual path of inclusivity and justice. By drawing on the legacies of Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, we discuss how religions can be reclaimed from oppressive narratives to create communities grounded in empathy and understanding. This discussion invites listeners to embrace personal growth, self-care, and community engagement, all while reflecting on the interconnectedness of life through the lens of radical veganism. Guest Bio: Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter's teaching, research, and activist interests are in Black, Womanist, and Environmental ethics, with a particular focus on race, food, and nonhuman animals. He is the co-creator of Racial Resilience, an anti-racism and anti-bias program that utilizes the combined insights of contemplative practices and critical race theories. His academic publications include “Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism” in The Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature (Bloomsbury, 2018), The Spirit of Soul Food (University of Illinois Press, December 2021), and “Race, Animals, and a New Vision of the Beloved Community” in Animals and Religion (Routledge, 2024). Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Theology, Race, and Ecology at the Methodist Theological School of Ohio, a Faith in Food Fellow at Farm Forward, and lead pastor of The Loft at Westwood UMC, in Westwood California. Thanks for listening to another episode. Follow, review, and share to help Consciously Clueless grow! Connect with me: https://www.consciouslycarly.com/ Join the Consciously Clueless community on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/consciouslycarly Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/consciously.carly/ Connect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/consciously.carly.blog Music by Matthew Baxley

Today, I am joined by Lisa Rimmert of On the Nose. Lisa is a standup comedian and writer based in the Seattle area. In 2021, she launched her company, On The Nose, LLC, through which she helps to change the world through effective and humane communication. Current and past clients have included Beyond Carnism, Farm Forward, Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, and Volunteers of America. Lisa published her first book, a memoir, in 2022. Titled Stay: My Forever Friendship with an Aging Dog, it earned her a prestigious award for Best First Book from the Independent Book Publishers Association. She's currently working on a second dog-related memoir. When she's not writing, Lisa can be found telling jokes to audiences at bars and clubs around Seattle and beyond. A lifelong animal advocate, the topic of animals and their well-being serves as a through line connecting all of Lisa's projects. Lisa and I became fast friends, which I think will be pretty clear as you listen to this episode. The only thing stopping us from getting up to regular shenanigans is the fact that we live on opposite sides of the country.  I had the pleasure of reading her book Stay after Lisa and I recorded this episode so I'll share my thoughts now. Buy the book, if you've ever loved a non-human animal you'll find parts of yourself in this book. It brought me back to moments with my senior cat Cookie, that first moment you realize they're a senior and each moment after. Lisa so beautifully captures her experience and friendship with beloved Dakota. It's a beautiful and poignant tale I feel lucky to have read.  To connect with Lisa: www.onthenosecomms.com www.instagram.com/lisarimmy www.facebook.com/lisarimmy www.youtube.com/@lisarimmy www.tiktok.com/@lisarimmert To connect with me:Follow me on Facebook and Instagram @didyoubringthehummus Contact me here or send me an email at info@didyoubringthehummus.com Join my mailing list and get 3 free recipes just for signing up! https://www.didyoubringthehummus.com/3recipepdf Join my Podcast Fan Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/didyoubringthehummus/ Book a free 30 minute call with me: https://www.didyoubringthehummus.com/book-online To be a guest on the podcast: https://www.didyoubringthehummus.com/beaguest ©2024 Kimberly Winters - Did You Bring the Hummus LLC Theme Song ©2020 JP Winters ⁠@musicbyjpw⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kimberly-winters/message

Grant Strom of Strom Family Farms joined the WRAM's Noon Ag Hour to discuss the upcoming Farm Forward Conference.

If you want to be successful and confident in the decisions you are making in the dairy business, there is one tool I want to share with you today that will help you move forward. It's helped me in my business to gain more focus and clarity, it's helped make decisions easier, it's saved me time and money, and it can do that for you too. Join host, Peggy Coffeen, as she leads a panel discussion at the World Dairy Expo with Three NMPF Young Cooperator Members. What you'll learn: How core values play a strong role in the culture of your business How these 8 questions will provide the basics of a strategic plan for your business How these three young producers define their core values and core focus What these three producers plan to do to strategically move their dairy farms forward A Panel Discussion from the World Dairy Expo hosted by NMPF YC.

Soul food has its roots in the culinary traditions of Black Americans and African diaspora communities in the southern United States, and it plays a crucial role in preserving Black history. But given the impact of racism and colonialism in the US food system on Black people, what should soul food look like today? In this week's episode, Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter joins Melanie and Evanna to talk about his book The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, & Food Justice, which unpacks the connections between food injustice and racial injustice. They discuss how decolonizing soul food offers a way to reclaim culinary history and human dignity for Black communities; the importance of advocating for a more equitable food system and future while upholding the values of compassion, love, justice, and solidarity for the marginalized; and what a movement toward Black food sovereignty might look like. Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter's research, teaching, and activist interests are in Black, womanist, and environmental ethics, with a particular focus on race, food, and nonhuman animals. His publications include The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, & Food Justice; “Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism,” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature; and the coedited volume The Future of Meat without Animals. In them, he explores the intersectional oppressions experienced by BIPOC, nonhuman nature, and animals. He's an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of San Diego and Lead Pastor of The Loft at Westwood United Methodist Church. He's also on the board of directors of Farm Forward, an anti-factory farming nonprofit. Evanna mentions The Food Empowerment Project's Chocolate List. Christopher mentions the book Afroism by Aph and Syl Ko. Visit Christopher's website and check out his book "The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, & Food Justice". Follow Christopher on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). Check out Melanie's new book, "How to End Injustice Everywhere". Check out Evanna's book, "The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting". This season of Just Beings is brought to you by our friends at LeafSide and Vivo Life! Learn more about LeafSide by visiting GoLeafSide.com. Learn more about Vivo Life by visiting VivoLife.com. Stay up to date with Just Beings on social media by following @JustBeingsPod. This episode was edited by Andrew Sims.

Episode #127 Notes1:00 - What is Farm Forward?2:00 - What is factory farming, and how do you define it?5:00 - What are zoonatic pandemics?9:00 - How avian bird flu has affected food prices.16:00 - On learnings from COVID-19.19:00 - On transitioning to a better food system, and impacts on the way people access food and eat.24:00 - On adjusting our diets to reduce meat intake.29:30 - Farm Forward's report on chicken labelling and greenwashing.33:30 - On issues with food certifications.36:00 - Disease resistance in animals.

Surprise! Those certification labels promising no antibiotics in animals are sometimes a hollow promise. Andrew deCoriolis from Farm Forward unpacks the recent studies from both the Milken Institute School of Public Health and Farm Forward's own research that show that corners can and are being cut, and no one is really minding the store. USDA/FSIS, once again, fail to deliver.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support What Doesn't Kill You by becoming a member!What Doesn't Kill You is Powered by Simplecast.

Surprise! Those certification labels promising no antibiotics in animals are sometimes a hollow promise. Andrew deCoriolis from Farm Forward unpacks the recent studies from both the Milken Institute School of Public Health and Farm Forward's own research that show that corners can and are being cut, and no one is really minding the store. USDA/FSIS, once again, fail to deliver.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support What Doesn't Kill You by becoming a member!What Doesn't Kill You is Powered by Simplecast.

Species Unite will be back on June 2nd with a new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. This week's is a conversation with Aaron Gross.    We all have a food story; the story that we tell ourselves about what we eat and why we eat it. It's that story that runs the show when it comes to how we shop, cook, and feed our children.  It was most often taught to us by our parents and their parents, most who thought they were passing on good values and deep traditions and were only doing what was best for their kids. But our food story is more than that. It was also passed on to our parents and to us from advertisers, marketers and a food industry that uses words like values and traditions to get us to buy into a narrative that has damaged our health, destroyed the planet, and caused endless suffering to billions of animals.  But once we come to terms with the fact that it's just a story and not something that we can't change, there's a whole new world waiting. And, like in so many other industries that are inherently broken in America and around the globe, the pandemic has exposed the gaping holes in our food system. But it's also given us the opportunity to take a deeper look into what and how we eat and decide that we can change the story.  Aaron Gross is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, and he's the CEO and founder of Farm Forward. Farm Forward was founded as the nation's first nonprofit devoted exclusively to ending factory farming. Recently, Aaron and the writer, Jonathan Safran Foer published a piece in the Guardian called, We Have to Wake Up: Factory Farms are Breeding Grounds for Pandemics.  There's a paragraph in there that says, "The link between factory farming and increasing pandemic risk is well established scientifically, but the political will to curtail that risk has, in the past, been absent. Now is the time to build that will. It really does matter if we talk about this, share our concerns with our friends, explain these issues to our children, wonder together about how we should eat differently, call on our political leaders, and support advocacy organizations fighting factory farming. Leaders are listening. Changing the most powerful industrial complex in the world – the factory farm – could not possibly be easy, but in this moment with these stakes it is, maybe for the first time in our lifetimes, possible.” Aaron graciously joined me from his quarantine in San Diego to talk about how we do this; how we change the story around how and what we eat and ultimately, how we change our food system. Aaron is one of the smartest guys out there and it was beyond a privilege to hear his thoughts and ideas on how we forge ahead. This conversation was enlightening, inspiring, and incredibly informative. I hope that you learn as much as I did.  We can change our food industry. As bad as most things across the planet are right now, there's real opportunity in front of us. Let's not waste it. Visit FarmForward.com Like Farm Forward on Facebook Follow Farm Forward on Twitter

