Transcripts For CSPAN Food Safety 20140907

[gavel pounds] hello, welcome to tonights program at the Commonwealth Club of california. Our program for tonight food fights for the 21stcentury first century. Womens voices driving change. We have the executive director of moms across america, the founder and executive director of teens turning green and our host and moderator is the ceo of tech talk studio. Now im going to turn it over to christy dames. Thank you. Thank you to the Commonwealth Club. We really appreciate being here tonight. I am really excited to have these really powerful women. Some are moms. Some are not. My first question to deborah garcia. You have two major awardwinning films. Youre quite the vocal activist and speaker. You have a famous husband, jerry garcia. How did you come to make films about food . You have been a film maker for a long time. In 1970 when i was in college, i started making food, and because of that era, activity land, going natural about that, i became vegetarian, became kind of a organic fanatic and felt much better and felt very committed to that. I knew at some point i wanted to make films. I did not start off making documentaries. I did not make documentaries for many years. But i was when to make films about the food system and why people should demand a food system a healthier food system. So, that first film i made was the future of food which came out about 15 years ago. That way was talking about the perfect food system. They were talking about the perfect pair pear, lovely bread. Which is important. But i want to talk about the seas applied, all of this which was really under the water. I did not know that, and i was an extremely informed consumer. I was very popular. Netflix bought it a few thousand copies. Whole foods carried it. We had this Great Program where people could buy bulk copies, 200 copies and sent to all of their friends. After four years of that, i decided to go more deeply into that same realm, so i made the film symphony of soil. Which is about soil. Our relationship to soil. And it even looks at agriculture from soils point of view. You do not want to poison it. You do not want to kill it. You want to give back to it. It is promoting healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy planet, which i think we need to demand. We need to serve and we need to get it. Beautiful. Thank you. Next, we have the executive director of moms across america. There is even a moms across the globe that has taken off. Every year at the fourth of july there are 172 parades. She is a major voice. She was just invited to the epa a few weeks ago because there was such a major storm that happened across the country and they asked her to come to washington. Zen, how did you become involved in food activism . I love my kids. They have food allergies. Dairy, gluten, knots. The dairy, wheat, gluten, and nuts allergies, i had heard those before. At the caring dn it was like carageenan . It isnt just about everything kids like. Even organic food, unfortunately. When i heard that it can cause stomach ulcers and cancer, what we dont see is extremely important as well. The inflammation on the outside is a warning light for what is going on on the inside. I started to research about food. I watched food inc. I watched ted talks. And i found gmls genetically gmos, genetically modified organisms we went as gml free as possible. My sons mouth swelled up. Within four months, it was almost gone. When i saw my Childrens Health improve i got very involved with property seven. It was election night. I was sitting in the back of the room. The leader at the front of the room, she had done landmark, which is personal training in leadership and all that. She had done it and i had done it. And i thought, why is she up there and i am back here . What is my role in this campaign and this cause . And i realized i had just inconveniently involved. I was helping out. And i asked myself, what if i took on, i am the one to transform the Food Industry . Not mean myself, but my actions. I am taking it on. I knew the results would be completely different than being someone who else out. So i asked itself, how can i let as many people know about gmos in as short amount of time as possible. I came up with the idea of fourth of july parades. We will go to our local fourth of july parades where the permits, the porta potty is already set up. We will hold up a banner and say moms across america march to label gmos. Everybody know that a Everybody Knows that a moms only special interest is her children. This is why moms are so important. We have done lots of other things, too, which we will get involved in later. Thank you. Our third panelist is judi shils. She is the mom of erin shrody. The two of you did something important. Can you tell us how you came to food . Actually all of my life changed when my daughter was born. I read a book called diet for a poisoned planet. In a day my entire kitchen went from conventional to organic and i never looked back. I realize the child i was carrying in may needs to come into a clean world. She grew up and some years later i realized i needed to do for her and for her peer group everything i could possibly do to sustain the world, so we started something called teens turning green, which is now much more college turning green. So many of these students are here with me tonight. Basically our goal is to march around to College Campuses to really affect change. My role as my daughters role and that is really to be mentors. We have to teach them how to fight the fight. Food, this year, has become a huge one for us. There is a lot of food justice initiatives on College Campuses. There are a lot of food policy committees, as there should be. The food that is being sent to our children from the time they are in preschool through college is some of the most terrific food there is, i think we all know that. Filled with everything were hearing about. This particular year, i decided we were going to do something about food. You can absolutely change the food in your school, the food in your life, in your refrigerator. But the school piece i never really saw happen. I decided we were going to focus on a school in our immunity, very underserved, which is in marin county marin county. Our