FOOD POLICY: The Health Effects of America’s Corporate Controlled Food Industry

Description: We are all familiar with the saying, “You are what you eat.” While the correlation between food and health may seem obvious, the policies surrounding food development and growth have had a chilling effect on the country’s environment, economy, and workers’ rights. Straying far from idyllic rural farmlands, we now see ‘factory farming’ run by a handful of large corporations that control farmers with debt and contract termination threats, pollute the environment with runoff from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and destroy consumers’ health with animal conditions that foster E. coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella.  This panel will delve deeper into America’s corporate-controlled food industry and the effect that it is having on the health of our patients and our planet.

Goal: Although the food industry is a big business, they must tailor their products to meet consumer demands to profit. With an enlightened view on food, purchasers can change what sells in the market. This panel aims to educate more people on how to select healthier, more environmentally-safe foods to shift the industry to supply products that will lead to better health. Participants will also hear about how they can affect food policy in the United States, and current legislation in the US Congress for nationwide change in production conditions.

Panelists:

Louise Mitchell

Louise Mitchell, Sustainable Foods Program Manager, Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment

Louise Mitchell is the sustainable foods program manager at Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (also known as MD H2E), a program of the University of Maryland School of Nursing.  She is also a regional organizer of the Healthy Food in Health Care program for Health Care Without Harm.  Louise provides technical assistance to the food service professionals in Maryland and DC hospitals on strategies for increasing their purchase of local and sustainably produced foods, launching on-site farmers’ markets, CSAs and gardens, implementing environmentally sustainable practices, and promoting their initiatives.  Louise has a diverse background as a physical therapist, a publicist for non-profit organizations promoting conferences on nutrition, integrative medicine, sustainable agriculture and environmental issues, and in 2002 she helped start a farm which focuses on growing mineral-rich foods.

MONIKA KALRA VARMA, J.D.

Director, RFK Center for Human Rights

Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights 

A member of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights team since 2002, Ms. Varma has spearheaded the Center's extensive and innovative economic and social rights advocacy, including efforts to hold international actors accountable for extra-territorial economic rights violations. She has led advocacy campaigns targeting the United Nations and Member states, U.S. Administration and Congress, OAS Member states, International Financial Institutions, corporations, and regional bodies. Ms. Varma regularly speaks on domestic and international human rights issues before policy makers and civil society, and has published opinion editorials in the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, the Jurist and several online media outlets.

Ms. Varma currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Harvard-based Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Health and Human Rights Journal and is a Steering Committee member of the Lawyers Emergency Response Network for Haiti. She also serves on the Board of Governors of the Women’s National Democratic Club and is a member of the Advisory Board for the Global India Fund.

Prior to joining the RFK Center, Ms. Varma worked for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in Hague, Netherlands as a legal officer with the Office of the Prosecutor. She was a member of the trial team which secured the Tribunal's first indictment and eventual conviction of the crime of terror against General Stanislav Galic, the Serb military commander in Sarajevo from 1992-1994.

Ms. Varma received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego. She attained a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California at Davis School of Law.

Since 2006, Dianne Moore has headed the Sustainable Food Initiatives for Women’s Health & Environmental Network (WHEN).  Dianne represents WHEN, as a member organization, and serves as the PA, NJ and DE Regional Food Organizer for Health Care Without Harm.  As the manager of Food & Sustainability Initiatives, Dianne works with health care facilities and childcare centers by providing technical expertise, educational forums and resources and tools, on food policy and strategies for more sustainable food purchasing and practices. 

Dianne’s efforts have resulted in the engagement of over 40 hospitals from three states in developing and executing policies on sustainable foods such purchasing and serving sustainably raised meats, hosting onsite farmers’ markets, chef’s markets and CSA programs, and serving rBGH-free dairy.  Major efforts include: 12 hospitals and health systems signing Health Care Without Harm’s Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge and six healthcare systems taking the Bottled Water Reduction Challenge, reducing 75,000 liters of water, removing over 5,000 plastic bottles from landfills and creating ongoing programs directing customers to fresh, healthy tap water.  Dianne worked in partnership with other organizations to shift the marketplace for rBGH-free dairy purchasing by healthcare facilities. She coordinates the sustainable food and non-toxic cleaning components of Eco-Healthy Futures for greening childcare centers in Southeastern PA. The Food and Sustainability Initiatives program is a winner of the EPA 2009 Environmental Achievement Award.

Dianne has been an invited presenter at the PA State Nurses Association conference, PA Public Health Association conference, and the American Society for Healthcare Food Service Administrators, among others.  She has been on the national planning committees for FoodMed 2007 (Boston), CleanMed 2008 (Pittsburgh), and 2008 The Politics of Food Conference (Raleigh).

Dianne holds an MS from the University of Pennsylvania and an Advanced Standing MSW from Temple University.  She is a Senior Fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program and has completed an intensive training in sustainability at University of Massachusetts Lowell.