Dr. Christopher Carter is an assistant professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego and a pastor in the United Methodist Church. He just published his first book “The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice” and is on the board of directors of Farm Forward, an anti-factory farming non-profit. Tune in to learn more about: His grandfather's experience being a migrant farm worker picking cotton, and attending school until 4th grade during Jim Crow laws; The colonization of food and why we overlook Indigenous food when we look back in history; The consequence of racial trauma; What soul food is; Why the foundation of our food system is based on structural racism; His own journey on becoming a vegan; About Farm Forward and the anti-factory farming non-profit. To learn more about Dr. Christopher Carter go to https://www.drchristophercarter.com/spirit-soul-food. You can buy his new book here or at your local bookstore. 

As a part of the Just Kitchen series, Anna and Derrick speak with Rev. Dr. Chris Carter about black veganism, creating a food ethic, and his book "The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice".  Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter's teaching, research, and activist interests are in Black, Womanist, and Environmental ethics, with a particular focus on race, food, and nonhuman animals. He is the co-creator of Racial Resilience, an anti-racism and anti-bias program that utilizes the combined insights of contemplative practices and critical race theories. His academic publications include The Spirit of Soul Food (University of Illinois Press, December 2021), and “Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism” in The Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature (Bloomsbury, 2018). The passion that informs all of his work evolves out of his family's struggle to loosen the chains of systematic racism – similar to bell hooks he believes that education is the practice of freedom. He believes that at its broadest level, learning should be transformational: it should transform how the student views herself, her neighbor, and her worldview. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of San Diego, a Faith in Food Fellow at Farm Forward, and lead pastor of The Loft in Westwood California. https://www.drchristophercarter.com/    

Executive Director of Farm Forward, an advocacy group, takes on the greenwashing of Animal welfare certifications, drawing the distinctions between industry and independent labeling, as well as animal welfare elements frequently overlooked by consumers. Executive Director Andrew DeCoriolis explains why most labels are meaningless, or worse.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support What Doesn't Kill You by becoming a member!What Doesn't Kill You is Powered by Simplecast.

Executive Director of Farm Forward, an advocacy group, takes on the greenwashing of Animal welfare certifications, drawing the distinctions between industry and independent labeling, as well as animal welfare elements frequently overlooked by consumers. Executive Director Andrew DeCoriolis explains why most labels are meaningless, or worse.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support What Doesn't Kill You by becoming a member!What Doesn't Kill You is Powered by Simplecast.

  "Green Washing" is a better recognized term than "Humane Washing" but it's the same idea of claiming to be as good as your customers want to hear. Exaggerations or plain mistruths take liberty with the true facts of the matter.  Farm Forward is one organization that is watching and calling out retailers and others in the food chains that they believe are making animal welfare claims that cannot be substantiated. Ben Goldsmith is the  Co-founder and Chief Strategist of Farm Forward and organization that openly calls for the end of "factory farms" to be ultimately replaced with more equitable, sustainable and humane practices. www.farmforward.com

The class, taught by Melissa Hoffman, is part of the Green Team initiative at Temple Beth Am Los Angeles (https://www.tbala.org/get-involved/green-team). Melissa Hoffman is Director of the Jewish Initiative For Animals (JIFA), a leading sustainable food and animal welfare initiative. In her role, she consults with Jewish organizations and communities across the country to develop and implement ethical food practices, as well as curriculum and programs that foster compassion for all living beings through the lens of Jewish values. Prior to working with JIFA at Farm Forward, she earned her M.S. in Animals and Public Policy from Tufts University in North Grafton, Massachusetts. The class was conducted via Zoom on November 11, 2021 and is introduced by Rabbi Avi Havivi.

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter's teaching and research interests are in Black & Womanist Theological Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Religion & Food, and Religion & Animals. His publications include The Spirit of Soul Food (University of Illinois Press, 2021), “Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism” in The Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Nature (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the co-edited volume The Future of Meat Without Animals (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). In them, he explores the intersectional oppressions experienced by people of color, the environment, and animals. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of San Diego and a Faith in Food Fellow at Farm Forward.Instagram: @dr_chris_carterTwitter: @Dr_ChrisCarterMusic by: @siryalibeatsVector Portrait by: Rafli

This episode we spoke with Christopher Carter about faith, black veganism, and soul food. Show Notes: Follow us on Twitter at @FoodThoughtPod, and you can drop us a line at ThoughtAboutFood on Gmail. Leave us a review! It helps people find the show. Christopher Carter is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Chair of the Theology and Religious Studies department at the University of San Diego and a Faith in Food Fellow at Farm Forward. Christopher's forthcoming book is The Spirit of Soul Food: Race, Faith, and Food Justice from the University of Illinois Press. Christopher mentions that his use of Black Veganism is directly inspired by Aph Ko and Syl Ko's book Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters Christopher shared a recipe for red beans and rice, one of the first that he successfully "veganized." This also counts as a teaser for his book, since this recipe and others are included throughout the text (something I wish more academic books on food would do!): Red Beans & Rice For me, a Black man whose American ancestry begins in Mississippi and Louisiana, the foundational soul food dish will always be red beans and rice. This recipe was a staple in my childhood, something we could eat on special occasions and when our budget for food was slim. For me, red beans and rice feels like home. When the pervasive reality of racism knocks me offcenter, red beans and rice can be the ground from which I can regain my sense of self and remember myself as beloved by my community and beloved by the Ultimate source of compassion. Despite all the stress, micro, and macro aggressions I may face, sitting down at the dinner table and eating red beans gives me a little something to help me keep-on-keeping-on, as the elders would say. If we think about the history of Black foodways as a window into the racism that was and continues to be foundational to our domestic food system, we realize that Black foodways have a deeper meaning that can easily be overlooked. Knowing this history and finding ourselves within this story prompts theological reflection and response. Decolonial analysis seeks to unsettle the notion that theory and praxis are necessarily separate from each other—theory is thinking, and thinking is doing, and praxis necessarily requires thought-reflection on actions. Both my Christian faith and my identity as Black man influence the analysis, arguments, and constructive proposals that I put forth in this book. What some might see as a provocative suggestion, black veganism, is rooted in these two identities. However, what follows in this book is not a straightforward argument for veganism. My own path to veganism was not straightforward, it  was a complicated and challenging transition and it would be foolish to expect otherwise from anyone else but especially Black people given the ways that our foodway is racialized. Black veganism is a process of being and becoming, knowing who we are and what tools we need to use so that Black foodways can be a source of abundant life for Black communities. When I became vegetarian and subsequently transitioned to veganism, I feared that my evolving diet compromised my ability to feel like I was a part of my community when we sat down for meals. Moreover, if I could not eat red beans and rice, I wondered, “what kind of Black person would I be,” could I still claim to be standing on the culinary shoulders of my ancestors? Finding a vegan version of this dietary staple opened my eyes to the creativity one can have cooking soul food. Preparing it and serving it to my family revealed that this delicious version conjures the same familial memories as its nonhuman animal meat-based alternative, and thus possesses the strength to become a foundational family dish too. Because of this, red beans and rice is the first dish we set out upon our vegan soul food table. Ingredients: Two 15oz. cans of Kidney beans, rinsed and drained 4 cups of broth made from Better than Bouillon Vegetable base 4 vegan sausages (I highly recommend Field Roast Apple Sage, Italian, or Mexican Chipotle) 1 tablespoon of grapeseed oil (or any high heat oil) 1 large white onion, diced medium 6 six-inch celery stalks, diced small 6 garlic cloves, minced 1 teaspoon chili powder 1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped ½ cup of green onions Directions Heat a 4-5 quart stew pot over high heat, add the oil and wait until it shimmers. Add the onion and celery and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook about 2 minutes more. Add the sausage, chili powder, thyme, broth, beans, and bell pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently. Season with salt, pepper, and your favorite hot sauce. Serve over a bed of rice, garnish with the green onions. The intro and outro music is "Whiskey Before Breakfast" which is both a great traditional song and an interesting interpretation of "praxis." It was performed and shared by The Dan River Ramblers under a Creative Commons license.

