For connected articles and far more information, please pay a visit to OCA’s Genetic Engineering web page, Millions Against Monsanto web page and our California News web page.
As the defeat of Prop 37 is mourned in California and all through the food motion, students are actually enacting it, continuing the challenging function for food chain transparency that they began well prior to the Prop 37 battle entered the mainstream.
For 4 years, from coast to coast, students have created, piloted, and refined the Actual Food Calculator, the most meticulous assessment tool for food procurement obtainable. The qualifications of ‘real food’ are stringent and precise, utilizing robust third-party certifications and going the further step in verifying source agricultural and labor practices. GMOs are outright prohibited from counting below any of the Calculator’s 4 categories: community-based, fair, humane, and ecologically-sound. The Calculator’s criteria in fact enact Prop 37 on an institutional basis – with it, students are literally taking Prop 37 into their own hands.
The True Food Calculator evaluates each food item purchased along with its supply, producing a percentage indicating the proportion of the school’s food spending budget dedicated to real food. Most importantly, the Calculator is performed by students – the consumers.
This is labelling-it-your self on a banner-drop scale, as students not only investigation and track multi-million-dollar budgets, but also engage with the final results and challenge their institutions to commit to and publicize measurable goals for improvement and policies for far more just and sustainable acquiring.
Carleton College senior Lindsay Guthrie, a leader of the Real Food Calculator Operating Group, feels strongly about the knowledge students gain by conducting the Calculator, noting that “the knowledge and the relationships they create make them uniquely prepared to be food leaders who can articulate the complicated dynamics of food getting. It is about much more than auditing the industry — as Prop 37 essentially would have carried out — it’s about positioning food advocates inside the technique and taking it back.”