goal was nongmo, zero waste. Everybody said youre out of your mind. This can happen. I shot off an email to the superintendent. I said, i want to change her food he your food program. Can i . He said absolutely. Then i thought, who am i to change the food system . I did not really know what i was doing. I partnered with a local chef who had a lot of buying power and was pretty wellknown. He opened up a lot of doors with purveyors and farmers and we started on august 28, against all odds. Basically we have done this for a year now and we see healthy kids and kids they care about the land and kids that are learning about the garden and starting a farm on their campus. I think it goes back to each one of us had a passion and we each realized that we had a purpose and that our voices were just as powerful as anybody elses and why not you go i think for my daughter and i, our motto is dream and do, and we teach that to every single student we work with. If you can dream and do something realistically to change the world, you dont have a choice. So, deborah, right out of the box symphony of the soil. Can you talk about the state of our soil . What is, what did you learn from this film . What did you bring through in the film . What is happening with soil . And if you could talk about the World Congress of soil, where you just spoke last week . One of the interesting things, i could not have told anybody about soil before a learned about it. The United States is gifted with a really High Percentage of very good soil. 40 of our soils are excellent soils. We have these resources. And what we would do in america is we would use up the soil and move west. Use it up and move west. There was always so much. There was always more. It actually shaped our character because we dont like limits. When people say to americans, you have to accept limits, we say that is unamerican. Americans about that, it is our resources, but now, if we keep farming the way we are, we will be out of topsoil in 30 years, so we are poisoning our soil, and the whole agricultural system is very destructive to soil, and the way nature works, it gives back. The leaves fall from the tree, and the microorganisms break that down, which can feed the plant that grows, so there is a cycle in nature of giving back. You have to feed the soil. Industrial agriculture takes and takes and takes and does not give back. The soil becomes more depleted, and you have to use more fertilizer, and it depletes the soil. It can kill the soil, and it can deform it. I think in our society, we have mirrored this. Society now, a lot of people just take and take and take you and they dont have to give back, and i think that we need to change this whole system in america to actually bring out this other quality that we have, which is this is a really difficult challenge, and we have to be really smart and really courageous to face it, because we might not be able to do it. And that americans are, we can do it, so i think we need to shift this idea of what it is to be american, to be patriotic. Lets do the right thing for the right reasons, so, yes, they symphony of the soil film, it is a really wonderful film, and we will be selling it afterwards. It is being shown at whole foods, farming festivals, and communities use it. We have sold 30 copies just to schools in iowa, and they show it, the belly of the beast, and they are showing it to farmers at the National Resources conservation service, which is the soil service of the government, part of the department of agriculture, and they have bought copies to show farmers how to do things like planting things like cover crops, turning them back into the soil, and it returns nutrients to the soil so you do not have to use synthetic nitrogen, if any, and so i am happy about that. I like making films that i am passionate about that will change things, because i think a lot of the problems people have withheld health is as they have been saying, we are not growing food in the right way, and even without the toxins, we are not returning nutrients to the soil, so a lot of our food is not nutrient dense. It is just junk. So i was in korea a few weeks ago, sharing the film with the korean conference, the big thing for the planet, and 2400 soil scientists are there, with cuban pants, wonderful people there, so i was there, and the film was shown as a cultural centerpiece of the conference, which was really an honor, so what made me feel really good, because the film is collaborative, so you can brag about it. I was putting up a poster where it was showing, and so i am putting up the poster, and this woman walks by, and she says, are you deborah . And she said, i am dead were also. I am from brazil, and i teach soil science, and i use your film in our classes. It is great, and i said that is great. And another person said, are you deborah . And she was from europe, and she said, i use your film in classes, and she named all at least soil scientists, and i am, right on, and it is being shown at whole foods, because it is kind of like the next level, and my philosophy is smart enough. Do not dumb down. Give people information a way that they can take it in and feel empowered and get it, and then you think, yes, i get it therefore, i am going to eat organic, or i am not going to put that in my garden, or i am going to show this film at thanksgiving dinner next year so we can all be on the same page and understand it, because soil science is cutting edge, and if we change the way we do agriculture, not only is it healthy for our bodies and our planet, we can put a whole lot of carbon back in the soil, and that will help with global warming, and that will move towards soil conscious. We are all creatures of the soil, and we should treat the soil as if it is part of us, which, in fact, it is. Thank you. And speaking of soil and then, a perfect segue, because one of the things that you and moms all across the country have educated themselves and know what is going on, and they have seen it in their families and children, and one of the number one things with our soil is chemicals and what is going into the soil, so you are specifically around antigmo and what that means, so can you talk about the passion you have around that, and moms who are all around the