Joey (https://josephtuminello.academia.edu/) is asst. professor of philosophy at McNeese State Uni & program coordinator for the nonprofits Farm Forward & Better Food Foundation (See also Default Veg). His research covers philosophies of food, medicine, animals & environment. He teaches biomedical ethics & sections of ethical theory & existentialism. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is also here on YouTube​​​​​ (subscribe there too!). We discuss (full show notes are on YouTube and Sentientism.info): - Growing up in a Catholic household in Louisiana - "Who's your mama, are you Catholic & can you make a roux?" - Questioning religion early on. Developing scepticism. Understanding mechanisms of control in religion & beyond - Hard-core atheist phase & studying philosophy - Non-theism & atheism. Tempered with humility & openness - "Open-mindedness & scepticism go hand in hand" - Deciding not to get confirmed - Attending Catholic high school that didn't welcome questioning & experiencing social adversity - Social justice & hateful interpretations of some religions (e.g. Westboro Baptist Church) - Using religious arguments to justify discriminations - Analytic philosophy & challenging religious inconsistencies - "Ambiguity & tension is part of the human experience" - Humility & open-mindedness needs to be at the core of naturalism - The arrogance in "angry atheism" - Getting comfortable not knowing. With-holding belief until there's evidence - Meta-physics & ethics - "We don't have access to the ultimate nature of reality" but there are still things we can meaningfully say about reality - Experiences are happening. Phenomenology, directed consciousness & the self/non-self - Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" - Consciousness, interests that matter and ethics (caring about the interests of others) - Lacking a justification for the exploitation or oppression of others, human or not - The "Embrace The Void" podcast with Joey's friend Aaron - Pre-human morality - Is the choice to be moral simply the choice to care about the perspectives of others - Moral inter-subjectivism. There are moral truths independent of each mind but they do require an interface between subjects - Sentient beings do matter morally, but is sentience the only thing that matters? Is cutting down a tree wrong if it has no impact on sentients? - The risk of anthropocentrism, because humans are defining & assessing sentience. But sentience existed long before & far beyond humans - And much more... see YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist​. ​Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Main one is here on FaceBook. Thanks to Graham.

My guest this week is Joey Tuminello, an assistant professor of philosophy at McNeese State University, a program coordinator for the nonprofit orgs Farm Forward and Better Food Foundation, and one of my very closest IRL philosophy brothers. We talk food, drugs, applied ethics, really all that is good in life.Joey's website: https://josephtuminello.academia.edu/DefaultVeg: https://defaultveg.org/2021 Jonathan Safran Foer Virtual Visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GNSTLP2Convocation: Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good StoriesEditing by Lu Lyons, check out her amazing podcast Filmed Live Musicals! http://www.filmedlivemusicals.com/podcast.htmlMusic by GW RodriguezSibling Pod Philosophers in Space: https://0gphilosophy.libsyn.com/Support us at Patreon.com/EmbraceTheVoidIf you enjoy the show, please Like and Review us on your pod app, especially iTunes. It really helps!If you enjoyed this and want to discuss more, start a conversation with me here: https://letter.wiki/AaronRabinowitz/conversationsRecent Appearances: I was on Daniel Schauer's podcast discussing pod life and failing to identify my own microphone https://www.dsmagic.us/democratizing-music-podcast-episodes/zon9318xu1tlzzvsqia4qjh0g0nybgNext week: Critical Legal Theory with Cafésinister

Food writer Corby Kummer spoke to Boston Public Radio on Thursday about a new report by Farm Forward that investigates the differences between animal welfare labels on food. “Whole Foods gets dinged, because they decided they weren’t going to go with the Animal Welfare Society or Certified Humane, they were going to do their own standards and they would put their own animal welfare label on their goods,” he said. “That should always raise red flags - if a company is doing its own certification, who’s checking independently to verify what’s happening?” Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer, and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy.

This episode we’re talking to a friend of mine, Joey Tuminello. Joey, like me, works on a number of quite different questions in philosophy, so our conversation covers a lot of ground. We talk about the difference between food and drugs; eating invasive species; animal ethics and food ethics in the Jain religious and philosophical tradition; and we finish up by talking about his work for the activist group Farm Forward, and how that work connects back to his philosophical commitments. Show Notes:UPDATE: Joey Tuminello, our guest on this episode, teaches at McNeese State University. Louisiana has been hit hard by Hurricane Laura, including Lake Charles where the school is located (you can read about it here: https://on.natgeo.com/3mGHufL and here: https://nyti.ms/2RQbc3J). Please consider donating to https://www.the15whitecoats.org/. Their usual work is providing resources for students of color in medical school (which is a great cause on its own!), but Joey tells me one of their founders is actually from Lake Charles and donors can now earmark donations for Hurricane Laura relief.Follow us on Twitter at @FoodThoughtPod, and you can drop us a line at ThoughtAboutFood on Gmail. Consider leaving us a review wherever you found us!Joey Tuminello was our guest today. Check out his writing on Academia.edu and he said you can email him if you have questions about this episode at JosephT at farmforward.com.We spent a lot of time talking about Farm Forward, where Joey is a program coordinator. Check out their work!We talked about a lot of books! Probably the main one though was Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.Food Philosophy: an Introduction by David Kaplan (I'd love to have him on the show some time) is a great book we also discussed.Joey also mentioned the book Cooking Eating Thinking edited by Deane Curtin and former guest on this podcast Lisa Heldke.Here are some other books we talked aboutI Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to WineNutritionism: The Science and Politics of Dietary AdviceThe New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's SalvationInvasion Biology: Critique of a PseudoscienceThe Ethics and Rhetoric of Invasion EcologyOn AnimalsThe "invasivore" movement's website we discussed was eattheinvaders.orgThe intro and outro music is "Whiskey Before Breakfast" which is both a great traditional song and the title of an autobiography I would definitely read. It was performed and shared by The Dan River Ramblers under a Creative Commons license.Here's Joey's recipe (which by the way I made in a regular pressure cooker and can attest it was delicious!):"Instant Pot Vegan Louisiana-Style Red Beans & Rice (adapted and veganized from Camellia Brand Beans' recipe)I chose to share this recipe because it represents my own trajectory towards veganism after growing up in south Louisiana. We have some of the best-tasting food in the world, but much of it is steeped in meat and animal products. This also comes along with a lot of assumptions about authenticity and the perceived need to include meat, animal fat, etc. in our traditional dishes. Part of my interest in food ontology stems from my continual reflection on the concept of authenticity in Louisiana cuisine, as well as my view that we can retain and even enhance and develop our cultural identities without the need for animal products. Plus, I cook this all the time and it's delicious, easy, and perfect for leftovers.Ingredients:· 1 tablespoon oil· 1 pack of Beyond Sausage Original Bratwurst (14 oz.), or other vegan sausage· 1/4 stick (or 1/8 cup) vegan butter or margarine· 2 cups chopped seasoning blend (onions, celery, green bell peppers, parsley flakes)· 1 tablespoon minced garlic· 1 lb. dried red kidney beans· 6 cups water· 4 bay leaves· 6 tsp. Better Than Bouillon vegetable base (or other stock/bouillon cubes)· Salt to taste· Creole/Cajun seasoning to taste (e.g. Tony Chachere's)· 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper (to taste)· 1/4 tsp. liquid smoke· 1.5 tsp. vegan Worcestershire sauce· Start with 1 tsp. of each of the following (add more to taste):· garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika· Green onions (for garnish)· Hot cooked riceDirections:1. Rinse and sort beans (no need to soak overnight).2. Press the Sauté button on the Instant Pot, add oil to pot. Add sliced sausage, and sauté for about 5 minutes or until browned. Remove sausage to a paper towel-lined plate and reserve.3. Add 1/4 stick vegan butter to Instant Pot, along with chopped seasoning blend and garlic, and cook until onions turn soft and clear.4. Add cooked sausage back to pot, along with the beans, water, bay leaves, and Better Than Bouillon vegetable base. Stir.5. Turn Sauté mode off. Cover, twist to lock the lid, and turn the valve to sealing. Press the Manual button and set to 100 minutes at high pressure.6. When the timer beeps, allow the pressure to release naturally for 30 minutes. Then, turn the valve to venting.7. Remove lid, and use a spoon or potato masher to mash beans to desired creamy consistency. Add salt, cayenne pepper, liquid smoke, vegan Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, Creole/Cajun seasoning based on above amounts.8. Serve over hot cooked rice.9. Garnish with green onions."

