When Happy Cows Are Not Happy Cows

From author John Robbins at the Huffington Post

This past week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that will essentially prohibit, starting in 2015, any egg from being sold in the state that comes from caged hens. This bill became law 20 months after a majority of California voters approved Proposition 2, making it clear that concern for the living conditions of livestock is no longer the province of animal rights activists alone.

Recognizing how widespread concern about the humane treatment of farm animals has become, the California Milk Advisory Board has recently ramped up its 10-year "Happy Cow" advertising campaign with a new series of ads proclaiming that "Great milk comes from Happy Cows. Happy Cows come from California." These ads are now being shown across the nation.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with the ads. For one, they weren't filmed in California at all. They were filmed in Auckland, New Zealand.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Current Milk Board ads claim that 99 percent of the state's dairy farms are family owned. But in order to arrive at this figure, they count as "dairy farms" rural households with one or two cows. Meanwhile, there are corporate-owned dairies in the San Joaquin Valley which have 15,000 or 20,000 cows. It is these far larger enterprises that produce the vast majority of California's milk.

My concern, let me emphasize, is not with small-scale family farms. I have no problem with the many hard-working families who treat their cows well, take care of the land and try to bring a healthy product to market. My problem is with the much larger agribusiness enterprises, the factory farms to whom the animals in their care are nothing but sources of revenue.

Thanks to the practices they employ, the amount of milk produced yearly by the average California cow is nearly 3,000 pounds more than the national average. This increased production may seem like a good thing, but it is achieved at great cost to the animals. The cows are routinely confined in extremely unnatural conditions, injected with hormones, fed antibiotics, and in general treated with all the compassion of four legged milk pumps. Roughly one third of California's cows suffer from painful udder infections, and more than half suffer from other infections and illnesses.

Although genetically engineered bovine growth hormone is banned in many countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of the European Union, it is widely used in California's largest dairy operations to increase milk production. Unfortunately, it also increases udder infections and lameness in the cows, markedly raises the amount of pus found in milk, and may increase the risk of cancer in consumers.

The natural lifespan of a dairy cow is about 25 years, but one-fourth of California's dairy cows are slaughtered each year (typically at four or five years old), because they've become crippled from painful foot infections or calcium depletion, or simply because they can no longer produce the unnaturally high amounts of milk required of them.

The Milk Board ads present the California dairy industry as a bucolic enterprise that operates in lush, grassy pastures. Some of the ads employ the slogan "So much grass, so little time." But California's dairy industry is concentrated in the dry and barren Central Valley. Here, the cows are typically kept in overcrowded, dirt feedlots. Some never see a blade of grass in their entire lives.

The ads show calves in meadows talking happily to their mothers. But the calves born to California dairy cows typically spend only 24 hours with their mothers, and some do not even get that much. Here is a video that reveals what actually happens to the calves:

The ads propagate the image that California dairy cows live in natural conditions and the practices of the dairy industry are in harmony with the environment. But the amount of excrement produced each year by the dairy cows in the 50-square mile area of California's Chino Basin would make a pile with the dimensions of a football field and as tall as the Empire State Building. When it rains heavily, dairy manure in the Chino Basin is washed straight into the Santa Ana River and some makes its way into the aquifer that supplies half of Orange County's drinking water.

The large-scale factory dairies in California's Central Valley produce more excrement than the entire human population of Texas. About 20 million Californians (65 percent of the state's population) rely on drinking water that is threatened by contamination from nitrates and other poisons stemming from dairy manure. Nitrates have been linked to cancer and birth defects.

The Milk Board defends the ads by saying they are entertaining, and are not intended to be taken seriously. But the Milk Board is not in the entertainment business. It has not spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this ad campaign to amuse the public, but to increase the sales of California dairy products. Besides, does misleading the public become legitimate just because it is done in an entertaining way?

The Milk Board knows that showing calves being taken away from their bellowing mothers and confined in tiny veal crates won't sell their product. Neither will showing emaciated, lame animals who have collapsed from a lifetime of hardship and over-milking, being taken to slaughterhouses and having their throats slit. But this is the reality for animals in the large-scale factory farms that produce most of the state's milk. Covering up this misery with fantasy ads of happy cows who are actually in New Zealand is not amusing. It is perpetrating a sham on the public.

This is why I have joined with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a lawsuit that challenges the Milk Board's ads as unlawfully deceptive. Thus far, the Milk Board has prevailed in court, even though it's obvious that the ads lie to the public. Why? Because the California Milk Advisory Board is the marketing arm of the California Department of Agriculture, a government agency. And in California, in a truly Orwellian twist, government agencies are exempt from laws prohibiting false advertising.

Should we hold our advertisers, even if they are government agencies, accountable to reality? Should we require that what they tell us have some resemblance to the truth?