country can hear this . Yes. Just to clarify, gmos are genetically engineered to withstand pesticide. It either is a pesticide, the pesticide is inside the food itself, or it is genetically engineered to withstand pesticides, so last year, there was an increase in roundup, which is the number one herbicide used in the world, and the active ingredient, glyphosate, you talk about taking, taking, taking, it actually takes from the soil. It is a chelator, which means it draws out the nutrients of any living thing it touches. It is indiscriminate, therefore causing vitamin deficiency and mineral deficiency of any living thing it touches. As a doctor said, it essentially gives a plant aims, so a normally harmless bacteria in the soil kills the lead, so what is it doing to our children, right, is our question, and glyphosate is being used millions of pounds per year, 500 Million Pounds around the world, and, in fact, they just dont use it on the soil before the crop is planted, and they dont just use it on gmos. They actually spray it as a drying agent on our rice, our sugar, our dry peas, the garbanzo beans. It is on your tea. It is on your stevia, and the levels are far above what has been shown to destroy gut bacteria in chickens. It is scientifically proven, and we allow on our food, three parts per million on seed potatoes, five parts per million on regular potatoes, four parts per million on the canola oils they cook with in the restaurants, and it is on the grains that the animals eat that we consume, and the soil is getting inundated with glyphosate. It is sprayed on gmos, on the soil, as a drying agent, and we are extremely concerned about the health risks for our children, and what were seeing now is that one out of to of our children has some sort of chronic illness. And this actually goes to the point of a vary highly respected researcher from m. I. T. , who just recently came out with some very alarming statistics, and she said at todays rate, by 2025, one out of two children will be autistic, and she is able to absolutely map glyphosate use and autism, and she has a chart that shows one on one exactly the use of that. And it is not just scientists. We have testimonials from hundreds of moms. Moms across america, we launched last february, and within months, we were reaching hundreds of thousands per week, and we have thousands of people who come to our website. And we have hundreds of testimonies about how their kids get better when they get off of gmos, and, for example, one woman found out about her son who was 11, and they went organic, and within weeks, they asked, do you have him on a new drug, and they said, no, we just have him on organic. He entered high school, and not one of his teachers could see that he was autistic, and we had another to had asthma, issues across the board. And one had astigmatism in his eyes. He no longer needs glasses, and the doctor said it mustve been there was some sort of inflammation, and she said, i know what the inflammation is. We moms know what is happening. Judi, please talk about what youre doing in the schools. You have so much reach, but now, you are doing something different, and you said this feels like the most important work of your life right now and when you are engaged in. Can you talk about that . Just sitting and listening to you allows me to know more about why we are doing what we are doing. Moms can attempt to take care of their children when they are not home, but they are in school a big chunk of their lives, and 16 years, at least, and they are being fed gmo food. A are being fed the worst food they possibly can, and everybody thinks that is ok, and what we are trying to do is mobilize campuses and encourage kids to fight the fight. One of the things we dreamed was a nongmo pantry, and the goal of that was to show chefs on campuses and in restaurants the differences they can make just by eliminating foreign, soy, canola, and transferring it to what it means to be, nongmo, and that can illuminate about 90 of the impacts we are having, but i think part of what we all have to do as responsible citizens, and i think especially moms, if we have to fight the fight in our schools, and we cannot hear that we cannot do this. We are killing off our kids. We are killing off the next generation. We are in pairing their ability to have children, and i think if each of us is responsible citizens, it really works in the sphere, whether it is in the local schools or the local communities, stopping this being sprayed in our parks and everywhere else, then we are reducing the impacts that our kids are feeling, and for us personally, if we change the way we are feeding our children, and we did it this year for 150 kids in our school, but the most underserved, the kids eating the worst food three meals a day, so i personally wanted to start there, because he can make a difference, and in all of our communities, there are populations that look like that, and what is our responsibility as citizens in the community to take care of these kids . And it has been interesting, because our whole career, we typically work with wealthier white people, and people are always saying, why arent you working with the underserved populations, and my response is that were all underserved. When it comes to these issues, nobody is not underserved. I think the opportunity to know that you can affect change, and now my opportunity to stand in front of people and say you can do this in your schools, you can do it within budget, you can do it within usda guidelines, you can do it in public schools, you do not have to do it in private schools is a really important next step for us, so we can all go back to the superintendents and leaders of School Districts and say stop, and i think more of this information, deborah is talking about soil, the most vital piece of our lives, and we are talking about the autism rates, who is going to take care of all of these kids with autism . Who is going to school them . And the externalities, what we are paying at the end of the day, we might not be spending the money now, but we will so spend it later, and it is getting worse, and for me, the food is the core issue and the seminal issue in our lives, and we all look back, and that is what we try to do everyday. How