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
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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
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Prof. Peter Meyer claims that
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prisoners because they can pay
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amount that non-prisoners would
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report says. For many prisoners,
participating in drug research is
the only way they can earn
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