This month, PETA has erected billboards throughout the state that read, "California Cheese Comes From Miserable Cows." PETA, of course, is an animal rights group, but this issue is increasingly being recognized as one that concerns not only vegetarians and animal advocates. Consumers who want the animal products they buy to be from humanely raised animals can be found in every segment of society.

Consideration for the plight of animals is a central part of the American character. It is an essential part of who we are as a people. The "happy cow" ads are an insult to the legitimate humanitarian concerns of millions of people. As consumers, do we want to reward this sort of behavior with our hard-earned dollars?

Abraham Lincoln was speaking not only for vegetarians or for animal rights advocates when he said, "I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it."

To learn about steps you can take towards greater physical health, social conscience, and economic freedom, read my latest book The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. For information about my work, and to sign up for my email-list, visit JohnRobbins.info.

After Elevated Park's Success, Other Cities Look Up

By KATE TAYLOR
Published: July 14, 2010 in the New York Times

Detroit is thinking big about an abandoned train station. Jersey City and Philadelphia have defunct railroad beds, and Chicago has old train tracks that don’t look like much now, but maybe they too...

The High Line’s success as an elevated park, its improbable evolution from old trestle into glittering urban amenity, has motivated a whole host of public officials and city planners to consider or revisit efforts to convert relics from their own industrial pasts into potential economic engines.

In many of these places there had already been some talk and visions of what might be, but now New York’s accomplishment is providing ammunition for boosters while giving skeptics much-needed evidence of the potential for success. The High Line has become, like bagels and CompStat, another kind of New York export.

“There’s a nice healthy competition between big American cities,” said Ben Helphand, who is pushing to create a park on a defunct rail line in Chicago. “That this has been done in New York puts the onus on us to do it ourselves and to give it a Chicago stamp.”

The High Line, an elevated freight spur that runs along the West Side of Manhattan and overlooks the Hudson River, was also nothing more than a crumbling eyesore 10 years ago. But since it opened as a park last year, its plantings and vistas, tasteful design and intricate weave through the redbrick bastions of New York’s meatpacking past and contemporary buildings by Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel have been a hit. Though the High Line is not fully completed — plans have it potentially extending as far north as West 34th Street — more than two million people have already visited.

Developers from Rotterdam and Hong Kong have come looking for ideas. Officials from Jerusalem are hoping to visit. Recently a team from Singapore (Is there really anything old and rusty in Singapore?) spent time on the landscaped walkways that stretch from Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street.

“We could have a full-time job if we wanted to just do tours,” said Lisa Tziona Switkin of James Corner Field Operations, the lead designer on the project. She has walked the park with people from Memphis, Atlanta, Chicago and elsewhere. Many of these visitors are interested in the potential for using outmoded infrastructure to add green space and transportation options as well as to promote cultural and commercial revitalization. Part of the fascination with the High Line, which is operated by the city and the nonprofit Friends group, is that it is more than just a pretty place. The neighborhoods it runs through — the meatpacking district and Chelsea — were already glamorous with many restaurants, bars and art galleries. But the opening of the High Line has made those areas even more of a destination and encouraged the Whitney Museum of American Art to build a museum there.

In the early days the founders of the Friends of the High Line, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, drew their own inspiration from the development of the Promenade Plantée in Paris, an elevated park built beginning in 1988 on an abandoned railroad viaduct.

Now their success is encouraging others. In Philadelphia the idea is to turn the Reading Viaduct, which is 60 feet wide, into an elevated park and bike path.

“Our viaduct is much wider, which gives us more opportunity in some way,” said Paul R. Levy, the president of a business improvement group that is exploring the plan there.

The proposal is the brainchild of John Struble, a furniture maker, and Sarah McEneaney, an artist, who live near the viaduct and who met Mr. David in 2003 when he walked the span with them.

“He totally inspired us,” Ms. McEneaney said. “We got a lot of advice early on.” Still, she said, the project had little momentum until the High Line opened. “That sparked a lot more interest from the city administration,” she said.

Now the business-improvement quarter, known as the Center City District, is conducting a feasibility study focused in part on whether building the park would bring new development to the neighborhood, where many buildings are vacant.

“I was a nonbeliever until I actually walked on the High Line,” Mr. Levy said. “It was a complete turnaround for me.”

Alan Greenberger, the deputy mayor for economic development in Philadelphia, expressed caution about whether what was done in New York could be reproduced elsewhere. “People do look at the economic success and say that’s inspiring,” he said. “Can you replicate it? That’s another story.”

In Chicago, Mr. Helphand is president of Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail, a group modeled after the organization that Mr. Hammond and Mr. David direct. He acknowledged that Chicago does not have the army of private philanthropists that New York does, but said there was still lots of enthusiasm.

“We don’t have Diane von Furstenberg,” he said, referring to a prominent supporter of the High Line, “though we do have a celebrity chef.” (The first two sections of the High Line cost $152 million, $44 million of which was raised by Friends of the High Line.)