What if DefaultVeg was the norm? Professor, Founder of Farm Forward and DefaultVeg and Co-Author of the Eating Animals screenplay and collaborator with Jonathan Safran Foer, Dr. Aaron Gross joins me on the Plantbased Business Hour. We discuss the lack of social distancing in factory farms, how they are breeding grounds for Pandemics -Swine Flu and Asian Bird Flu- and the oppression of animals, workers and farmers by multinational "farming" corporations. We also discuss the disempowerment of consumers by the system that supports these wealthy corporations with subsidies and legal protections at the expense of all of our health and well-being. Are you angry yet? Hold on...there's a solution: DEFAULT VEG! For more info, visit http://ElysabethAlfano.com and Defaultveg.com. SUPPORT with Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AwesomeVegans .

What if DefaultVeg was the norm? Professor, Founder of Farm Forward and DefaultVeg and Co-Author of the Eating Animals screenplay and collaborator with Jonathan Safran Foer, Dr. Aaron Gross joins me on the Plantbased Business Hour. We discuss the lack of social distancing in factory farms, how they are breeding grounds for Pandemics-Swine Flu and Asian Bird Flu- and the oppression of animals, workers and farmers by multinational "farming" corporations. We also discuss the disempowerment of consumers by the system that supports these wealthy corporations with subsidies and legal protections at the expense of all of our health. Are you angry yet? Hold on...there's a solution: DEFAULT VEG! For more info, visit http://ElysabethAlfano.com and Defaultveg.com. SUPPORT with Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AwesomeVegans .

We all have a food story; the story that we tell ourselves about what we eat and why we eat it. It’s that story that runs the show when it comes to how we shop, cook, and feed our children. It was most often taught to us by our parents and their parents, most who thought they were passing on good values and deep traditions and were only doing what was best for their kids. But our food story is more than that. It was also passed on to our parents and to us from advertisers, marketers and a food industry that uses words like values and traditions to get us to buy into a narrative that has damaged our health, destroyed the planet, and caused endless suffering to billions of animals. But once we come to terms with the fact that it’s just a story and not something that we can’t change, there’s a whole new world waiting. And, like in so many other industries that are inherently broken in America and around the globe, the pandemic has exposed the gaping holes in our food system. But it’s also given us the opportunity to take a deeper look into what and how we eat and decide that we can change the story. Aaron Gross is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, and he's the CEO and founder of Farm Forward. Farm forward was founded as the nation's first nonprofit devoted exclusively to ending factory farming. Recently, Aaron and the writer, Jonathan Safran Foer published a piece in the Guardian called, We Have to Wake Up: Factory Farms are Breeding Grounds for Pandemics. There's a paragraph in the article that says, " The link between factory farming and increasing pandemic risk is well established scientifically, but the political will to curtail that risk has, in the past, been absent. Now is the time to build that will. It really does matter if we talk about this, share our concerns with our friends, explain these issues to our children, wonder together about how we should eat differently, call on our political leaders, and support advocacy organizations fighting factory farming. Leaders are listening. Changing the most powerful industrial complex in the world – the factory farm – could not possibly be easy, but in this moment with these stakes it is, maybe for the first time in our lifetimes, possible.”   Aaron graciously joined me from his quarantine in San Diego to talk about how we change the story around how and what we eat and ultimately, how we change our food system. Aaron is one of the smartest guys out there and it was beyond a privilege to hear his thoughts and ideas on how we forge ahead. This conversation was enlightening, inspiring, and incredibly informative. I hope that you learn as much as I did. We can change our food industry. As bad as most things across the planet are right now, there’s real opportunity in front of us. Let’s not waste it.

Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein, Director of the Justice Fellowship in Chicago, presents his Valley Beit Midrash lecture "There’s a Riot Goin’ On”: Violence in Rabbinic Thought" before an audience at Temple Chai (www.templechai.com/) in Phoenix, AZ. ABOUT THIS SPEAKER: Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein is the Director of the Justice Fellowship in Chicago, where he also works as Educational Consultant for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Staff Educator for Farm Forward’s Jewish Initiative for Animals, and Coordinator and Teacher for Mishkan Chicago’s Social Justice Beit Midrash. He has taught at Hadar, Drisha, Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, the TAKUM social justice beit midrash, and campuses, communities, and organizations around the U.S. and Israel. He is a Senior Editor of Jewschool.com. DONATE: www.bit.ly/1NmpbsP LEARNING MATERIALS: https://bit.ly/2PxBo1p For more info, please visit: www.facebook.com/valleybeitmidrash/ www.facebook.com/temple.chai twitter.com/VBMTorah www.facebook.com/RabbiShmulyYanklowitz/ Music: "They Say" by WowaMusik, a public domain track from the YouTube Audio Library.

Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein, Director of the Justice Fellowship in Chicago, presents his Valley Beit Midrash lecture "The Torah Case for Reparations" before an audience at Temple Chai (www.templechai.com/) in Phoenix, AZ. ABOUT THIS SPEAKER: Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein is the Director of the Justice Fellowship in Chicago, where he also works as Educational Consultant for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Staff Educator for Farm Forward’s Jewish Initiative for Animals, and Coordinator and Teacher for Mishkan Chicago’s Social Justice Beit Midrash. He has taught at Hadar, Drisha, Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, the TAKUM social justice beit midrash, and campuses, communities, and organizations around the U.S. and Israel. He is a Senior Editor of Jewschool.com. DONATE: www.bit.ly/1NmpbsP LEARNING MATERIALS: https://bit.ly/2E7PIbK For more info, please visit: www.facebook.com/valleybeitmidrash/ www.facebook.com/temple.chai twitter.com/VBMTorah www.facebook.com/RabbiShmulyYanklowitz/ Music: "They Say" by WowaMusik, a public domain track from the YouTube Audio Library.

Kate and Kathryn dive into their relationship with eating animals and how the book, Eating Animals, has shaped Kathryn’s (and by extension Kate’s) thinking. Then they are joined by the executive director of Farm Forward, a non-profit trying to end factory farming.