important this is, there are actually 31 million gmo meals that are served every day in our schools, so what judi is doing is just crucial just to the integrity of our entire culture and the survival of our culture, so we are going to be promoting the whole entire process, with moms across america, to our moms across the country. We have had 200 46 leaders in 44 states, and we want to get this out in the fall in our backtoschool campaign, and it is just crucial that they are empowered. That all of us are empowered in our hometowns to do what you are doing, judi, to make it real, and we can. And i have this dream, a map with red dots for every Single School at has gone gmo free. Ours is the first to be gmo free, but i know within the year, we are going to start seeing dots all over this map, and i think if we see it, and it is tangible, and it makes the next person brave and courageous, there will be a ripple effect, and the world will change. Moms. Lets take moms. I am involved in a moms project, and i am just astounded at the moms and their power, so i have had people say, talking about how we are represented in the press, in the media, so, first, we are women, but what does she know, she is just a mom, and i have been meeting with moms who are the mothers of autistic children who go to bed at night with a medical text and cant speak to a mitochondrial problem and a heartbeat like nobodys business, so this thing that the media trail of just moms or just women, we run 85 of the spending of the home. That is spent by the woman. So can we talk about moms and their power and how women have power, and how are we gaining it . Are we at a standstill . Are there things blocking us . What about this . There is a huge move of moms right now, and i just want to say historically, moms have been the one to determine longevity of the human race. Now, that might be a bold statement, but i say it because fathers provided. They protected, and they would provide for the tribe or the community, but mothers are the ones who decided what the tribe or the community each, and if they did not trust their instincts, if they fed the tribe rotten meat or poison or questionable berries, their entire tribe would perish, some others have been able to trust their instincts up until about 20 years ago, i which is when they introduced pesticides and gmo into the food without knowing it. Mothers have not known. Therefore, this attributes to the decline of the American Health in our population. We are now 17th on the list, the bottom of the 17 most developed countries. We have rates across the board. As he said, one out of two of our children are suffering from chronic illness. Our babies are dying at astronomical rates. We are number one in the usa of infant death on day one. We have 50 more babies that die on day one then the rest of the industrial world combined, and we have so many friends with miscarriages, birth defects, and with this happening in the world, and we are standing up, and we are saying something about it, and i believe that the world is starting to take notice, and we are not going to stop because the love for our children will never end. And you had how many thousands of women call the epa . So what we did, we were fed up with this glyphosate possibly affecting our kids with allergies and autoimmune, and we asked our doctors to test, and they did not have any test, but i got after them, and we found one lap who would test for it, and we asked moms to send in their water, their urine, and their breast milk, and we found it at 1600 times higher than that is allowed in the Drinking Water in europe. Astronomical levels, and these are higher than the levels that were shown to destroy gut bacteria in chickens, and a chicken is about the same size as an infant. This is not ok with us. We set the report to the epa. They did not get back to us within a month, so we did a fiveday calling campaign to recall roundup, because when a product does not do what they said it would do, because they said it would pass harmlessly through the body, so seemingly accumulating in breast milk, it should be recalled, and the epa did not respond, so we did the fiveday campaign, and by wednesday, they said, can you please stop . 10,000 women have called, and by friday, they said, we have to do our jobs, and i said, your job is to recall roundup, and they said their job was to meet with principles. We are going to go back next week, and we are going to stand outside the epa and offer them free glyphosate testing, so we will see, and we will continue to demand to recall roundup. There is a researcher of pesticides, and when he found out people, he says one of the things that glyphosate does is basically ties your hand behind your back so the other chemicals and pesticides that are in your food, like atrosine, become more powerful, so there is a combination of these chemicals, and there was a certain level of roundup that they allowed on food, and roundup kills everything green. And the thing that is chemically engineered. They had to up the amount that they would allow on plants because they were spraying so much roundup that they were exceeding the original standards. That does not wash off. And it does not cook off. And the reason why the first genetically engineered product that monsanto brought up was roundup, because there was a patent, so they had to figure out a way to continue their monopoly on roundup, which was very popular, which was supposed to be so harmless, which obviously wasnt true, so they decided to create seeds that you would have, by contract, have to use roundup on these seeds, so it makes it easy to read, so you can weed 1000 acres, a person on a tractor can weed 1000 acres by spraying roundup, so they did it to be able to stipulate and make people continue to buy specifically roundup rather than just the generic brand. And, by the way, it is patented as a antibiotic, so it is a known antibiotic. It is also known by the epa to be an endocrine disruptor, and that means it causes birth defects, infertility, sterility, and as we mentioned before, it is a chelator, so there are many effects of glyphosate that we do not know. We are not talking about little children that are being impacted. We are talking about young women youre going to be giving birth