Recently, Chicago commissioned a design master plan from a team that includes a firm that was a runner-up in the competition to design the High Line.

Not everyone in Chicago, or other cities for that matter, embraces the notion that all good ideas start in New York. Janet Attarian, a project director for the Chicago Transportation Department, said that the plan for the Bloomingdale Trail has been around since the late 1990s. “It is something that we have been cogitating for a while,” she said.

The Bloomingdale Trail is almost three miles long, twice the length of the High Line, and is wide enough to accommodate bike traffic, which will give it a certain functionality that the High Line lacks.

“In the mornings there will be a rush hour of bicycles,” Mr. Helphand predicted. “It’s the east-west nonmotorized transportation route that we don’t have.”

Jersey City officials, who can practically see the High Line across the Hudson River, want to turn a downtown railroad embankment into an elevated park and transportation corridor. The effort is complicated by a legal battle with a developer that is now in mediation. The City Council on Wednesday voted to raise funds to acquire the embankment should the city win the fight.

Maureen Crowley, a coordinator for the Embankment Preservation Coalition, said that Mr. David and Mr. Hammond have advised the group, and that Mr. Hammond recently joined its advisory board.

The coalition organized a tour of the High Line last year for Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy and several other Jersey City officials, who were impressed, Ms. Crowley said.

Other recent participants in a High Line tour were from Paris, a group of officials from La Défense, that city’s business district. They sought ideas for shaping development in their own neighborhood. The group’s leader, Philippe Chaix, had been involved in developing the Promenade Plantée, the High Line’s muse a decade ago.

“When we were beginning to take the High Line around,” Mr. David recalled, “being able to point to the Promenade Plantée was huge to us. It’s exciting that the High Line can act in the same way — be something that other projects can point to and say, ‘This may sound unusual, but look, they’ve done it here, and look how successful it is.’ ”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 15, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Project's Fate May Predict The Future of Mining

By ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: July 14, 2010 in the New York Times

BLAIR, W.Va. — Federal officials are considering whether to veto mountaintop mining above a little Appalachian valley called Pigeonroost Hollow, a step that could be a turning point for one of the country’s most contentious environmental disputes.

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A Mining Bellwether

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Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Above is an existing mining operation, adjacent to the Spruce 1 site, which is to the upper left of the cleared areas. More Photos »

The New York Times

The population of Blair, near the Spruce 1 site, has dwindled to 60. More Photos »

The Army Corps of Engineers approved a permit in 2007 to blast 400 feet off the hilltops here to expose the rich coal seams, disposing of the debris in the upper reaches of six valleys, including Pigeonroost Hollow.

But the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration, in a break with President George W. Bush’s more coal-friendly approach, has threatened to halt or sharply scale back the project known as Spruce 1. The agency asserts that the project would irrevocably damage streams and wildlife and violate the Clean Water Act.

Because it is one of the largest mountaintop mining projects ever and because it has been hotly disputed for a dozen years, Spruce 1 is seen as a bellwether by conservation groups and the coal industry.

The fate of the project could also have national reverberations, affecting Democratic Party prospects in coal states. While extensive research and public hearings on the plan have been completed, federal officials said that their final decision would not be announced until late this year — perhaps, conveniently, after the midterm elections.

Environmental groups say that approval of the project in anything like its current form would be a betrayal.

“Spruce 1 is a test of whether the E.P.A. is going to follow through with its promises,” said Bill Price, director of environmental justice with the Sierra Club in West Virginia.

“If the administration sticks to its guns,” Mr. Price predicted, “mountaintop removal is going to be severely curtailed.”

Coal companies say politics, not science, is threatening a practice vital to local economies and energy independence. “After years of study, with the company doing everything any agency asked, and three years after a permit was issued, the E.P.A. now wants to stop Spruce 1,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. “It’s political; the only thing that has changed is the administration.”

While the government does not collect statistics on mountaintop mining, data suggest that it may account for about 10 percent of American coal output, yielding 5 percent of the nation’s electricity. The method plays a bigger economic role in the two states where it is concentrated, Kentucky and West Virginia.

The proposal to strip a large area above the home of 70-year-old Jimmy Weekley, Pigeonroost Hollow’s last remaining inhabitant, was first made in 1997 by Arch Coal, Inc., of St. Louis. The legal ups and downs of Spruce 1 have come to symbolize the broader battle over a method that produces inexpensive coal while drastically altering the landscape.

Spruce 1 started as the largest single proposal ever for hilltop mining, in which mountains are carved off to expose coal seams and much of the debris, often leaking toxic substances, is placed in adjacent valleys.

After years of negotiations and a scaling back of the mining area to 2,278 acres, from its original 3,113 acres, the Spruce 1 permit was approved by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2007 and limited construction began. But this spring, the E.P.A. proposed halting the project.