What does it mean to be a conscientious consumer of food? Does it make a difference to the economy, the environment, or is it simply a personal decision? What do people of faith have to say about it? We'll explore these issues today on the Leading Voices in Food Podcast with our guest, Dr Aaron Gross, an Associate Professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego. About Aaron Gross Aaron Gross as a historian of religions who writes and speaks about animals and factory farming, as well as modern and contemporary Jewish thought and ethics, and Jewish food and animal ethics in particular. He is the co-chair of the American Academy of Religions' Animals and Religion Group and is the founder and CEO of Farm Forward, a nonprofit advocacy organization that seeks to promote conscientious food choices, reduce animal suffering, and to advance sustainable agriculture. Aaron, you write and speak about animals in factory farming. What first inspired you to engage in this work, both in your scholarship and through the Farm Forward? I think entrance into the food space often comes through different doors. For me, the door was really thinking about animals. And it happened when I was pretty young, based on values I had from my family and the real, kind of explosive moment, was learning about industrial farming, really from reading materials from nonprofit organizations and just getting a kind of quick picture of what the poultry industry, beef industry, and the pork industry had come to look like. And I had a very different vision of what that was supposed to be. On my mother's side, she grew up on a working farm. I had a kind of picture of what those ethics were supposed to be. A lot of my own values I understood as really coming out of an experience of being a farmer. And it was this huge delta between the reality of what I had learned had become virtually totally dominant, And this other picture of what farming should be. It kind of first propelled me into these issues. First with the sensitive sensitivity to the animal issue. But once you start paying attention to the system, you realize it's kind of a bad for multiple issues at once. Many issues intersect there. So I became more interested in the ecological issues. Ultimately the questions of social justice and equity concerned me. And so it's not been hard to make a career of it. It turns out You've collaborated with novelist Jonathan Safran Foer on the book and subsequent documentary Eating Animals. Could you tell me more about the genesis of that partnership? Yeah. One of the interesting experiences that I've had is the reactions I get from people when I tell them I'm interested in these issues. In particular, reactions that I often get to being a vegetarian, which is surprisingly complicated in ways that I didn't necessarily expect. There's a certain kind of way you can find yourself threatening people without having any intention to because you eat very differently. This was something that Jonathan and I got to kind of bond over when there was a major investigation into a kosher slaughterhouse that became a pretty national issue that broke in the New York Times. Follow up stories ended up being part of my dissertation later on, but when it first happened, it exposed just horrific cruelty in a kosher slaughterhouse. Aberrant stuff. So the details are difficult and not necessarily worth the trauma of rehearsing them. Not specific to kosher, or it didn't have to be specific to kosher, though it was bound up with it in this case. And Jonathan and I both as people from a Jewish background cared about it more because of that kind of connection to our community. And we got talking and we both had that same experience that his on and off and my fairly steady commitment to vegetarianism had provoked a lot of interesting intellectual conversations that told us that there was some depth going on here. Something that was raising deeper questions for people. And Jonathan wanted to write about this, that is a combination of kind of social concern, kind of animal suffering at the center and kind of going out to consider all those other issues I mentioned. And then tying that with the reality that not anybody can talk about these issues. Just directly talking about, the animal suffering and environmental pollution or social inequity tied with it often just shuts people down. And so it seemed like a good challenge for somebody who is primary a novelist and works kind of with empathy and how do you speak to people on their own terms. And for me, coming at it more as an advocate, and a scholar, it was an exciting thing to be able to help somebody who has that facility in writing and that kind of audience talk about these issues. So it was a very exciting collaboration. You started the organization Farm Forward in 2007. Could you tell our listeners just what makes the organization unique and what are some of your goals? Yeah, so at the time I started Farm Forward, it was the only organization that specifically focused on factory farming as an issue instead of it being a kind of subset of a larger agenda. There were a lot of other organizations working on it at the time as there are now. I felt good about those organizations, but I thought not being able to focus exclusively on this issue lead to certain kinds of challenges. So the main motivation was just, there wasn't really a space completely focused on this and one of the effects of that was you tended to have a split in orientation. Some that would be advocating for vegetarianism or veganism as a way to kind of combat or divest from factory farming. And those groups would talk about meat reduction, but very unlikely to talk about high welfare farming and really serious support for farmers who were trying to do it outside of the factory farm system. Certainly no resource allocation. They might feel good about it, but tended to not do it. On the other hand, you had groups which were pretty committed to helping farmers, trying to get people who are running sustainable high welfare farms to survive. But in general, in that community, not so good to acknowledge that vegetarianism and veganism might be another way to challenge the factory farm. What do you mean by high welfare farming? So that's a complicated question. Yeah, it would depend on the industry. So we'd have to really drill down and look at specifically, the meat industry and poultry or the egg laying industry in poultry. And I could tell you about some of my particular thoughts. What I'll say is the shorthand is there's a certification called Global Animal Partnership. That's the largest animal welfare certification in the country. At all Whole Foods stores though products with that label are sold everywhere. And they break it into five tiers. Tier one being just a little bit better than industry standard, and tier five being kind of top tier and you could walk through all of those differences. So when I'm saying high welfare, I'm thinking things that are step three, four and five on the gap system, things that are significantly better than average but may or may not be optimal. And that's directly related to the treatment of the animals. So welfare, I'm using specifically to refer to the treatment of animals. Though the correlation between welfare and sustainability and justice issues is far greater than I think is generally appreciated. And in my own kind of reflection on these issues, I think it's often a reluctance to address these issues in tandem that leads to the kind of fractured approaches to resisting factory farming. I mean, what we do know is nobody's really been successful resisting factory farming. It's just grown, and grown more slowly in places where there's been points of resistance, but that's not exactly a victory and I do think that has a lot to do with the way in which people who would have a concern about factory farming has been kind of divided into these different constituencies which then can be handled. How are those things linked - the environmental sustainability and the animal welfare? So a lot of the environmental problems come from concentrating animals and unnatural numbers and if we look at the kind of history of how that happened, it broke a lot of taboos about how you raised animals. Post World War II you have a change in attitude towards farming and the kind of introduction of a strongly, well let's say an attitude that claimed science as it's guiding kind of light though no more motivated by kind of industry and profit, but claiming a scientific outlook. And they really kind of overthrew husbandry treatment oriented approaches. So this was very visible at universities. You had departments of animal husbandry closed down and replaced by departments of animal science, which is pretty much what we have today at big land grant universities, at least in the U.S. It's a little bit more complicated in places like India where there still are departments of animal husbandry. So husbandry referred to a tradition that was very serious about productivity and economics. It was about, raising animals in an economic context, but that had long standing values that came out of the farm tradition kind of baked into it. That was, in some ways, the point of a critique of the scientists. So this isn't a fully rational system, this is a system that's got these, a strange ways of looking at things. They consider animals as sentient beings that have to be managed as such, instead of just an economic production unit. So straight through the 1970s, if you look at an industrial farm magazines and materials, the language, which is not the way they would put today, is extremely explicit in terms of things like treat the pig just like a machine. Don't look at these as animals. Look at them as production units. And where you previously had a kind of concern for the animals overall wellbeing kind of balanced with profitability and linked to profitability--where you genuinely had an overlap between keeping an animal healthy and vibrant and having an animal that would be profitable for you. And that link was just totally severed in this new system. It said if we could completely erase all of our values and just could do anything we want to these animals, how would we raise them? What would we do? And so you had a very different system arise and one of the things that you started doing was cramming animals in small spaces and figuring out you could make that work if you gave them drugs in their feed