in the nottoodistant future and know what that is going to look like. We are talking about students who want to make other choices, and i think between the moms and the army of students, the thousands and thousands of students all over the country, so loud. Yes. This is interesting also, because, debra, i wanted to talk to you about the power of being a filmmaker, and today, so many have access to the equipment, everything to make films, so are we diluting our power, are we gaining power through film . How is that today . Film it is a powerful medium, and because of technology, filmmaking has become an issue. And i love the craft of film, so my films are highly crafted. And i see film as being an emotional medium, but it also impacts people emotionally so it transforms them so they want to make changes. There is all kinds of films. There are some films that are so powerful that they move people, but i love making films. I like, for example, i like the challenge of taking soil, which is dark and seemingly inert, and film, which is about light and movement, and bringing them together into a film that people like seeing. So i think film is a powerful medium. I also think i am an older generation person, so i like getting information. I would rather skim through the interview myself, and i also like longform documentaries because you can go deeply into things, which i like, but there are a lot of short films. I did not even take a short film seriously, and somebody asked me to make a short film for their nonprofit, and so i made it, and i was, short films . And then i thought, yes, short films, 10 minutes, 12 minutes, yes, i can do that. It affects people in different ways, but if you want an audience that wants information, you can get them the information immediately. It is like magic. And i know that my work, one of the things that i like is the Community Meetings that people do, where they pay a fee and show the film, and they bring their Community Together so they can all discover this information together, and they need each other, and they network, and they often have food afterwards, and so making a film is a way, rather than just on the internet, of bringing people together so they can find others who are interested in these issues, and then they can make alliances and get ahead of bad things and start changing things, so i think there are a lot of ways that films can be useful, and there are a lot of different kinds of films, and i think everyone who makes a film should get an award. Even if it is a simple film, it is a challenge. Good luck, girls. And lets talk about education, how you all are educating women, moms, families, communities. The first thing i suggest is to have a movie night. If you have a gmo movie night and you have just 10 moms, and if those moms share with only five moms, which they wont, lets just say they share with five, and those five share with five, then you have educated 1270 people in your community, and i figured out if those, if they just switched to organic food, maybe 200 a week, that is 13 million of food, maybe even local, right, organic food in your community, so one movie night can make a huge difference, and that is a wonderful way to take it on. Oh, some movies i want to plug are gmo omg. If you havent seen that one, its wonderful. Bought is coming out soon. Unacceptable levels is fantastic we have the producer here. Unacceptable levels is a fantastic movie, and there is going to be a new movie coming out called a new resistance, which will be about roundup. So i have been watching the past few days. We have 26 interns, and we are changing the world, and to watch them use the mediums that they are using, whether it is social, we put out 100 days to an event that we have coming up. One of the kids made a stop action animation in a few hours. She had never done that before, so i am watching the power of youth and the power of opportunity they have to not only change the world but to change the minds of everybody they deal with on a daily basis and to talk to all of their friends and families and really have that impact go fast, so i think the opportunity to educate now is so quick. These guys can say whatever they want to whomever they want like that, like wilson will come up with an idea about a project we want to do, and 10 minutes later, it is out the door, and it is rippling all over the world, because people are telling their friends, so they are collective opportunities. There are 10,000 moms at epa, and they say stop. Show up. We can talk to you. I think we have to use every tool we have and every arsenal we have. Yes, and at the same time, one of the Campaign Managers from washington state, when they did big gmo labeling up there, said that 16 of people do not use facebook regularly, so we need to get out in person and connecting locally, and that is one reason why we are promoting the parades. This is 49,000 people. Persontoperson, mom to mom, right, and youre handing them a flyer that says everything about gmos and glyphosate. If they have alzheimers, they will be appreciative. Be the one who brings integrity to the table, the one whom brings truth to the conversation. Be the light in this food fight. Thank you. I would like to remind our audience listening at home, i am kevin omalley, the chairman of the business and Leadership Forum of the Commonwealth Club of california. Our program is food fights for the 21st century womens voices driving change. And our panelists are judi shils, zen honeycutt, Deborah Coons garcia, and Christie Dames, and deborah, im going to ask the first question. You had a Fairly Famous husband who was an important part of your life, as well, and a lot of people wanted to know, what did jerry think about organic foods . Yes, when i first met him back 40 years ago, you know, they werent really into organic food, but i was. It sounds like a cliche and a health fanatic, and it was very hard to eat right back then, especially if you were a vegetarian, and you are on the road a lot, but by the 1990s, things got better, and as i was telling them before, as a rock star, you can have what you want, so we had a right at chefs traveling with the band, and we could get whatever food we wanted, and the hotels would have a special grateful dead menu with things