You're Sure You Want to Eat That?

A couple of weeks ago, the folks I follow on Twitter (a terrific bunch of CSR and social enterprise experts) were all abuzz about a New York Times article that told the story of a young woman from Minnesota. What was all the fuss?

Well, it turns out that this woman, 22 year-old Stephanie Smith, ate a bad hamburger – made from E.coli-laden beef – and it paralyzed her.

We’ve all heard about E.coli and the illness it causes, but Stephanie’s story was shocking in its seriousness. While her case is extreme, she’s actually just one out of tens of thousands of people who have been sickened by 16 different E.coli outbreaks in just the last three years alone.

In addition to the article, the NY Times made a 9-minute video that chronicles her story – although I wasn’t able to embed it here, you can visit their site and watch it yourself (I highly recommend it).

This story hit home for me on a few different levels.

On a professional level, I am very interested in sustainability and specifically the ways in which businesses can demonstrate their commitment to corporate citizenship through positive environmental action. Given the fact that livestock production is the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in America, I have spent quite a bit of time considering just how broken this system of production really is, as well as what can be done to reduce the industry’s environmental impact going forward.

On a personal level, however, food production is important to me because I want to be conscious of what I put in my body. Marketers know that consumers (especially those labeled “green”) are most concerned with products that go “in me, on me or around me” – and food definitely falls into this category. Thus I try to be as educated as I can about where my food comes from, and use my wallet to show support of businesses that operate in ways that align with my values.

Interestingly, on an academic level, this story was also very relevant. One of my MBA courses this semester focuses on corporate governance, accountability and ethics – an area of interest that’s now increasingly important in the wake of last year’s financial crisis.

In fact, Stephanie’s story serves as a real-life example of irresponsible corporate governance gone unchecked.

In class I’ve learned that good governance is related to two important concepts: leadership and accountability. These are two factors that seem to be largely undervalued not only in Stephanie’s case but in our meat industry as a whole.

Cargill, the company that sold the infected meat to Stephanie and other consumers, is America’s largest private company. The fact that it is private is crucially important: Unlike its public counterparts, Cargill is not required to disclose information about its governance structure nor its financial health to the general public. Why does this matter? Plenty of companies are private, right? Sure – but when the company in question is responsible for providing food to millions of Americans, the issue becomes more concerning.

What about Cargill’s meat suppliers? In Stephanie’s case, four different companies supplied meat products to Cargill, including one in Uruguay! As the NY Times article found, not only are standards for hygiene and safety often very lax at these places, but management at these companies often have unwritten agreements not to test their product for food-borne illness for fear of losing business!

And where is the USDA in all of this? It turns out that in many cases the USDA knew that Cargill was violating safety standards but did nothing about it.

Ok, this is the point at which I must admit that a lot of my information is based on this one article about this one woman. How can I assume that this one example of irresponsible and reckless behavior is indicative of the entire beef industry, its suppliers and even the USDA? Well, I can’t.

What I can say is that, after learning more about where our food comes from, and the ways in which animals are treated in this production system – well, it really doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch.

Plus, couldn’t we argue that just one example of egregious misconduct on the part of these entities is enough of an example of corporate governance, accountability and leadership gone awry? If this can happen to one woman, isn’t that enough?

In my opinion, Cargill and its industry colleagues sit atop an unsafe, irresponsible supply chain that puts profits and mass production ahead of consumer safety and ethical production.

Many questions remain for me: Who really is steering the ship at Cargill, and to whom are they accountable? What is the incentive for Cargill and its suppliers to act in ways that protect consumers and mitigate the risk of lawsuits and other legal actions? And, if the USDA cannot enforce a set of standards for safety in meat, what other harmful substances are making their way into the foods we eat? How can consumers possibly protect themselves?

For Stephanie Smith, though, the answers are clear: “In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known”[i].

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[i] “E.Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection,” published online 10/3/09 by www.nytimes.com. Retrieved online 10/3/09.

Don't Be Late. Period.

Recently, at The Feast conference, I was introduced to an organization called Sustainable Health Enterprises (aka: SHE). Elizabeth Scharpf, founder of SHE, was on-hand at the event to share with us how her organization uses market-based approaches to solve a seriously pressing problem.

But first: take a minute to think about what your life would look like in a developing country. For my part, it’s amazing how much I take for granted – whether it’s reliable electricity, supermarkets filled with fresh produce, a stable political system, or even just a roof over my head. In fact, I go through every day taking advantage of many basic necessities that others in the developing world would consider luxuries.