and controlled their conditions inside. And then you had a concentration of feces that turned from an advantage and extensive systems that were driven by kind of husbandry logic to becoming a kind of toxic problem. And then you had, good old things like the expense of getting rid of that, driving a kind of let's just let it leak out into the rivers and so forth. And so you have kind of pollution. You also are eliminating at the same time, the small farmer. So, if you go back to the 1920s, we're dealing with something like 25 million-plus small poultry farms producing eggs with an average of less than 30 birds. Now you can't be producing eggs with less than, I mean, realistically, probably no less than 100,000 birds. That is a couple barns with at least, 30,000 animals in a barn. Totally different system. And you also went from a lot of independent ownership. A lot of the Ag industry was, for example, in the hands of a women, to being owned by these corporations, which increasingly became totally vertically integrated. And so you had all these questions of how people were now being treated. So instead of it being a place where somebody can, work hard and make a living and build a farm, it became a system where people were hired hands, or these contract farmers. Especially in the poultry industry where they're technically independent farmers, but they don't own their birds, the equipment and stuff that's mortgaged and they're completely in the control of the large companies by design. So here now, we've got a kind of justice issue kind of mixed into this, but it's in some ways driven by throwing out this ethical orientation of traditional animal husbandry and deciding to cease looking at animals as animals. And cease looking at farming as a system of organizing how we relate to other life forms and seeing it just as a business. What is Farm Forward's role in taking us back to more of a husbandry and sort of welfare minded system and what are the activities that you engage in to do self? We try to work in three areas that is changing actual farming practices, changing things on the farm, changing how people are eating, especially at an institutional level and changing the stories we tell. Obviously the way I just narrated the history of modern farming is not the way we normally tell that story, which is one of victory and progress and efficiency with, oh, maybe there was a few problems introduced as we got efficient along the way. So in the area of farming, we do a lot of work through certifications. This is one of the ways to add value to a farmer's product in a way that also a consumer who doesn't necessarily have a lot of knowledge can trust. So I see one of the best ways to help farmers is getting them into certification systems, making sure certification systems are actually farmer friendly, because a lot of the best farmers are least adapted to current certification system. So I would say that's one of the major areas we're working on right now. If you want to just get a lot of people in a certification system, you're working with industry because that's the dominant industry. And so you could create a certification system that does improve things for animals, improve conditions on the farm for the workers, but isn't necessarily really focusing on the best farmers. It's focusing on a little bit better than the norm. Getting really top farmers in the system and getting them to benefit from it is a more challenging thing. So that's where those tiers, I mentioned before, having a tiered welfare system where your lower tiers are going to be an inexpensive product that's produced in a way that's better than average, but probably not optimal. Acknowledging that that's not the best, instead of just saying it's got a humane label, it's perfect. Where tiers four and five should really be representing a relatively small number of farmers into tier five who were really the leaders and who needed to be reached out to probably don't have the resources to be putting time into doing the kind of paperwork and stuff that's involved in doing these certifications, and getting them in the system in an easy way that really allows them to communicate to the public what they're doing. What are the kinds of practices that make you a top farmer in your eyes or the eyes of this certification? Yeah, so let me speak to that. Again, it'll be industry specific. So let's take the chicken meat industry, which is really the most fully industrialized. One of the tragedies in the chicken industry that is not as well understood as it could be is the way in which genetics have driven suffering. So the chickens we eat today, if I compare them to chickens from 50, 60, 70 years ago, they're growing three times as fast while eating a third of the feed daily. So sort of picture this: you're dealing with, if you were to imagine an analogy with a human child, you've got a five year old who's gone through puberty, it looks like they're 15 and they've only eaten breakfast. It's a dramatic a modification of the animal's genome and it's done through a form of breeding that doesn't involve gene splicing, but is definitively I think genetic engineering by any kind of common sense definition of it, even if it falls outside of that definition by a certain kind of technical definition. And one of the features that's know very bad for farmers is it means the animals that are sold to farmers can't be reproduced. So you have to go back to the corporation to get these things. One of the things that's very bad for animals is their bodies are built to grow so fast that for about the last third of their life, they're in chronic pain. They can't walk without pain. They certainly can't fly, which is a normal thing for a chicken to be able to do. I remember seeing kids visit a traditional farm, getting to the higher welfare farm ,seeing chickens fly and being like, chickens don't fly! And the farmer responds, my chickens do! So there are farmers who have preserved the traditional genetics. These birds are going to grow slower, they're going to cost more, the feed is going to be a lot more, but they're going to have healthy, robust immune systems. They're gonna survive out on pasture. They can navigate through a foot of snow. It's a totally different kind of animal and that would be the real distinguishing characteristic in poultry of top tier. And if you wanted to identify it, it would be you're looking for American Poultry Association certified breeds, the ones that were a pre this kind of hybrid breeding system that I mentioned, this intensified breeding. Let's focus in on the top or best or better kind of value base assignments that you've given. How would you respond to folks who would argue that in terms of efficiency and farmer livelihood and the market-based system that they're operating within, how to assign those values of being better on the welfare side versus the ability to run a farm efficiently in the current system that's set people up to do things in a more efficient manner in the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Style) and that produces affordable food for folks. Well, two things there. One, I think it's really a myth that the system is efficient. You've caught me that I've said ", in the name of efficiency," but the reality is the system only appears to be efficient because of the degree of externalities. If you externalize all your environmental costs, you've externalized all your workers healthcare costs, deliberately organize your processing and slaughter plants with the use of undocumented labor. If you do all these things, yeah you can "be efficient," but somebody is paying for it. And this is not even getting into the health problems that get generated by just a quantity of otherwise previously expensive foods like meat dropping in price and quantity explosion and that creating other issues. So I'm not so sure it's actually more efficient, but a farmer in that system has to face that dilemma and we just have to be attentive to that. That's where a certification is very powerful because a certification can allow the farmer to sell their product for more. The truth is there's plenty of people ready to pay more for higher welfare products. The problem is with the supply, is with getting that supply, and building the connective tissue in a kind of reliable way. So consumers, in some ways I've already kind of stepped up and said, if you all demonstrate to me that this product is really different, I'm ready to pay a good bit more for it. And this is true across economic classes. I mean in rural India with people living on the equivalent or five or $6 a day, it is common for them to pay 100 percent more, twice as much for eggs or meat from birds that are the equivalent of these heritage birds I mentioned in the Indian context. So whether we're talking about in the US or abroad, wealthy people or people of modest means--they're ready to pay more for animals that have been raised in a good way. We just haven't created the system that allows the truly high welfare farmer to distinguish him or herself from somebody who's just trying to game the system and make money off of this demand. So free range, for example, is an unregulated term that means virtually nothing. Somebody who is marking up their chicken and calling it free range might be doing something better, might not. Right? Those are the kinds of problems we need to address. Your scholarship focuses on religion, especially the Jewish tradition. So how does that faith-based element factor into your work? Excellent. Yeah, so I mentioned that one of the things Farm Forward tries to focus on this narrative. One of the things I think we often don't realize in change movements is the degree to which we have narratives that shape what we do. And this is where religion becomes very powerful because religion often holds the kind of master narratives that guide us in communities of faith, are the places where we discussed these stories about who we want to be. Is efficiency our ultimate value? At the end of our lives we want to say, "and I was efficient as a farmer," or do we want to talk about values like stewardship, which has a long tradition going back to the Bible. And what would that really mean and how would it look like? So faith communities I think are both places we can tell the story of farming differently, and also resources for what that new story might look like. Produced by Deborah Hill, Duke World Food Policy Center