The announcement caused an uproar in West Virginia. The E.P.A. held an emotional public hearing in May and stopped accepting written comments in June. Arch Coal has objected publicly, but did not respond to requests to comment for this article.

The Obama administration’s E.P.A. has already riled the coal companies by tightening procedures for issuing new mining permits and imposing stronger stream protections. But environmental groups were worried in June, when the agency approved a curtailed mountaintop plan in another site in Logan County, W.Va. Now, as negotiations between the E.P.A. and Arch Coal continue, the Spruce 1 battle is being closely watched as a sign of mountaintop mining’s future.

Feelings run high in the counties right around the project area.

“Spruce 1 is extremely important to all of southern West Virginia because if this permit is pulled back, every mine site is going to be vulnerable to having its permits pulled,” said James Milan, manager of Walker Machinery in Logan, which sells gargantuan Caterpillar equipment.

The loss of jobs, Mr. Milan said, would have devastating effects on struggling communities.

Maria Gunnoe, an organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and a director of SouthWings, which organizes flights to document environmental damages, said that if Spruce 1 went forward, “it’s going to mean the permanent erasure of part of our land and our legacy.”

“We can’t keep blowing up mountains to keep the lights on,” said Ms. Gunnoe, a resident of nearby Boone County who has received death threats and travels with a 9 millimeter pistol.

Mr. Weekley, whose house is in sight of the project boundary, remembers the day in 1997 when he decided to fight it. Nearby mining under previous permits had filled his wooded valley with dust and noise.

“You couldn’t see out of this hollow,” he recalled. “I said, Something’s got to be done or we’re not going to have a community left.”

He and his late wife became plaintiffs in a 1998 suit claiming that the project violated environmental laws. A ruling in their favor was overturned, setting off litigation that continues.

Mr. Weekley said that he had rejected offers of close to $2 million for his eight acres and that he had seen the population of the nearby town of Blair dwindle to 60 from 600, with most residents bought out by Arch Coal.

A rail-thin man who enjoys sitting on his porch with a dog on his lap, Mr. Weekley uttered an expletive when told that coal industry representatives, including Mr. Raney in an interview, referred to the upper tributaries filled in by mining as “ditches” that can be rebuilt. In fact, some of the streams to be filled by Spruce 1 are intermittent, while others, including Pigeonroost Creek, flow year-round.

“I caught fish in that stream as a child, using a safety pin for a hook,” Mr. Weekley said. “If they get that permit, there won’t be a stream here.”

In documents issued in March, the E.P.A. said the project as approved would still smother seven miles of streambed.

Filling in headwaters damages the web of life downstream, from aquatic insects to salamanders to fish, and temporary channels and rebuilt streams are no substitute, the agency said. The pulverized rock can release toxic levels of selenium and other pollutants, it noted.

The effects of Spruce 1 would be added to those of 34 other past and present projects that together account for more than one-third of the area of the Spruce Fork watershed, the agency said.

The debate over Spruce 1 and other mountaintop mine permits has been a source of division and anguish among local residents.

Michael Fox, 39, of Gilbert, is a mine worker who like many other miners here thinks the objections are overblown. “I have three kids I want to send to college,” Mr. Fox said.

One former mountaintop miner who says he now regrets his involvement is Charles Bella, 60. He is one of the remaining residents on Blair’s main street, along the Spruce Fork, which is fed in turn by Pigeonroost Creek.

“I know it put bread on my table, but I hate destroying the mountains like that,” Mr. Bella said.

A Humane Egg

Published: July 11, 201o in the Editorial section of the New York Times

The life of animals raised in confinement on industrial farms is slowly improving, thanks to pressure from consumers, animal rights advocates, farmers and legislators. In late June, a compromise was reached in Ohio that will gradually put an end to the tiny pens used for raising veal calves and holding pregnant sows, spaces so small the animals can barely move.

In California last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring that all whole eggs sold in the state conform to the provisions of Proposition 2, the humane farming law that was embraced by state voters in a landslide in 2008. By 2015, every whole egg sold in the state must come from a hen that is able to stretch her wings, standing or lying, without touching another bird or the edges of her cage. This requirement would at least relieve the worst of the production horrors that are common in the industry now.

Since California does not produce all the eggs it eats, this new law will have a wider effect on the industry; every producer who hopes to sell eggs in the state must meet its regulations.

Heartening as these developments are, there is also strong resistance from the food industry and from fake consumer-advocacy groups that are shilling for it.

In fact, there is no justification, economic or otherwise, for the abusive practice of confining animals in spaces barely larger than the volume of their bodies. Animals with more space are healthier, and they are no less productive.

Industrial confinement is cruel and senseless and will turn out to be, we hope, a relatively short-lived anomaly in modern farming.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on July 12, 2010, on page A18 of the New York edition.

