Welcome to the LIVESTREAM of the Harvard Food Law Society’s Raw Milk Debate. This link will become active at 6:15 PM on the evening of the event, February 16, 2012. The actual event will begin at 7:15 PM, at which time the stream will go live.
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For more information about this event, please contact: jabrams@jd12.law.harvard.edu

At one time, everyone drank raw milk. But with the invention of pasteurization and its attendant safety benefits, consumption of raw milk in this country almost completely disappeared. In fact, in many states it is illegal to sell raw milk. But a growing segment of the population is clamoring for increased access to raw milk, citing its nutritional benefits. Opponents are skeptical of such nutritional claims and believe the safety risks of unpasteurized milk are simply too high.Join the Food Law Society as we present a debate covering the legal, health, and nutritional merits of raw milk. The participants are:

Fred Pritzker,
Pritzker & Olson Law Firm
Dr. Heidi Kassenborg,
Director, Dairy & Food Inspection Division, Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture
vs.
Sally Fallon Morell,
President, Weston A. Price Foundation
David Gumpert,
Author, The Raw Milk Revolution

ANNOUNCEMENT: This event will be streamed live. The stream will be viewable beginning at 6:15 PM on 2/16/12 on the LIVESTREAM PAGE.
For more information, contact: jabrams@jd12.law.harvard.edu

Join us for conversation and drinks with like-minded students from MIT and Tufts for our first ever joint social hour.  Hopefully this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship and of more collaboration to come!  All are welcome!

Mark Winne’s second book, “Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture” takes on the universal struggle between human freedom and authority in its relationship to food. From urban gardening heroes in Cleveland, to feisty farmers in New England, to lower income mothers in Texas, Winne shows how people are reclaiming their connection to their food, health, land, and governments.

Mark is the former Executive Director of the Hartford Food System and a co-founder of a number of food and agriculture policy groups including the City of Hartford Food Policy Commission, the Connecticut Food Policy Council, End Hunger Connecticut!, and the national Community Food Security Coalition. He was an organizer and chairman of the Working Lands Alliance, a statewide coalition working to preserve Connecticut’s farmland, and is a founder of the Connecticut Farmland Trust. Mark was a member of the United States delegation to the 2000 World Conference on Food Security in Rome and is a 2001 recipient of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary’s Plow Honor Award. From 2002 until 2004, Mark was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a position supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Hartford Courant, the Boston Globe, The Nation, In These Times, Sierra Magazine, Orion Magazine, Successful Farming, Yes! Magazine, and numerous organizational and professional journals.

Mark now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he serves on the Santa Fe Food Policy Council and the Southwest Grass-fed Livestock Alliance.

5:30 Panel on Sustainable & Responsible Food Production
6:00 Panel on Producing the Special
6:30 Premiere Heirloom Meals’ Thanksgiving
7:30 Dessert & Coffee

Hosted by the Harvard Food Law Society, the Environmental Law Society, and the Environmental Law Review, the PBS special “Heirloom Meals’ Thanksgiving” will make its Boston debut, preceded by two intriguing and insightful panel discussions. Heirloom Meal’s Thanksgiving, airing on PBS stations across the US, celebrates how different cultures in America each give the holidays their own special flavor, with an emphasis on recipes passed down through the generations and shared cooking experiences (for more information, visit www.heirloommeals.com).

The opening panel will focus on sustainable and responsible food production, and will be moderated by Sue McCrory of WBUR’s Public Radio Kitchen.  Featured panelists include Emily Broad of the Harvard Health Law & Policy Clinic, Jesse Laflamme of Pete & Gerry’s Organic Eggs – the first Certified Humane egg farm in the country, and David Waters – CEO of Community Servings in Boston, a social service agency preparing and delivering 1000 free meals a day with an emphasis on locally sourced farm ingredients, and other leaders from companies dedicated to excellence in sustainable food production.

The second panel will feature on the powerful themes in the special, moderated by Heirloom meals creator and producer Carole Murko and Amy Traverso of Yankee Magazine. The panel will also feature Louisa Kasdon and Sara Baer-Sinnott, leaders of on-line media portals, blogs and organizations dedicated to the healthy ways people embrace and enjoy food today, with an emphasis on preserving positive and successful aspects from the past.

After the hour-long screening of Heirloom Meals’ Thanksgiving, the general public will be able to meet all of the panelists and moderators at a reception featuring Jim’s Organic Coffee, Pete & Gerry’s Heirloom Custard (prepared by Community Servings), Stonyfield Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt and Cookiehead Sprouted Grain Brownies.

The mental and physical health of the Western world has waxed and waned over the years according to environmental conditions.  In the United States, we have come to an unprecedented time of plentiful food and relative peace on the home front, yet we have increasing mental illness, and live our lives with physical or mental disability longer than ever before. Emily Deans, M.D. will explore how our modern Western diets theoretically contribute to our mental health burden using an evolutionary paradigm as a backdrop.

Emily Deans, M.D. is a board certified adult psychiatrist practicing in Massachusetts.  She graduated from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in 2000 and from the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency in 2004, and was a Chief Resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She is currently a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical school and blogs at evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com.

Food Fight (www.foodfightthedoc.com) is a fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement has created a counter-revolution against big agribusiness. Join us for a screening of this lively documentary followed by a discussion by the film’s creator, Chris Taylor.

Free to Harvard Law School students; Open to the public, $5 admission

TEDxHarvardLaw will focus on food policy and public health, with a specific focus on legal and policy approaches to increasing the supply and demand of healthy foods.

Dr. Robert Lustig will kick off the event with a lecture on “The Sugar Epidemic: Policy vs. Politics,” in which he will argue for a paradigm shift in the public policy approach to obesity.

Among the nine other speakers are Walter Willet, Chair of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, who will discuss how modern dietary patterns lead to disease; Doug Rauch, former President of Trader Joe’s, who will discuss his innovative idea to bring inexpensive fruits and vegetables to food deserts; and Susan Prolman, Executive Director, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, who will discuss the 2012 Farm Bill.

For full information on our TEDx conference, please visit the event page, here.

Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, will argue that it is time for a paradigm shift in obesity science and policy, away from personal responsibility and toward public health. His presentation will elaborate on his contention that sugar, like alcohol, should not be treated as an ordinary commodity on the open market.

Recently featured in the New York Times Magazine, Dr. Lustig has become a leading pubic health authority on the impact sugar has on fueling the diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome epidemics, and on addressing changes in the food environment to reverse these chronic diseases.

Join us for a conversation with Jack A. Bobo, Senior Advisor for Biotechnology in the Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs at the U.S. State Department. Mr. Bobo also serves as the Chief of the Department’s Biotechnology and Textile Trade Policy Division. The event will cover topics ranging from trade policy to development issues related to agricultural science and technology, and will also provide insight into pursuing policymaking careers at the State Department.

Cosponsored by the Food Law Society, the International Law Students Association, and the International Law Journal.