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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 1975)
Food meeting calls for reflection, action (CPS) — Austin, TX. "So our grains and beans go to feed cattle. So what? I love a good steak. Does anyone here eat steak?" Dead silence. Ron Knutson, former assistant to US Depart ment of Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz, had chosen the wrong place to solicit steak eaters. The 500 students, professors and college administrators who gathered at the National University Conference on Hunger here the last weekend of November 21, were not the type to just fast a day for world hunger and let it go at that. The conference arose as a "call to reflection and action" to the hundreds of campuses that launched food action or hunger projects in coordination with UW drive tops goal The University's United Way campaign ended Friday after achieving 122 per oent of its goal by raising almost $33,000 in contributions, according to Vernon Sprague, campaign chairer "The faculty and staff of the University should be warmly congratulated for the generous way they participated," said Sprague. This year’s drive, which started Oct. 1, raised about $6,000 more than the projected goal of $27,000 and about $10,000 more than last year's final figure of $22,487. "With very few exceptions, every department and unit of the University had a greater number of participants and a larger dollar amount of contributions than in the past year," he said. Sprague noted this increased support was true both of faculty and classified personnel. Students also participated in the campaign, raising more than $500, he said. Under the direction of Tom Dulcich, Carrie Cubbage and the Interfraternity Council students held a "Rotating Bunion Derby," a dance which visited fraternities and sororities, collecting donations. "It was most gratifying to have students participate," said Sprague. Sprague said that he “wishes to express for himself and the people of greater Eugene metropolitan area sincere thanks for the active participation of departmental and unit volun teers." Even though the drive has officially ended, the chairer said that United Way officers would be most happy to receive con tributions any time. either the Rome World Food Conference last November or Food Day last April. As a group the conference passed resolutions supporting two bills in Congress which would make the "right to food” for everyone in the world a cornerstone of US policy. The conference also called on Congress to pass a fair food stamp act which would not penalize the “poorest of the poor.” Little more than an hour of conference time was spent considering formal resolutions, however. For most of the weekend, participants met in small groups with experts and fellow activists to consider the scope of the food problem and what strategies people could undertake using research, curriculum development, con sumer action and political action. As it happened, the conference didn't need a “call to reflect," because one of the first things participants had to consider was one of the early prophets of the food action movement, Francis Moore Lapps, admitting that she had been wrong. In 1971, Lappe had been one of the first to p>oint out that most of America's edible vegetable protein was wasted in the process of feeding cattle: 16 lbs of grain and bean protein fed to cattle produces only one pound of meat protein, she noted, and the other 15 lbs. became unusable for human con sumption. In her book Diet For A Small Planet, Lapps had shown how non-meat foods could be combined to produce high quality protein for human con sumption, a strategy for eating “lower on the food chain.” She had not been wrong about her calculations of protein waste, Lappe told the conference, but about the idea that America’s excess production of grain was the key to world hunger. Actually, she said, her research in the past four years had shown that hungry nations could feed themselves, but were prevented from doing so because much of their own protein was expxxted to feed the cattie of the developed nations. Even in the height of the drought last year, the African Sahel produoed enough food to feed itself, but much of it went to FREE 10-Speed Bi cy cle D ra wi ng SIGN UP NOW! AT THE CAMPUS DQ Drawing Dec 13th 13th & Hilvard German AUTO SERVICE VOLKSWAGEN *gBL.'y & MERCEDES DATSUN & TOYOTA EXPERT WORKMANSHIP AND SAVINGS 2045 FRANKLIN BLVD. Bus. Ph. 342 2912 Eugene, Oregon 97403 Oregon Daily Emerald feed the cattle of the developed nations, she said. “Hunger is only a symptom of a system that systematically creates hunger out of plenty,” she said. The wealthy nations didn’t have to feed the poor, they just had to get off the developing countries’ backs, Lappe com mented. “People will feed themselves unless prevented from doing so.” Hunger rep returns in 'hopeful frame' By JACKMAN WILSON Of the Emerald Peggy Kehrer went to the National University Conference on Hunger without much hope that anything could be done in time to save parts of the world from famine. She returned from the three day conference with a more hopeful frame of mind. The 600 delegates from universities around the country were organized into four study groups to recommend specific courses of action against world hunger on a university level. Kehrer served on the Curriculum Committee. Kehrer says the organizers of the conference “tried to almost force the participants to stop just gabbing and start proposing action.” Universities have the capability to educate Americans about world hunger, Kehrer says, but few Universities' curricula focus on hunger in proportion to the scope of the problem. This shortcoming is compounded by a “great resistence to any two schools cooperating” on research or course offerings. Kehrer discovered the University’s institutional lack of concern for hunger before she left for the conference. “I wrote to 50 faculty members to get their ideas about things I should bring up at the con ference. I got three replies." Kehrer thinks the University should be “educating students to be world citizens, instead of citizens of Eugene or Oregon only.” In her opinion, problems of the developing nations should be stressed in courses and the school could do this by “hiring people with more of an in ternational viewpoint.” Delegates at the conference agreed that the immediate solutions to world hunger lie in an equitable distribution of the world's resources and a recognition of the urgency of the problem. “We don't have the freedom to •talk about this politely and academically for the next 50 years,” Kehrer says. The conference was sponsored by the Institute for World Order and was held in Austin, Texas. Kehrer’s attendance was sponsored by the Campus Prisoners used in drug studies (CPS-LNS) — Prisoners are the cheapest human guinea pigs for drug and medical research companies, according to the report of a University of Penn sylvania economicst. 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