that are healthy, but jerry with his eating was like a lot of aspects of his life. When he was good, he was very, very good, and when he was bad, he was horrid, and he probably should have been good more often, because he probably would still be here, but there are a lot of demands on you. It is much easier to find organic, healthy food. Whole foods, and people are demanding it, and you can find that in these places, where before i would go to these health food stores, and you would see these apples that looked like they were 10 years old, and so i am for that. Some people are, oh, whole foods, it is a big corporation, but thank god for whole foods. You can choose, and if you eat simply, it is not that much more expensive, so, yes, we have the best food in the world in the bay area, so it is always great being at home, because we can eat. We can grow stuff in our gardens yearround. We have to realize that not everybody has that ability, but we do, so we need to celebrate it and, i think, support it, which is why people look to us. A quick aside, we just wanted to do a chunk, and were going to all sorts of cities and states and towns that we have never heard of, and we have lived by the light of whole foods. What we found over the past couple of years is the liberation of farm to table restaurants. We are seeing chefs literally change their worlds because of what they put on their menus, and because they are buying from all of these farms, and the farms are going organic and transitioning from conventional to organic, i think this is how we can tell change is coming. We interviewed a Restaurant Owner in dallas named patrick stark who said he switched over to 98 nongmo food, and one year later, his sales had increased to 10,000 a week, because the longevity of the oils is longer. People want healthy, clean, pesticidefree food, and they will pay for it, because when it comes down to it, if you get autism or cancer, you will be spending 1000 to 10,000 per month more. That is what we are paying. And glyphosate effects diabetes. In 13 years if he continues at the rate it is going, we will not have any money left for anything else except for diabetes, so this is a crisis, a health crisis, which needs to be tended to now, and the more of us that by organic, cheaper it will become, and the people that can even afford it, at least the gmos will not be in the food anymore. At least the pesticides that we get band will not be in the food anymore. At least that is what we are going for. Questions . I have two. Any of you ladies, any of you working the Church Circuit . You can reach a lot of people through the church. I calmly know, especially the future of food was shown a lot by evangelical christian churches. They got the screening rights and screen it, because they thought it was a bad idea, and also the previous pope, he called it an abomination, which i was going right on, but, yes, and i have had my films shown. It is important. It is a respect for life. Filmmakers talk about the dangers of pesticides, genetically modified food. I guess what he means by that is when our people get sick, it is by the chemical companies. There are Many Companies that make chemicals and also the pharmaceuticals to make us feel better, and that is not a circle we want to support. I was going to start by saying nutrition is the upstream medicine. Thank you so much for this. And when i sit in the audience, you bring tears to my eyes, so thank you, and tell us as an audience, what are some of the things that we can be doing to be activists in our own local community . Well, number one, you can march in your parades, right . That is just around the corner. You can have movie night. Number three, we have things like he have done in the past, with heirloom seeds, and we put them with, please stop spraying roundup. By the way, we have a 50 loss of our seeds. Every third bite of food is created by bees, so we have these little seed packets, and you can go around the neighbor to neighbor and say this is a free gift for you. Please stops praying roundup. Do you know it has been found in breast milk and urine and water . These are things to do when you can have a oneonone conversation, and i mean that. Every single persons voice, every single persons phone call, and bigger than monsanto. We were up against the resignation and out of the american people. Too many of us think that we dont matter, that we dont count, that our phone call will not make a difference, that our letter will not make a difference, and it is absolutely not true. I had a cultured food party, and she tells you how cultured food heals your gut. Have your friends over. Grind up some sauerkraut and make some cultured food. It is fun. It really is. I think that you need to pick a passion. You need to really figure out what matters to you in your community, and you need to find out what is going on around it. Earlier, i was mentioning a woman named pam, and when prop 37 started to happen, she drove her car around and mobilize the team to get prop 37 passed, in every county in california, and she was one woman. She had never done anything like that in her life, but she cared that much creatively really look at our communities, look at our kids, get involved in the kids school and change the way they are being fed. Start a community garden. Think about what you care about and then find your avenue for making change. The people not fighting the fight for us. Our Community Leaders are. Their kids go to school with your kids, so i think if we each take something on, every one of us, i think everybody sitting at the table or in the audience, or one person that fought the fight that we believed was worth fighting, so for me, that is the best answer. I know that people by the end of my film, they say, i do not want to use roundup, and there are alternatives to that, and my friend lives in cincinnati said, we need a Farmers Market here, so she started a Farmers Market. It is amazing. Now it is a big success. They actually closed down the whole place they are. All these people are growing organically because now they have got the market, and she teaches people in other areas, and she saw this film, and she said, i want that, too, and i think when you try to say to people who arent from where we are and arent