How should society balance people's needs and wants for meat and eggs against the needs and wants of farmers and farm animals? What do theologians and ethicists have to say about factory farming, animals and marginalized communities. It's a complicated subject that triggers strong feelings about moral economics, racial equity, nutrition, and environmental sustainability. We will explore these issues today on The Leading Voices in Food podcast with our guest, Methodist pastor Christopher Carter, who's also an assistant professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego. About Christopher Carter Pastor and Dr. Christopher Carter is an Assistant Professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego. He has a background in theology, religion, and the study of ethics in society. He is the author of the book, The Future of Meat without animals and writes about the food system through the lens of oppressions experienced by people of color, the environment and animals. Interview Summary You're a Faith in Food Fellow with Farm Forward, which is an organization dedicated to reducing factory farming and promoting the best of animal husbandry and sustainable family farming. Could you tell me more about your work on farm forward? So the former executive director, but kind of the person who started it, Aaron Gross is a friend of mine and first encountered my work as a grad student several years ago. And he knew that I was kind of making connections between a farmed animal welfare, and race and farm workers in ways in which that he had not heard yet. And this was maybe in 2011 and 2012. So pretty early on in my academic research into this. And so he approached me many years later, and just kind of kept tabs on my work, and let me know that they had some finances. They were looking to invest in people who were really engaged in trying to address some of the systemic issues that you named earlier with regards to animal husbandry and animal welfare. I actually add to kind of farm worker element into it as well. And so initially what they helped me do with funding was to fund my research. And so I did five weeks, in Louisiana, in basically what you might call Plantation Alley, and visiting different former plantations to do research on indigenous African agricultural practices. I wanted to learn about the knowledge base that former or that enslaved Africans brought here with regards to animal agriculture. So animal husbandry and agricultural technologies that they brought here, that were used on plantations and how those knowledges still exists in different parts of the South especially. And how we might, as African American Christians begin rethinking a or adopting those things in our current context as well. And so they helped pay for that because at this point I was still a grad student, so I was still poor. So, after that, we maintained a relationship with regards to my outreach to local churches. And so they support me. I usually visit churches mostly in the spring and summer, so it is kind of offset my liturgical calendar, I guess, if you will, because you have Advent and other religious seasons that keep me tied to my local congregation. Spring and summer is when I'm able to actually visit other congregations to help them, as I say, start thinking theologically about food. So part of my responsibilities is just engagement with local churches specifically charging or looking at ethnic minority churches, but just broadly understood in the Methodist circle. Most of the churches tend to be predominantly White as well. And so helping them make the connection between their theological beliefs, our theological beliefs, I guess I should say, how we treat creation and how we treat and how we think about what we eat right. And how these things are interconnected perhaps in ways in which they hadn't unpacked, right? I even start with things like grace, you know, and we think about food and a religious perspective. We pray over this food, but what does that really mean when we do that and what are some of the questions and things that we're saying? Whereas some of the assumptions we actually have when we say grace. And let's begin to name those things, to bring that kind of a certain level of consciousness to it. And then ask ourselves, are the ways we are acquiring this food is it consistent with the ways in which we even say grace, right? Is it really consistent with the theologies that we claim to uphold? And often after some questioning and deep soul searching they find that, well, maybe it's not quite as consistent as we want it to be. And so then helping them think through what are the next steps, right? What they might do to begin to make some changes with regards to where they buy their produce, what they use, what they serve, all these other kinds of things. When you say you're helping churches think theologically about food, you gave a couple examples about saying grace procurement, but can you help our listeners understand what does that look like practically? How do you think theologically about food? Thank you. That's a great question. I think first and foremost, I guess I probably need to step back a little bit and say that I come at it from my own personal experience and then I try to make that accessible to others. And so personally I grew up in a very food insecure household. And so for me, thinking theologically about food, first and foremost starts with grace because it starts about being thankful to have something to eat. And so I begin with this premise of the creation narratives. And I look at those narratives as poetry and say what would it be like to imagine a space or all people, people have access to these kinds of opportunities in this, this blessing that from this poem that we can learn, that is a beautiful vision of what the world could be. And so first and foremost I encourage people to imagine and engage. To imagine what the world could be if this kind of a literature actually existed, but then to begin to do that kind of inner deeper work about what it is that we're actually doing in local congregations. So specifically, the ways in which I go about doing that first is helping them first to kind of map out their own assumptions around food and around eating. Who cooks? Where they get their food from? What do they eat? And then having them think more critically, once they begin to examine some of the ethical dimensions of where they get those things, and I say who cooks because that's a way to get at questions of gender and power. Quite honestly, you know. How does play out. Could you give an example to help someone think more theologically? Oh yes, I can. So I'll give you an example of what I did in my own congregation first. And what I did is, as a senior pastor at a black church, I never ate first. I always ate last and I always help prepare and serve the food. And I do this rooted out of Jesus's parable of washing disciples' feet and talk about our role as clergy to model service. And what that looks like. And then frame it around food as one primary means by which we actually can serve others, literally serve them food. But also help people who, especially the church I worked at--this was in Compton, California, we're in a very poor city with a lot of homeless and we had several unsheltered people come to our church, especially on first Sundays where we had potlucks. And they knew that and they were welcome. And so first and foremost, you have to, I would argue, you do have to model it in order to get people to be able to see that you, as the leader of this space, take this seriously. And you're trying to set a tone for creating a welcoming and inclusive space and environment. And that can be done through plates. The second way, I guess I would say, I help people think theologically about food. I did want to say this--real things I forgot earlier is through stories and having people. I always like to use the example of our, our bowls are griots and griots are in the West. African traditions are storytellers. And so what we serve tells a story. Often a story that is passed down from our grandmothers or mothers or fathers or whoever was the cook. There's something there that says something about us. And so when we serve food at church, what story does it tell you? Does it feel something's been missing from that story? I think if we are people of faith, if we were supposed to be about compassion and justice, I don't know that our food shares that story, right? That we serve if we haven't thought theologically about where that food comes from. Who's growing it? And who may or may not be suffering as a consequence of it. And so if we want to model that and share it, it's not just a saying. It's not so much to make sure that you acquire food from good suppliers to feel good about yourself. Right? It's really about actually naming that. So the people who are eating know that you've thought about these things. Most, especially if you're in a predominantly African American church, our ancestors come from agriculture. So you know, you're maybe a generation or two removed from people who are farmers and they can relate to that. My experience is they respect that and they honor that and there's a meaning there. And so helping them reconnect with those stories of their childhood. Modeling that particular kind of service, helping them understand that our bowls and plates tell a story about who we are and who we want to be in the communities that we belong to be a part of. I think this is essential into the first steps of getting people to think theologically about food. When you're trying to get people to consider these elements of maybe animal welfare, the welfare of the laborers, where the food comes from, all of these critical questions, what are some of the challenges you've encountered? Trying to get people to think theologically about food. So I would say the strongest challenges are from churches who tend to have more of an inward focus. And one could say that's most churches. Inward focused, meaning that they are focused on preservation. Self-preservation rather than any kind of ministry that's really directed towards a kind of solidarity for the community. Is that focus around sufficient funding to keep the church running? Yes. Often focused around sufficient funding. Operating out of a kind of a scarcity mindset that we have to do things to keep things open for us. And so you meet, I've met resistance by saying, well, this sounds great, but what you're asking us to do is going to cost more money if we buy food the way you're talking about. And if we do this, you know, we don't have the budget line item to do this kinds of work. We're more concerned about other things in the community. This seems as though it's not important enough because it's just about food and it's just about animals, right? That's been the pushback that I would get. The primary, strongest push back I get. When you look at those places where it's not where you would like it to go in terms of a theological underpinning around food, what does it look like and where are you trying to take it? I would say what it looks like when people haven't thought theologically about food and just have their plate there--it's usually food that not locally sourced and it's animal products that come from a factory farm in ways in which their food not only harms the environment, that only harms the animal, but that harms people. And this is where I'm able to, I find that's the space that I'm able to get people to begin to see the importance of changing. I think the dimension of farm workers and factory farm workers is obscured by the ways in which we buy groceries. And so people don't see the ways in which people might suffer because of where you get your food from or how you get it. So helping them be able to share those stories with them is, is I would say, one of the crucial ways to get people to think that perhaps there are ways we can change our plates. And I will say to a certain degree there has to be a health dimension there as well, with regards to looking at a plate that they haven't thought theologically about food, right? Where they aren't concerned. You know, it's funny because Paul, the Apostle, has lots of things that are a one might find, I won't say problematic, but somewhat troubling when it comes to society. But if you look at his letters as pastoral as they are, and if you recognize, I think, that at most I would say some of the interpreters are routed around what is it take for communities to flourish. And so he talks about the importance of being healthy so that he can do his job, this vocation. And so some of that language is the language that I use to congregations, for them to think about health and wellness. Not only as kind of superficial, such as I want to look a certain kind of way, but it's I want to feel good so I can do my vocation to the best of my ability. So I can be the person that God has called me to be. That I can actually do the work that I feel as though I'm called to do. And so trying to make those connections, I think. I would too, for large part, would say my work is about interconnection. It really is helping people see how these things are much more interconnected than they think. Because again, as I said earlier, our current model of food procurement just disconnects people in such ways that they just don't have to think about it Delving a little deeper into your current work, you're finishing up a book about African American Christians and food justice. Could you tell us a little bit more about that book? What are its primary arguments and what's the contribution you want to make? Yeah. So the book is entitled Spirit of Soul Food. It is at University Illinois Press. The essential argument there, and that was a part of the research that actually that Farm Forward was funding for me to do this research, I should say in Louisiana. I'm arguing for African American Christians to think theologically about food and creating ways for us to do that that are explicitly grounded in the black experience. Particularly leveraging the framework and language around soul that I think is really embedded in Black culture and soul food. And so what I try to accomplish, I call it a decolonial kind of liberative theology where I kind of try to decolonize the plate, so that we take seriously the ways in which White theological values have been adopted in African American church spaces that have limit food imaginations. What does it look like? Those differences between the white theology around what's on your plate versus the black theology? Yeah, thank you. I think that probably the primary difference I would say is I want us to think about the racialized dimensions that exists with--so it's not only how we get our food, we talked about that, so recognizing that those foreign workers are mostly black and brown is right. It's recognizing that the factory farm workers are mostly black and brown. It's recognizing that the people who live in these factory farm communities are black and brown. All the negative stuff about farming, industrial agriculture affects black and brown people more so than other communities. Globally it actually affects women more so than other communities. And so it's helping them see that and see this as an issue that's distinctly tied to the wellbeing of the black community in America. And writ large. So that's one piece. The second piece is the reason I was doing the research in Louisiana is to recapture some of the knowledge that was lost. I shouldn't say lost. A knowledge that many contemporary black people don't know that's a part of our culture. So I used to volunteer at this kind of urban-like garden that my little brother at his high school they used to grow food. And there was one, a couple of students, but one student in particular that came up to me that I was trying to get to volunteer for the Garden Club. And I told him what we were doing and he said to me, you know, I don't want to do that. What are you trying to do? Make me a slave? That was the language that he used about gardening. And it helped me. It awakened me to the fact that the consequences of forced agricultural labor psychologically and emotionally run deep rank. And so a part of my research, and going to the plantations and doing research on indigenous African agricultural practices, is for people to know that the knowledge--there was a reason why they enslaved certain black tribes and not others. It is because they brought a particular kind of knowledge and skill set that is still used. So the ways in which rice was grown in the Carolinas come from Senegambia. Like it's distinctly African as in the ways in which they still grow it over there right now. Different tribes, the Fulani for instance, are ones that were captured and brought to Texas and Oklahoma because of their particular experience in pastoral and animal husbandry. And so there's all this knowledge that that is in black culture, African culture. We have been often, as black people, are told that we came here and we weren't smart enough to know how to do any of this stuff. And so the plantation owner, you know, out of their gracious goodwill showed us how to grow food because we didn't know. And so I'm trying to undermine that assumption. So these people can be empowered to say, no, this is a part of our history and part of our culture and part of our past. We are an agricultural people. We are people from the land. And so I attempt to reclaim that through the language of soul and soul food, right? And redefine soul food and soulful eating in ways that not only challenge, I would say, decenter whiteness, right? Challenge the assumptions around farming and gardening. But center on the experience of black farmers and black gardeners and black cooks to show that there is this knowledge base that's distinctly--that we have a distinct contribution to make. And that I would argue is also embedded within a lot of Christian language just because that's as much as African Americans have been here. And so ultimately I think that's kind of my aim in the book by trying to describe what soulful eating will look like and what gardening will look like. All these different kinds of practices I think that African American churches can engage in as they begin this journey of thinking theologically about food. It's so exciting to hear your message of reclamation of this pride within the African American community around farming and food. You're here at Duke University and you are going to facilitate a large meeting around food and faith here. What makes this event unique? What do we want to get out of it? I'm here as a facilitator who was graciously invited to help design the process, designed to get people to be able to connect with each other, to not only share what their expertise is but also to plan and think about what we might do after we leave this space. Right? It can't just be a meeting where people come together and give each other hugs and feel good about what we do and then leave and go do nothing. Although there is a space for giving each other hugs. What excites me about this event is that it has academics and practitioners and farmers. Like there's a diverse group of people here committed to changing the structure of our food communities and food systems in America. And I think the potential for the cross pollination of ideas is exciting in this space. And so I'm really happy to be able to help do what I can to kind of create this space for that cross pollination of ideas to take root. So that we can begin to move forward and, and kind of change to the world with regards to how we source and eat our food. Produced by Deborah Hill, Duke World Food Policy Center