Organic Food, Health, And The Burden of Proof

From Dr. David Katz at the Huffington Post

Paradoxically, my long-standing interest in organic food has encompassed both ardent support and concerned opposition.

My support for organic food -- and my own family's frequent selection of it -- has largely been based on potential benefits to the planet. These, I think are self evident, so I won't elaborate them here. My concern has been based on the misinterpretations of what organic means.

Organic does not mean "nutritious." Broccoli may be grown conventionally, but still has the nutritional profile of broccoli. Gummy bears -- and sugar, for that matter -- may be organic, which says something good about what they don't contain (pesticide residues). However, it says nothing good about what they do contain, or add to your diet.

Considerable mischief has come from supply-side misrepresentations of organic. Tapping into the burgeoning public interest in "going green," the food industry has draped products in labels touting organic ingredients even when such ingredients are a nominal part of the whole.

According to the USDA, any food sporting "organic" on its label must be "produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations."

Further, "organic meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides, fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge [a comfort, to be sure], bioengineering or ionizing radiation."

There is, of course, the fine print. A label that says "organic" is noteworthy for not saying "100 percent organic." Ninety-five percent of the ingredients in such a product must be organic, but the rest can be ... whatever. In products "made with organic ingredients" up to 30 percent of the content need not be. We may get the truth on a food label, but rarely the whole truth.

The industry has done much to propagate the view that organic and nutritious are synonymous. The prevailing view, for example, seems to be that Whole Foods sells only nutritious foods, when, in fact, its commitment to selling "natural and organic" products guarantees no such thing. Standard offerings include, for instance, whipped cream and pepperoni pizza. In any other supermarket, shoppers would recognize these as dubious choices for health promotion -- but under the halo effect of "natural and organic," Whole Foods shoppers may feel they can't go wrong nutritionally. I beg to differ.

When developing the Overall Nutritional Quality Index that now powers the NuVal nutrition guidance system (www.nuval.com), an international team of leading nutrition and public health experts and I wrestled with this dilemma. While we unanimously supported organic food philosophically, we were forced to conclude in 2007 that there simply wasn't sufficient science to include organic in an evidence-based measure of nutritional quality. Work on updating the NuVal algorithm will begin with the release of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and we will once again need to address this issue.

Ironically, both sides of the organic/health debate have received a boost from recent research. A study just published in Pediatrics found higher levels of pesticide metabolites in the urine of children with attention deficit disorder. The association between organochlorine pesticides, which affect the nervous system, and ADD makes sense, and was clear in this new study despite a good attempt to control for other factors. Pesticides residues may or may not "cause" ADD, but they are at least implicated by association. Other research over recent years suggests that organic produce may be, on average, 20 percent more concentrated in vitamins and minerals than conventionally grown produce.

On the other hand, a systematic review of the literature on organic foods published May 12 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that "evidence is lacking for nutrition-related health effects."

This paper, however, bespeaks absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. Consider what it would take to PROVE that organic foods confer a health benefit.

Imagine a clinical trial in which 1,000 people are assigned to strictly organic foods, and another 1,000 to conventionally grown foods, for 10 years. Such a trial would be enormously costly, cumbersome and logistically demanding -- if feasible at all. Some chemical contaminants would almost certainly get into the diets of the 'organic' group despite the very best efforts to prevent it, and these would also contaminate the study- because they would narrow the intended difference between treatment groups.

Nonetheless, imagine there were three fewer cases of cancer, and/or of ADHD, and/or perhaps several other maladies, in the organic group. Just "three fewer cases" over 10 years would be too few to distinguish from a statistical fluke in a sample of a thousand people. And, realistically, there might be even less than three fewer cases of cancer, because many cancers develop over a period of more than 10 years; a 10 year study might just not be long enough.

But let's imagine there were, indeed, three fewer cases of cancer, three fewer cases of ADHD, three fewer neurological ailments, and so on, in the organic group over a 10 year period. While none of this would likely be statistically distinguishable from random variation, consider what it would mean to the public health. Three extra cases of cancer per ten years in 1,000 people caused by pesticide residues would mean 3,000 extra cancers every ten years per million people! In a population of 300 million, it means 300,000 extra cancers every decade!

What this tells us is that the health effects of pesticide residues and other common contaminants of conventionally produced food could be truly enormous at the population level, and still all but invisible to epidemiologic research.

Organic and nutritious do not, and never will, mean the same thing -- please be aware of that, and beware marketing messages to the contrary. But along with known benefits of organic food for the planet, we have more and more hints of potential health benefits as well. The case gets incrementally stronger with time that a food that is nutritious to begin with is better still if organic.

While we don't have, and are unlikely to get, definitive proof of the health benefits of eating organic, perhaps it's time for the burden of proof to go the other way: since organic food is better for the planet and is likely to be better for health, we should accept it as such ... unless someone can prove it isn't!

-fin

Dr. David L. Katz; www.davidkatzmd.com

Follow David Katz, M.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrDavidKatz

ISKCON's 2nd Generation Go Green At French Mela

By Madhava Smullen for ISKCON News on 9 Jul 2010

The chateau of New Mayapur in France

This August, 350 “Kulis,” or members of ISKCON’s second generation, from France, England, Italy, Spain, Germany and Belgium will converge on the rural community of New Mayapur two hours south of Paris, France.

In a way, their journey will be a spiritual trek; one that will end at Europe’s second Kuli Mela in as many years. Kuli Mela—meaning a gathering of community—arose from an effort to mature annual Kuli reunions from mere social events into productive sharing of attendees’ lives and talents.

After its inaugurative festival in New Vrindaban, West Virginia in 2006, Kuli Mela became something of a phenomenon, kicking off a spate of regional events around the world—each with its own theme and mission.

And France’s Kuli Mela promises one of the most interesting themes yet: Ecology. “With high pollution levels around the world, global warming, environmental disasters such as the BP oil spill, and general mistreatment of Mother Earth, it’s an extremely important subject,” says Chandra Bellamy, one of Kuli Mela France’s ten-strong organizational team.

It’s no accident that the team has chosen New Mayapur, an 85-hectare rural community set around a historic castle, as the location for the event. “Srila Prabhupada’s dream for New Mayapur when it was established in the 1970s was to have it become a self-sufficient community,” Chandra says. “And our goal at this Mela is to inspire a return to the simple life of gardening, working the land, and taking care of cows that he taught.”

Many of the workshops offered over the five days of the Mela, from August 5th to 8th, will pursue this goal. Dhanesvara Dasa, author of Lessons in Spiritual Economics from the Bhagavad-gita and inspiration behind village communities in Lithuania and Ukraine, will speak on spiritual economics and how to understand and apply Vedic Dharma in managing a rural community.

Yamuna Dasi from the UK, meanwhile, will speak about climate change, and about how to resist a globalized and capitalized world.

And French native Prema Rasa Dasa, herbalist and author of The Art of Cooking With Wild Plants, will conduct an experiential workshop were attendees will learn how to recognize, choose and pick wild herbs in the forest land around New Mayapur, before cooking up and eating them.

Several films with ecological themes will also be shown at the event. There’s “The Lost Village,” a documentary produced by Bhakti Vaibhava Swami and starring Lokanath Swami, which examines the destruction of traditional village life in India by urbanization. There’s Food, Inc., an Oscar-nominated documentary that explores the food industry’s detrimental effects on our health and environment. And there’s Solutions Locales pour un Désordre Global—or “Local Solutions for a Global Disorder”—a French film by director Coline Serreau, who traveled around the world for three years with her camera, seeking community village initiatives across India, Brazil, and Russia.

The environmental consciousness of Kuli Mela France even extends as far as dinnerware. “We will give each attendee their own plate and cup bearing the Kuli Mela logo, which they will use for the entire event,” Chandra says. “At the end of the Mela, they will either keep them as souvenirs, or we will return them to the company they came from for recycling.”

The meals themselves—breakfast, lunch, and a light dinner every day—will be organic, with half of the vegetables used to be grown by Kulis themselves or donated by devotee farmer Kutastha Dasa, and the other half to be purchased locally. Chef duties will be performed by Rupanuga Dasa, an expert with five years of experience cooking for organic fair crowds.

“Even the snacks we serve will be organic and healthy,” says Chandra, ticking off a list of delicacies including French crêpes and Indian chaat snacks such as pani puris, dahi puris, and aloo tikkis. “You won’t find any pizza, Coca-Cola, or fries at this event!”

As well as emphasizing the importance of self-sufficiency, the Kuli Mela France organizers hope to create a consciousness of valuing ISKCON’s rural farm communities, and to inspire Kulis to get involved so that they don’t disappear.

This is not merely theoretical—after fifteen years in decline, the New Mayapur property narrowly missed getting sold off several years ago. And the community—which many French Kulis grew up in—is still struggling, with only a handful of devotees living in the temple and maintaining the Deities.

“We see this Kuli Mela as an opportunity to get the community back on track,” Chandra says. “A group of youth are already interested in settling in New Mayapur and building up the project. And we feel that the Mela may attract more young people to start something there, or at least contribute six months of their time.
And little by little, something can happen.”

That vision will start with hundreds of Kulis arriving at New Mayapur for the Mela’s opening ceremony on August 4th. The next day, meanwhile, will begin bright and early.

“Our Deities at New Mayapur—Sri-Sri Radha Govinda, Krishna-Balarama, and Gaura-Nitai— are so beautiful, adorned with locally grown flowers and beautifully decorated by the head pujari (priest) Visesa Dasi,” says Chandra. “But They don’t see many devotees throughout the year. So we’re really encouraging all the Kulis to attend the temple program every morning and give Them as much devotion and attention as possible.”

Breakfast on each day of the Mela will be served at 9am, followed by workshops from 10:00am to 1pm. After lunch, another session will follow, from 3pm until 6pm. As well as those with an ecological theme, a total of fifteen workshops will cover a wide variety of topics such as yoga, massage, dance therapy, pottery, transformative communication, and self defense using martial arts.

Bhajan singing will be held throughout the day in the temple room, while evenings from 7pm till midnight will see a wide variety of musical entertainment.

Singer Prana Ji and guitarist Mathura Dasa of the Bindoo Babas, an alternative reggae/jazz band based in the UK, will have Kulis jiving to their ‘70s inspired easy-going grooves. Michi, former frontman of the Spanish hip-hop group Dhira, will appear solo with his energetic and catchy melodies and rhymes. Hardcore metal band Bhimal from Poland are sure to inspire a head-banging mosh pit. And acoustic folk artists Jaya and Govinda from France and Chakrini from the UK will bring a more chilled-out vibe with their soulful sets.

Meanwhile, kirtan singer Madhava Naidoo will have everyone chanting and dancing their hearts out, sending the Holy Name of Krishna soaring into the sky.

“There will also be a lot of electronic music and DJs,” Chandra says, “Including Ashirvad, who will play a set based on their epic musical journey across sacred India; Silly Pundit and Haridas from the UK, DJ Veda from France, and DJ Sanj with his Bollywood beats.”

The festival will be rounded out with an evening of Indian music and dance featuring dancers from France and Belgium, including bhajans, classical Odissi dance and Bollywood Dance.

“As well as Kulis, the Mela will be attended by friends of ours from neighbouring cities whom we’ve invited to experience our culture,” says Chandra, “So we hope the event will bring everyone together.”

Senior devotees from around the world will also be a strong presence at the event—ISKCON had a large, thriving community in France in the 1980s, and Kuli Mela will be an opportunity for all those who have since moved to the US, Australia, and other countries to reunite at New Mayapur and spend some time together.

“We would like this Mela to leave people with an enthusiastic feeling of happiness and creativity, and to inspire them to become active in the New Mayapura community,” says Chandra.

The New Mayapur guesthouse has already sold out for Kuli Mela, although space remains in two large tents to be used as men’s and women’s dormitories. Attendees also have the option to camp using their own tents or to stay at one of several hotels in the area. Shower and toilet facilities will be provided on site. For more information, please write to contact@francekulimela.com.

Related Stories:

• Forthcoming Children’s Readers to Combine Quality and Krishna
• ISKCON Youth: Worldwide Summer Programs
• Hindus Laud French Actress Fanny Ardant For Defending Roma Rights
• Sarkozy U-turn on French Burka Ban Over Fears of 'Terrorist Reprisals'
• French Devotees Emerge From Years of Struggle with New Paris Temple
• Kulimela 2010 in France

Read more: http://news.iskcon.com/node/2971/2010-07-09/iskcon_s_2nd_generation_go_green_at_french_mela#ixzz0tJOcgXQV

Veg And The City: My Beef With Locavores

Check out our friend Devadeva Mirel's blog "Sabjimata" for her own take on this in her post "The Locavore's Dilemma"

From Victoria Moran at the Huffington Post

The ally relationship can be an odd one. I remember my shock in third grade, learning that the Soviets had been our ally in World War II. "How could this be?" I wondered. "Our arch-enemies, the reason we have to crawl under our desks and prepare for The Bomb, were once our friends?"

I'm having similar feelings now, as I contemplate the locavore movement. As a vegan, and someone who believes in organic growing methods and family farms, I thought we were allies. I'm also a realist: I know the world isn't going vegetarian overnight. Our numbers are growing, certainly, but the global demand for meat is greater than it's ever been. Amid all this, I was happy to see a substantial group of small farmers, given a voice by authors and commentators such as Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, take a stand for better farming, including more humane methods of animal husbandry than the factory-farming norm. We didn't have the same ultimate goal, but both theirs (replacing corporate agriculture with small, conscientious farms) and ours (a vegan planet) are so lofty that none of us will live to see either one. But for now we were, I thought, allies.

I'd go to the farmers' market at Union Square--it's every bit as gorgeous as anybody's Eiffel Tower or Grand Canyon--and if the farmer selling goat cheese also had glorious spring greens, I'd buy her greens. It was totally friendly. I never said, "Shame on you for stealing the milk God meant for goat babies!" and she never said, "Damn you, veg-head: buy some cheese or you don't deserve arugula!" And the couple that provide the provisions for my CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture: you buy a share in a small farm for a season) always knew that I wouldn't be getting eggs. I didn't ask for anything to make up for that, but they often put in some extra potatoes or apples or a bottle of herb-flavored vinegar. It was nice. We were allies.