And I know I’m not alone in this. How many times have you stopped to wonder what your life would look like without internet access, for instance? Or, if you’re a woman, when was the last time you thought to yourself, what would I do if I didn’t have a sanitary pad or tampon to use?

Ok, yes, the topic can make some people feel squeamish, but in actuality this basic biological process has huge consequences for women and girls in the developing world: every 28 days their lives are completely disrupted by their menstrual cycles. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience we’re talking about – rather, SHE estimates that on average women in developing nations lose a total of 5 years of productivity over their lifetimes because they have their periods. Without sanitary protection, young girls can’t go to school and women can’t go to work, which ultimately means the entire community suffers.

Interestingly, Elizabeth and her team at SHE have developed a unique solution in which everyone wins. Take a look:

SHE's initial model involves funding women-owned business in Rwanda with enough capital to purchase banana trees (a bio-waste that farmers normally pay to have removed from their property). These women manufacture pads out of the fiber from these trees, and then sell the finished pads at reduced cost to other women in their community. Here’s the kicker: this business not only provides a clever solution to a basic problem, but it provides much-needed employment to other women. Initial revenues are first paid back to SHE, with any remainder going to build equity in the company. Once SHE starts recouping its initial funding, it’s able to lend it out again to other women. And the virtuous cycle continues.

Elizabeth is a true social entrepreneur whose venture produces a win-win for everyone involved. Don’t you just love these kinds of stories? If you want to learn more about SHE and support their work with a donation of $28, visit their website. Or, you can check out their blog to follow their progress. But hurry: their goal is to raise an initial $28,000 to fund their first start-up in Rwanda. They only need $10,000 more and the deadline is October 28^th! Can you help them? As the video says, “Don’t be late. Period.”

Defining Local

Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?

As I’ve started to learn more and more about our food and agriculture systems in the U.S., I’ve noticed the word “local” popping up a lot. Have you noticed it too? In truth, I think you’d have to be living under a rock not to notice the fact that everyone seems to be talking about local these days. But what exactly does local mean? And is it really all that important? (The answer, in my opinion, is yes – and no. But we’ll get to that in a bit)

So first, what do people mean when they talk about local?

There are a number of definitions floating out there in cyberspace. Search “Local Food” on Wikipedia and you find that local could mean within city limits or within state limits – depending on who you ask. Whole Foods says local is anything that has traveled less than 7 hours by car or truck, and this local coop in New York City backs that up by saying local is up to 500 miles, or one day’s worth of driving.

Making matters worse, where the food is grown/raised isn’t the only issue:

Where local food is determined by the distance it has traveled, the wholesale distribution system can confuse the calculations. Fresh food that is grown very near to where it will be purchased may still travel hundreds of miles out of the area through the industrial system before arriving back at a local store.

Yikes, this is complicated.

Funny enough, my mom even asked her neighborhood grocer in California about fruit that was labeled local, yet came from Florida – and the store manager told her that the U.S.A. was local! Obviously, everyone has their own definition of what local really means.

It turns out that I’m not the only one trying to get to the bottom of this question. A number of bloggers have chronicled their attempts at eating locally. Inspired by Vermont’s recent “Eat Local Challenge,”  Every Kitchen Table decided to try his hand at one week of eating foods produced within 100 miles of his home. Two bloggers in British Columbia decided to spend a year eating food grown within 100 miles, but soon ran into big problems:

First was the expense. We used to eat a nearly vegan diet at home – our dwindling bank accounts emphasized how much cheaper [vegan] beans, rice and tofu are than wild oysters and organic boutique cheeses. Then, we wasted away. We were unable to find any locally grown grains  - no more bread, pasta, or rice. The only starch left to us was the potato. Between us, we lost about 15 pounds in six weeks. Then there was a lack of variety. From March 21 until the farmers' markets started in mid-May, the only locally grown vegetables available were humble fare like kale, cabbage, turnip, rutabaga, parsnip and leeks.

That doesn't sound like fun!

Perhaps the best example of someone trying to eat local is No Impact Man, aka Colin Beavan, a New Yorker who managed to convince his wife (and by extension their small child) that a year of living “no impact lives” – including eating only what they could find at farmer’s markets – was a good idea (to see the trailer for Colin’s fabulous documentary, check out my recent blog post). He manages to make eating locally look realistically challenging, yet intriguing at the same time - surely no small feat.