Farm Forward is the rare animal rights group that doesn’t advocate for veganism. Instead, its programs focus on ending animal suffering on factory farms and developing agricultural systems and markets that prioritize animal welfare. In this episode, host Lisa Held talks to executive director Andrew deCoriolis about the organization’s work—from establishing farm standards and educating consumers to getting high-volume buyers like institutions and fast food companies to commit to buying better meat. The Farm Report is powered by Simplecast.

Certified organic, cage-free, pasture raised, free-range, heritage animal-what does the label on your egg carton mean? In this episode of the Food Heroes Podcast, we meet Andrew DeCoriolis to discuss all things eggs- from confusing labeling, to conditions for egg-laying hens, to heritage breeds, and what we can do today to ensure more humane treatment of these beautiful birds. Andrew is with an organization called Farm Forward. The mission of the organization is to promote conscientious food choices, reduce farmed animal suffering, and advance sustainable agriculture.

We sat down with local academic Joey Tuminello during his work at the Opening Space for the Radical Imagination conference at Oregon State University. Andrea Anarchy and Joey discuss the journey towards his food and ethics activism, spirituality in leftist movements, and all the juicy in-between. Joey Tuminello is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of North Texas, an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a Program Coordinator for Farm Forward, a nonprofit farmed animal advocacy group. His academic and activist work focuses on the intersection of food, animal, and environmental ethics, including human dimensions and social justice issues related to factory farming. Further Resources for this episode: http://josephtuminello.academia.edu/ www.foodforward.com LaborWave is an exploration of culture, politics, rebellion, and alternatives to capitalism recorded in Corvallis, Oregon at Oregon State University’s Orange Media Network. We want to hear your ideas, thoughts, and articles! Contact us at corvallislabourwave@gmail.com

Andrew deCoriolis is with Farm Forward, an organization dedicated to animal welfare for farm animals. We discuss the poultry industry, and the near-disappearance of the many healthy breeds of chickens and turkeys that once populated all farms in the US. Now virtually all poultry are unhealthy, grotesque animals that live miserable lives and provide little nutrition or flavor. We also discuss the role of consumers, companies, farmers, and lawmakers to provide solutions to this currently unsustainable situation. 

Professor Aaron Gross, Founder & CEO of Farm Forward (farmforward.com/) and a professor at the University of San Diego presents his Valley Beit Midrash (www.valleybeitmidrash.org) lecture "What is a Jewish Response to Factory Farming?" before an audience at Temple Chai (www.templechai.com/) in Phoenix, AZ. ABOUT THIS LECTURE: How can Jewish community and Jewish teachings help us better respond to the factory farm systems that now produce the majority of animal products consumed in Israel, Europe, North America, and increasingly, the world? Are factory farms, which claim to feed the world, compatible with Jewish mandates to preserve human health? What do product claims like “antibiotic free” and “humanely raised” really mean? How might rabbinic teaching about tzaar baalei chayim–the Torah mandate not to cause unnecessary suffering–shape contemporary debates about the future of food? Join us and bring your own insights to share. DONATE: bit.ly/1NmpbsP For more info, please visit: www.facebook.com/valleybeitmidrash/ twitter.com/VBMTorah www.facebook.com/farmforward www.facebook.com/RabbiShmulyYanklowitz/ www.facebook.com/temple.chai Music: "Watercolors" by John Deley and the 41 Players, a public domain track from the YouTube Audio Library

Professor Aaron Gross, Founder & CEO of Farm Forward (https://farmforward.com/) and a professor at the University of San Diego presents his Valley Beit Midrash (www.valleybeitmidrash.org) lecture "Jewish Animal Ethics from Torah to Today" for the Jewish Community Foundation (www.jcfphoenix.org/) ABOUT THIS LECTURE: This lively survey of Jewish animal ethics will consider passages from the Tanakh, rabbinic writings, modern Jewish thought, and the remarkable contributions contemporary Jews have made to secular animal ethics from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Jacques Derrida. DONATE: bit.ly/1NmpbsP For more info, please visit: www.facebook.com/valleybeitmidrash/ www.facebook.com/Jewish-Community…60791413/?ref=ts twitter.com/VBMTorah https://www.facebook.com/farmforward www.facebook.com/RabbiShmulyYanklowitz/ Music: "Watercolors" by John Deley and the 41 Players, a public domain track from the YouTube Audio Library

This year for Thanksgiving, Americans will consume 46 million turkeys. Factory farming has never been more 'efficient'. This same year, the US has consumed 9 billion chickens. Worldwide, we managed to eat 50 billion. How does this system function? What makes it so effective and profitable? It all comes down to one word: genetics. Since the 1950s, heritage breeds of poultry, or standard-bred poultry, have been gradually replaced by an army of uniform hybrid birds. Bred to grow as large as possible and as quickly as possible, hybrids are exceptionally profitable for Big Agriculture, and have come to dominate the global poultry industry. In this episode, I talk with Andrew DeCoriolis from Farm Forward and Frank R. Reese Jr., owner of the Good Shepherd Poultry Farm, about the need to preserve heritage breeds. We explore: How animal welfare, the livelihoods of farmers and the environment are best protected when the genetic diversity of these birds is preserved. How free-range, pasture-raised and organic meat movements are counterproductive if we fail to win the battle of genetics. How supporting heritage poultry this Thanksgiving is one of the strongest and most effective ways to boycott factory farming and support sustainable agriculture. Farm Forward is a US-based non-profit that implements innovative strategies to promote conscientious food choices, reduce farmed animal suffering, and advance sustainable agriculture. Farm Forward is helping Frank Reese share his knowledge with the next generation of farmers by launching the Good Shepherd Poultry Institute (GSPI).  Frank Reese is a fourth-generation Kansas farmer with more than 60 years of experience breeding and raising heritage poultry. An award-winning master breeder and American Poultry Association (APA) judge, Frank owns and operates one of the few successful heritage poultry farms in America, the Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch, which has garnered praise from Martha Stewart, celebrity chef Mario Batali, the New York Times, and is featured centrally in the documentary film Eating Animals, which recently premiered at the prestigious Telluride Film Festival.   Links: Farm Forward Website Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch  Good Shepherd Poultry Institute American Poultry Association          Heritage Foods USA Buying Poultry (rating poultry products website)  Eating Animals Documentary Teaser trailer  USDA Poultry statistics     You may also like: FFS 021 – My Beef with Veganism  FFS 011 – Transforming Agriculture to Feed the Future  FFS 008 – Edible Insects: the diet of tomorrow? 

Now, more than ever, good organizations need your help. The holidays are stressful and 2016 continues to disappoint, but there's work to do! Today we're talking nonprofits (including Farm Forward, the organization Heather is working with), where your donations go, and what we plan to get - or not get - our kids for Christmas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week's episode, Tommy Brunson from Holy Water Buffalo drops by to chat about the band's new single and what they're doing lately; Jeffrey Steadman from Yelp pops in to discuss Tibetan food from around the city with Dan; and SLUG writer LeAundra Jeffs chats with the founders of Farm Forward about their organization and their work against factory farming. Plus, brand new music off the latest EP from Lady Murasaki! The Red Bennies are calling it quits! We’d like to hear your fondest memories of the band for an upcoming episode of the podcast. Call our automated voicemail line at 858-233-9324 and tell us your thoughts. You may get played on the show! … read more The post Episode #104 – Holy Water Buffalo, Yelp, Lady Murasaki, Farm Forward first appeared on SLUG Magazine.