so food conscious, to really think about the consequences of your food choices. If you buy this or eat this rather than that, what are the consequences of that . Pesticide laden, comes from god knows where, supports god knows what. This local, organic, healthy, yummy, feels good, helping farmers, so when people become conscious that even the smallest thing that they do, even deciding where they are going to have lunch or what kind of milk they are going to buy, that ripple through the system, and that is why organic is the fastest system and why so many farms are going organic, because that is what people want, and it is driving them crazy. No one is buying their propaganda anymore. We cannot wait for them to do it. We just have to do it, and they will follow. We have to do with, and they go, we are going to have to go this way, so i just think there are more people that make each junky food, just to say why dont you try eating another way and see how you feel, see if you feel better . Try it. Then they can feel good about themselves, and they want to do more. And they become activists. They become fanatics. And it is perfect, take that thing that is so important to you that has to deal with food. For me, i am working on a project, and we have a film, and i interviewed 25 mothers about autistic children, and it was the most interesting experience. People say, clearly, you must have an autistic child, and i say no, and they say there must be an autistic person in your family, and i say no. My research started uncovering these canaries in the coal mine, screaming with medical illness, that is coming from food and toxins and chemicals and all kinds of assaults on these children. I was so moved that that story had to be told, and so my own personal journey led me to open my eyes to what was happening there, and that was very powerful for me. And they will always say to me, you dont have any connection to autism and yet you are involved here . And they said i will forever be grateful, because these voices were not being heard, and they are very powerful. They are teaching people and educating at conferences, and these things are happening everywhere, and people who are looking at longterm chronic illness are looking at autism for answers. Alzheimers, looking at autism for answers, because it is all connected. It was taking something that wasnt me or was not in my world, that is not affecting me, but the impact is. This is a followup to both of the last two westerners, and i like reaching out to churches and faith based groups, and i admire everything you are doing, but the fact is we lost prop 37. And then the two blue states. I guess the question is, how do we get that Critical Mass to get more people as part of this to understand this message, because we are up against millions and millions of dollars from monsanto and the grocery manufacturers, leading the charge to file suit, and they might start with safeway and every Grocery Store and say, if you are a member of this group, we are not shopping there, because we are losing it . One of the things of that gmos, because i have been dealing with this for 15 years, we need gmos so we can feed the world, and that people say, i want to feed the world, so case closed. I say you should label it because then people will seek those out and eat them, so what are you afraid of . They are afraid that if we know who is eating it and who is not, and the people who eat did have more illness, then we can start tracing it. They dont want it to be traced. That is the problem, but i think that you just have towe have to keep at it and also be more forceful, especially with these liberal sacred cows, and if they say, you are an expensive snob, and because you can afford to eat where you want, and we need to stop subsidizing corn. We need to stop subsidizing food that makes us sick, and if we are going to subsidize anything, we need to subsidize the kind of programs we have. They are the guilty ones. They are the ones that need to be held to account. The tide is turning, and there is a very influential person, and i will not say his name, but i heard him speak recently, and he first started talking to monsanto. They were so arrogant. We are the top cat. And now they are worried. That is because they are getting pressure from every possible side. And they have literally said that monsanto, there are mom bloggers that say that their kids get better, and they do not have any medical records. We are gathering medical records, and that is part of the issue, but we are not giving up. To answer the gentlemans question, california is not giving up. We have another right now. We need you to call your senators today. They are voting on it on thursday, so we are not giving up. We are going forward. We have a legislative initiative to get these labels. This is not going away. There is a recent poll that said 92 of the people strongly feel that gmos should be labeled, so there is no giving up. I think if you look back historically, there are many fights that have been fought long and hard, and i totally agree, and we have a lot of younger people now that are able to help fight these fights on their smart phones and really get the word out, and they are all of voting age, and i think for us, part of the reason we aim all of our efforts at the College Campuses, they are the leaders, and if we can support things that change the world, good for us. And as we know, the great thing about food, you can do something about it. You can eat this food rather than that food, where things like energy and nuclear, what can you do about that . Well, we can do something about food, which is why i think it is popular. You know it is the right thing to do. You cannot go back, want to understand that organic and healthy food is the way. You just cannot pretend it does not matter. People only go the other way, getting more and more insistent. Next question. I just had a question about organic. With the revolving doors, i think organic is becoming manipulated. What is going to keep them from increasing the standards of what is in our organic food . The group that convenes and decides what is going to be in organic foods or not, they have been historically allowing more and more, like carrageen, but it does not allow glyphosate or