So now it’s time for me to throw my hat in the ring. While I’m certainly not an expert, I’ve found that my increasing awareness about food and sustainability issues makes for an incredibly depressing weekly trip to the grocery store. Everywhere I turn, even at the most eco-friendly and neighborhood grocery stores (like Russo’s, a favorite of mine that does cultivate relationships with local farms), I’m confronted with questions about where every potential piece of food has come from.

For an everyday consumer trying to make conscious, responsible choices with her food purchases, navigating the maze of the grocery aisles to find local food is a really tough and overwhelming assignment.

 Ok, so we know that local means a lot of things. Does this matter? If we can’t define it, should we really care about eating local?

Over the course of the last few weeks, my husband and I have been spending a lot of time talking about this very question – challenging ourselves to define how we will make food choices that sit right with our “inner compass”. And we’ve come up with two key takeaways.

1) Local is Seasonal: Instead of spending all this time on what’s local (inevitably raising questions not just about how far away something was grown but how far it travelled to reach your dinner table), ask yourself: what should I be eating right now, at this time of year? What naturally grows in abundance this month, or this season? We’ve thought a lot about this and it seems to us that when you think seasonally, you end up thinking locally.

There are a number of resources out there to help you find seasonal produce, including this Vegetable Seasonality Chart and another Seasonality Chart put together by New Jersey growers. Originally I had wanted to create a pretty diagram for you to click on and print out, but here’s the kicker: each region/state has different access to different seasonal food, which means there is no gold standard for what to eat when. Your first best bet is to Google “Seasonal Food” and “Your Town” and see what comes up.

I’m convinced, though, that by eating seasonally, you’ll actually be eating locally.

2) The Practical Impact Jablows: After seeing the documentary about No Impact Man’s year-long experiment, Dan and I talked about whether we could change our habits and lifestyles to the extent that Colin and his family did. While I’m impressed and inspired by the actions they took, I know that not all of them are feasible (going without a refrigerator) or appealing (using cloth toilet paper – seriously). That said, there’s no reason that we can’t do our part to be practical about our food choices (not to mention other areas like energy consumption).

With that, we’ve labeled ourselves The Practical Impact Jablows – perhaps not as snazzy a title as No Impact Man, but it sums us up pretty well. Do we want to eat locally and seasonally? Yes. We believe it’s better for our health, our taste buds, and our souls (and maybe even our wallets). Will we always be able to enforce this seasonal-only policy? No, of course not. In the end, we want to be proud of the choices we’re making, and if that means 80-90% of the time we’re able to adhere to our seasonal goals, we’ll be ok with that.

After all, how many apples can one woman eat?!

In the end, each of us has different ideas about what’s ok to eat. What’s local to me may seem too far away for you. And that’s ok. What matters is that we’re eating food that, as Josh Viertel from Slow Food USA says, has a story that we’re proud to tell. All food has a history – and for some of us, being connected to that history provides the deeper meaning we’ve been looking for.

Entrepreneurs Can Change the World

As I mentioned in my last post, last week I attended an amazing conference called The Feast. In addition to incredible speakers and a terrific crowd, one thing this conference did well was mix in videos to share stories and inspire the audience. One such video, Entrepreneurs Can Change the World, is a goose-bump inducing reminder of just how powerful an individual can be in driving change. I'd seen it before (and maybe you have too) but I found it to be just as enthralling and empowering as the first time I watched it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  

To learn more about Grasshopper, the company that produced this video, check them out here.

A Feast to Sink Your Teeth Into

This past summer I got wind of an organization called All Day Buffet and an upcoming event they were hosting called The Feast. With names like that, I was immediately intrigued (after all, I do love food!). But when I read more about the event, I started to get really excited.

The Feast Conference gathers the world's greatest innovators from across industries and society to empower, inspire and engage each other in creating world-shaking change. A creative look at the world's toughest problems, The Feast Conference presents the most innovative solutions, insights, and best practices as a catalyst toward action.

Sounds like fun, right? Even more intriguing:

More than a conference, The Feast represents a bottom-up movement, so we're curating an audience as cross-disciplinary and diverse as our talks. But we're doing something a little different -- we ask those who can afford to pay higher prices to micro-sponsor The Feast, which allows us to offer $99 invitations to awe-inspiring vanguards whose brains get them where their wallets can't.

This paragraph really caught my attention. I’m a student, so I can’t really afford to attend lots of conferences. But $99? I could do that. So I sent off my mini-application, including information about my interests and my work with The Changebase, and waited for a response. Amazingly, I only waited about half an hour before I got an email saying, “You’re in!”