And, in terms of individuals like that woman, that couple, and me, we still are. I fear, however, that a strong anti-vegetarian sentiment has grown up in the locavorism movement as a whole. Several recent documentaries suggest this. The first I saw, Food, Inc., was an impeccably researched indictment of the corporations that want to take over all food production and apparently don't care how thoroughly we're poisoned and "genetically modified" in the process. It showed small, organic farmers weighing in on the issue while doing what they do, in one case, cutting the heads off chickens. "This is hard to watch," my husband whispered. "I know," I said, "but he's the good guy."

The next film we saw was Food Fight. It went into detail about providing whole food in school cafeterias, rather the way chef Jamie Oliver did on his reality show, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. No one could fault the sincerity of these people, but it did cross my mind that the vegan option--getting our nutrition firsthand rather than cycling it through animals who are, even in the best of circumstances, slaughtered in their youthful prime--was never mentioned.

My final cinematic foray into the locavores' way of seeing things was a film called Fresh, screened at a yoga studio here in Manhattan. It featured The Omnivore's Dilemma author Michael Pollan; Joel Salatin (the guy who beheaded the chickens in Food, Inc., and referred to himself in this doc as "a caretaker of creation"); and Will Allen, an urban farmer in Milwaukee, quoted in Fresh saying, "Food is the foundation, but it's really about life." Yes. I think so, too. Everybody's life.

After that showing of Fresh, there was a group discussion led by two erudite young men, one of whom claimed to be a vegetarian but who joined his cohort in ripping to shreds the concept of a plant-based lifestyle. "A vegan diet is totally unsustainable in this part of the country," somebody said. "That's nuts," I was thinking, remembering my grandmother and how she "put by" so much food with drying and canning, her pantry was overstuffed, even (according to my mom) during the Great Depression. My grandparents had a small farm in northern Missouri, and although they did raise animals, the produce alone could have gotten them through the winter. Hardy vegetables like cabbage and kale stayed in the garden, where Gramma built little coverings to protect them. "Now your kale is always sweeter after a frost," she'd say.

Apples, potatoes, yams and winter squash went into the root cellar and were good till spring. Black walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans joined them there. Tomatoes, string beans, peaches and pears were canned, along with all sorts of preserves and jams and marmalades. Beans and peas were dried, as was some of the fruit. Nobody in Missouri had heard the word "vegan" in those days, but if such a person had wandered by, he'd have been well-fed.

I didn't pipe up with my opinion during the Q&A after that film, however, because I'd rather be an ally than an adversary. Besides, my message is to the farmers and their spokespeople, not a bunch of New Yorkers who think Long Island is "the country." I want to tell them they need us vegans: There aren't nearly enough low-intensity farmers growing animals to meet the demand. For them to make a dent in the marketplace, there will need to be millions of people not eating animal products. I'd tell them that I admire their commitment and believe there are ways we can work together, but that the vegetarian ethic didn't come into being with modern factory farming. Some of us don't like the idea of taking a life, even if that life wasn't nonstop horrific, as on factory farms.

My vegetarian predecessors from Pythagoras to Einstein made two conclusions: First, the killing of a sentient being for anything less than self-preservation or to save another is wrong; and secondly, it is close to impossible to raise animals for food and keep the process consistently humane. My grandparents, on their little farm, did the things the locavores say farmers should be doing now. Their chickens lived in a coop, had access to the outside, and nobody seared off their beaks. Roosters were pretty much dispatched with, however, because one was enough. And come Sunday, a hen whose laying was waning a bit, had her neck wrung and she showed up on a platter. The pigs gave birth and nursed their young without the hideous confinement of farrowing crates, but each one was destined for slaughter and the runt of every litter was killed as an infant.

It wasn't that my grandparents were bad people. They were simply trying to make a living and, in terms of animal agriculture, they--and the modern proponents of family farming--do it in the best way possible. This is why I want to be their ally. I know that as a vegan, I'm in a minority. People love their meat. It's up there with sugar and TV and maybe even coffee on the list of inalienable American rights. As long as people demand the product, of course I champion anyone who's willing to produce it with the least amount of suffering to the creatures involved, but that is still a great deal of suffering.

Former Michigan beef farmer Harold Brown put it this way on the site www.humanemyth.org: "In my experience, there is no such thing as humane animal products, humane farming practices, humane transport, or humane slaughter." I realize that in quoting him, I'm bringing out one of the "big guns" from "my side," just as the locavores have theirs. But I myself spent a day in a slaughterhouse once, and those sights and smells and screams will never leave me. With what I know and what I've experienced, I gladly I support anyone working to make things better. But, ultimately, "better" isn't good enough.

Victoria Moran is the author of books including Creating a Charmed Life, Shelter for the Spirit, and The Love-Powered Diet. You can view all her books here at Amazon.com.