roundup, so organic food is not gmo, and there are no toxic chemicals, so our involvement in this cause is what is going to make the difference, the calls to the National Organic standards board. You can show up and say what everyone. You can show up at your school board. You get three minutes. You can say what everyone. You can show up at your city councils, and you can say i want organic food in my schools, hospitals, my childcare centers, and it takes individuals, people like you and me that go and say these are the standards that we want for organic food, and it must be protected. Also, there are some really good organic associations, the center for food safety another one, and i get their emails every day. If there is some issue coming up about organic standards, i always signed those petitions, and then i know what is going on, and they have representatives. There was one lawyer who was arrested because she was protesting. Alexis was arrested. She is a mom. But i think it is really good to support these organizations that are working on this a fulltime and filing the lawsuits, because that is really what it comes down to. We need to use the courts and public pressure and a think also supporting places like whole foods, the good earth in fairfax, supporting people. We need teeth. Organic has teeth now because it is big money, and i am for that, because i want them to have teeth, and i am going to support those organizations, so it is individuals, but it is also great to have the organizations that know they have got some chops that they can bring to the table. We have reached the time were we only have time for one more question, and then we will go back to our moderator. My name is kevin omalley, the chairman of the business and Leadership Forum of the Commonwealth Club of california. Our program is food fights for the 21st century womens voices driving change. And our panelists are judi shils, zen honeycutt, Deborah Coons garcia, and Christie Dames. I will turn it over for the last question. Thank you. Thank you, ladies, for all of your activism for all of us. The first issue i have pertains to coexistence. Oregon is trying to map out where all of the organic fields are and where all of the gmo fields are, but the Biotech Companies are pushing back. Can we have coexistence and can we have truly organic foods . It is ridiculous preview cannot have coexistence, because the gmo flows across. I was able to question tom vilsack at a conference i was at a couple years ago, and so i said, you have allowed gmo in alfalfa. It was a perennial. They do not need to spray it, and now it can contaminate nongmo. And he was, we all have to get along. I have two sons, and i love them both equally, organic and industrial, and i said, with all due respect, one of your sons is a bully. And he said, we can get along. We can live together. And i said, gmos can contaminate organic, but organic cant contaminate gmo. But i know a person who met with, from a seed company, who met with monsanto like 15 years ago when this started, and they were promoting coexistence, and he said, you know, there really is no such thing as coexistence. They would just contaminate the field, and the guy looked at him and smiled and said, i know, and when he told me that story, it was a totally private, not recorded, and i just thought, oh, man, that is their strategy, is to promote this false idea of coexistence, which anybody but a moron would know is absolutely unnatural and impossible to do, and then gradually just have gmo creep, and then it is game over. Very dangerous. Coexistence, that entire idea should be busted. And you understand what plants are . Do you understand seeds . Really, only an incredibly stupid person would believe that, and some say that sounds stupid to me, but maybe i do not know how it works. Animals eat the seed, and they very easily deposit it in fertilizer somewhere else. And it blows. It blows in the wind. So in addition to that, a doctor from hawaii had a Homeland Security man visit him after 9 11, and you can see this video. The Homeland Security man said, i agree, gmo, monoculture, that is the most dangerous thing of all, because when a plague or a pest attacks a mono cropped, then we are all wiped out, and i said, can i quote you on that . And he said that we need to prove that it is safe, so they will have it. Those countries do not want it. China does by 50 of the gmo soy and corn. They have it in oils and just feed it to animals, but they are wising up to this, and they are starting to cancel shipments, so they know that it contaminates. Well, thank you very much. On closing tonight, i would like to ask for your twitter comment. If you were going to be tweeted right now. Just in a short sentence or a few sentences, what you really want to leave an entire world audience with tonight, that is most important for you to get across, what is the most important thing tonight . Well, i would say because i have turned into a soil freak, healthy plants, healthy people, healthy planet. That is it. And i would say sorry, i am losing that thought. It really is that we can, every single one of us, can make a difference. Just pick that one thing. Start with one thing somewhere, and just start. You dont have to know how to do it. Just do it and make a difference. And i guess i would follow. I would say dream it, vision it, and do it. [applause] i would like to ask our moderator for your closing remarks, as well. As a neighbor, your mom, if youre going to be a mom, find that mom and help her, educate her. Find that mom, because these moms are absolutely taking it on, so find those moms, because they are nursing all of us, and mom in the greater sense of the word, right . The planet, the earth, mom. Whoever mom is for you today, find that mom and help her. I would like to thank all of our panelists tonight. Our program has been food fights for the 21st century, womens voices driving change. Our panelists are judi shils, zen honeycutt, Deborah Coons garcia, and Christie Dames my name is kevin omalley. Thank you all for being here tonight, and with this, i would like to close this program on the Commonwealth Club of california, celebrating over 125 years of enlightened public discussion. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning st