lauren Ornelas, founder and director of the Food Empowerment Project, was here in Vancouver on Saturday to present a talk on food justice.
The Food Empowerment Project is part of the vanguard of an exciting movement looking beyond single issues. This is their mission statement:
The Food Empowerment Project seeks to create a more just and sustainable world by recognizing the power of one’s food choices. We encourage healthy food choices that reflect a more compassionate society by spotlighting the abuse of animals on farms, the depletion of natural resources, unfair working conditions for produce workers, and the unavailability of healthy foods in low-income areas.
By making informed choices, we can prevent injustices against animals, people, and the environment. We also work to discourage negligent corporations from pushing unhealthy foods into low-income areas and empower people to make healthier choices by growing their own fruits and vegetables. In all of our work, the Food Empowerment Project seeks specifically to empower those with the fewest resources.
lauren has been an activist for 24 years. She started working on animal rights issues when she was in high school, and has started numerous groups over the years. She’s probably most famous for being the person who inspired John Mackey of Whole Foods to go vegan. But even beyond that she’s had a huge influence on the animal rights movement through her campaigns and her willingness to help other groups become more effective in their campaigns.
Nearly 100 people filled the room at the Vancouver Public Library to hear lauren’s talk. She spoke about her history in the animal rights movement and how it has all lead her to found an organization bringing human and animal rights together.
After briefly speaking about animal rights issues and her investigations of factory farms, she talked about the conditions for workers on fruit and vegetable farms. Many of them are migrant workers, often tricked into working for less than promised, raped, abused, and otherwise exploited. As vegans, we have a great responsibility to speak out against the cruelty involved in growing the food that we eat – the apples, the oranges, the sugar, the lettuce, the corn.
And, of course, chocolate. The Food Empowerment Project has done a great deal of research into chocolate production – and they’ve got a list of the chocolates that they can recommend as being free from slavery. Yes, there is a great deal of slavery involved in chocolate.
The challenges of eating ethically are huge. It can be overwhelming to think about all of the issues involved, so it’s up to each one of us to determine where we can make a difference. Being vegan is a great start, and then choosing to avoid supporting companies like Coca-Cola that have a history of exploiting and even murdering workers and union organizers.
We each sit down with food 2, 3, or even more times a day, and each one of those times is an opportunity to vote for a truly ethical food system, one that is wholly non-exploitive and honestly sustainable.
The Food Empowerment Project has also done a survey of their area to map out access to healthy foods. They’ve found that low-income areas have significantly less access to fruits, vegetables, and meat and dairy alternatives.
You can learn more about the Food Empowerment Project on their website, their blog, Facebook, and even Twitter.
If you are interested in working on these sorts of issues locally here in BC, we are working on getting some of the materials from the Food Empowerment Project that they used in their chocolate research and their food access survey. We’d like to see many groups get involved in these issues here, and hope that you can too!
If you are interested, please contact us.
lauren Ornelas is the Food Empowerment Project’s founder and serves as the group’s volunteer executive director. She is also the former executive director of Viva!USA, a national nonprofit vegan advocacy organization. lauren has been active in the animal rights movement for over 20 years. After spending four years as National Campaign Coordinator for In Defense of Animals, lauren was asked by Viva!UK to start and run Viva!USA in 1999. In cooperation with activists across the country, she worked and achieved corporate changes within Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s, and Pier 1 Imports, among others. She currently serves as Campaign Director with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