At the time, I didn’t realize what a true honor it was to be accepted to attend. Now that I've been, I understand just how lucky I was.

Without hesitation, The Feast was absolutely the best conference I have ever attended.

Of course, a statement like that begs the question, “Why?” Let me explain.

The Speakers: All Day Buffet did an incredible job creating a lineup of diverse experts from a wide spectrum of industries.  In 8 hours, we heard from social entrepreneurs, designers, authors, musicians, executive directors, and even a professional poker player. What’s amazing was that even with such variety in speakers, the day definitely held some common themes. I thought I’d include some nuggets of wisdom passed down throughout the day:

Matthew Bishop, Chief Business Writer at The Economist, talked about the importance of the heart and the head coming together to create social change.

Bob McKinnon, Founder of YellowBrickRoad, told us that empathy is not just about understanding someone else’s suffering; it’s about creating solutions to overcome that suffering.

Uffe Elbaek, Founder of The KaosPilot, challenged us to not just be the best in the world, but the best for the world.

Annie Duke, Professional Poker Player, taught us about how to use “cooperative ultimatums” to win in poker and in life.

Kenna, a Musician, reminded us that we need to be clever, collaborative, and curious in order to find our spark and create change.

Jay Parkinson, Founder of Hello Health, showed us that there is potential for a new model of health care that relies on collaboration and communication between doctors and patients.

Joshua Viertel, President of Slow Food USA, encouraged us to eat food that has a story we’re proud to tell.

Ken Banks, Founder of Kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS, proved that the possibilities are endless when you create a technology that’s adaptable and open for everyone to use.

Elizabeth Scharpf, Founder of Sustainable Health Enterprises, shared with us the potential to empower women in developing countries through market-based solutions.

Rod Arnold, COO, and Becky Straw, Director of Water Programs at charity:water, demonstrated that when business and nonprofits truly partner together, people on both sides of the money win.

William Drenttel, Partner at Winterhouse, explained that designers aren’t in the design business but the consequence business.

And certainly last but not least, Brian Bordainick, Founder of 9^th Ward Field of Dreams, engaged all of us in a discussion of just how far an entrepreneur will go for a mission he believes in.

As you can see, it was an incredible day – one that certainly can’t be recreated in a single blog post. Luckily for you, All Day Buffet was live streaming during the event, so you can check out what each speaker had to say.

The Attendees: While the lineup of speakers was impressive, and their messages were certainly inspiring, what made this day invaluable were the people.

I have never attended an event where people were so singularly focused on connecting, engaging, and helping everyone they could. In one day, I met social entrepreneurs, artists, business owners, marketers, and nonprofit leaders. And after talking for a few moments, inevitably they asked, “What can I do to help you?” That may not seem impressive in a small crowd of dedicated social innovators - but this wasn't a small crowd. This was almost 400 people.

In fact, it turned out that a common theme, throughout all of the speakers and the conversations I had during breaks, was collaboration and community. At the end of the event, All Day Buffet’s Jerri Chou encouraged us to put out the energy of what you’re looking for, and let this amazing community support and help you.

For me, yesterday was a homecoming to a community that I knew existed but hadn’t been introduced to yet. I came home feeling renewed and energized and overwhelmed (in a good way) by the possibilities laid out before me: itching to get started yet sad to leave this incredible gathering of changemakers.

As if she read our minds, Cindy Gallop, Founder of If We Ran The World and our moderator for the day, challenged us to seize this excitement and inspiration and turn it into action. She called us a “crucible bubbling over with good intentions” and she warned us not to let this inspiration go to waste. Turn your good intentions into micro-actions of change, she said.

And, I’d add, don’t lose sight of the fact that you are part of a community that wants you to succeed. Because in our collective goal of long-term social change, when one of us wins, we all do.

To see some photos from the event, check this out.

To learn more and follow The Feast's speakers and their organizations:

• Matthew Bishop - @mattbish
• Kenna - @OKKenna
• Annie Duke - @realannieduke
• Joshua Viertel - @joshviertel
• Rod Arnold - @rodlarnold
• Becky Straw - @beckystraw
• William Drenttel - @designobserver
• Ken Banks - @kiwanja
• FrontlineSMS - @FrontlineSMS
• Elizabeth Scharpf and SHE - @SHEnterprises
• Yellow Brick Road - @YBRTweets
• Hello Health - @hellohealth
• 9th Ward Field of Dreams - @9wfod
• Cindy Gallop - @cindygallop1
• If We Ran The World - @iwrtw