Earth Day: Food Strategies that Care for Creation

How our food is produced, processed, transported, consumed, and disposed of profoundly impacts individual, community, and planetary health. As health care organizations look at ways to reduce their environmental impact, changes in food strategies are critical.

Food strategy experts from Practice Greenhealth will share how changes in food procurement, a focus on plant-forward menus and food waste management can help health care organizations meet sustainability, equity and community health improvement goals.

Quick facts:

• Food production accounts for approximately 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The Science Based Targets Initiative estimates we need to reduce emissions from food production by 67% by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Livestock production is responsible for approximately 14.5%, and wasted food is responsible for roughly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• Numerous studies have found farmworkers are at elevated risk for cancer, likely due to pesticide and sun exposure. Pesticide exposure is also implicated in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, as well as various disorders of the respiratory and reproductive tracts.
• The rise of antibiotic-resistant infections, which impact more than 2.8 million people and kill at least 35,000 people in the United States each year, has been linked to overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.
• A long history of failed regulatory oversight of industrial slaughterhouses contributes to dangerous conditions for slaughterhouse workers, environmental degradation, and severe animal suffering.