Food Empowerment Project: The Power in Food Choices – with 'lauren' Ornelas (vegan), Part 3 of 3

lauren says that there is a commonality to all the social justice issues of our world, which is the disconnect between our innate compassionate nature and our actions. When lauren founded FEP in 2007, one human rights issue she tackled immediately was child slavery. Currently, there are more than 150 million child slave workers in the world, according to the UN agency International Labor Organization. FEP zeroes in on West Africa, where there are more than two million children that are enslaved in cocoa plantations. In 2011, to help shoppers differentiate between ethically sourced chocolate products and those that are not, lauren and her team at FEP launched a free “Chocolate List,” based on where the companies source their cocoa from.

It has been well-documented around the world that environmental and health hazards often impact poor communities and communities of color disproportionately. lauren also speaks out against the multibillion-dollar biotech company Monsanto, which has a history of toxic waste dumping that pollutes the air and water of low-income areas. She also points out that the genetically modified crops engineered by companies like Monsanto require more agricultural chemicals, leading to more pesticide and herbicide exposure for farmworkers – who are largely people of color.

“So, in North Carolina, which is the top pig killing state, you have black and brown, and indigenous communities there who are suffering from the horrific smell of the pig farms. In California, we have in the Central Valley here, we have some of the largest dairy farms in the country where you have the Latino community here suffering from some of the highest rates of asthma because of the dairy industry. So you have animal agriculture polluting black and brown and indigenous communities.”

lauren’s solution for this insidious form of environmental racism is for the world to stop consuming meat and dairy products.

Our beloved Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken extensively about the benefits of veganism for decades. She has emphasized that our climate crisis is extremely dire and only the compassionate plant-based diet will save our precious planet. “Not just immediately, but for the long, long run, and we can keep this planet forever and make it into a paradise by just throwing that meat away and stop the animal industry.”