Value [the] Meal Campaign

This Thursday, EcoAction will be teaming up with the Georgetown Garden Club to table for a Day of Action with Corporate Accountability International’s Value [the] Meal campaign. We’ll be asking people to sign postcards and call the McDonald’s CEO as part of the CAI’s Value [the] Meal campaign.










Corporate Accountability International is a non-profit, grass-roots organization based in Boston that has been conducting campaigns since the 1970s to challenge corporate abuse across the world. The Value [the] Meal Campaign was launched in 2009 in response to the gross misconduct of a fast food industry that collects massive profits by selling products that lead to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and many other health problems.

Clean-up at the Anacostia River

Monday, for Martin Luther King Day, I joined the Georgetown Conservation Corps on a clean-up at Pope Branch Park in Anacostia. It was organized by the Pope Branch Park Restoration Alliance in conjunction with several local and national organizations, and it was the Alliance’s fifth annual clean-up, in honor of Dr. King and the Alliance’s founder, Joseph Glover. We spent the morning picking up trash along the railroad tracks and residential streets near the park, which surrounds part of the Pope Branch Creek, a tributary of the Anacostia River.

The GCC, which is part of the Center for Social Justice, has an ongoing partnership with the Earth Conservation Corps, which is one of the groups working with the Pope Branch Park Restoration Alliance. According to Scott Breen (COL ’11), one of the group’s leaders, the GCC works on community service and environmental education events with members of the ECC. Their mission is the following: “To address issues of environmental justice by providing outreach and environmental education to communities and community organizations that lack sufficient resources.”

Food for Thought

Image source.

I don't plan on talking politics in my blog (I'll leave that to the other DC student blogs, thanks) but earlier today, President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act, making it law.

Originally introduced in the Senate as S. 510 in March 2009, it was finally passed by the Senate in November 2010.  Amendments were presented and this act emerged in the House as H.R. 2751. People didn't expect it to go anywhere from there with the turnover of the House to Republicans and this act being put on the back burner.  Surprisingly, H.R. 2751 was passed in the House in June of 2009 and then passed in the Senate on December 19, 2010 (73 for, 25 against) - right before the turnover.

This legislation affects the FDA only, which regulates all foods except for meat and poultry, which is regulated by the Department of Agriculture.  This marks the first time that food regulation in the US has enjoyed major change since 1938.  It also marks the first time that the US has set food safety standards for imported foods.

Note: this post originally published on my personal blog.