Volunteer to help get vegan options into the National School Lunch Program!

January 28, 2009

Hello SF Bay Veg!

My name is Laura Beck and I'm working with Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on getting vegan options and soy milk into the National School Lunch Program during the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act (which should take place sometime in July). Nancy Pelosi from SF, George Miller from Contra Costa and Lynn Woolsey from Marin all sit on the Committee of Education and Labor (in fact, Miller is the Chairman!) and will have a strong influence on how the committee votes on this subject. Because of that, I'm getting together people to signature gather and letter write in San Francisco, Contra Costa and Marin Counties. We want to gather a large amount of signatures by May to convince them that kids need healthier grain and vegetable based meals and access to soy milk, whether it be for ethical, religious or health reasons. This is a hugely important campaign especially in light of AP article that states that 1 on 200 kids are vegetarian (please see: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/12/MNKT157GTS.DTL&hw=vegetarian&sn=001&sc=1000). Actually, many people think that this statistic is not correct, that it's more like 1 in 75! If these kids had support at school, it's a lot more likely that their vegetarianism won't be a phase but rather a viable lifestyle choice. So if you're interested in helping to shape the next generation of vegetarians or just giving kids healthier breakfast and lunch options in general, please contact me about volunteering! We need to collect a lot of signatures and write a lot of letters by May so let's get rolling!

My email is lbeck or you can call me at 415 832 9113.

I hope to hear from you and thank you so much for your time!!

Laura

p.s. If you or anyone you know is a doctor, nurse, health care professional, principal, teacher or working in the education field and interested in this campaign, we're looking for people to meet with congressional reps in our area so please let me know!