Senator Cory Booker Rocks our Humane Planet Speaker Series
Senator Booker makes the case for innovating our food system—why it’s urgent now for climate, health and justice
We’re all super energized after Senator Cory Booker joined our Humane Planet Speaker Series, produced by ZOOM Marketing, Palo Alto Humane Society and Sweet Farm.
The event kicked off with a tour of the Sweet Farm’s new 50-acre climate sanctuary in upstate New York. Nate Salpeter introduced us to Sweet Farm’s mission and we also met their animal ambassadors, many of whom were rescued from factory farms. We met Frodo the pig, Cali the goat, and Paco the llama.
Nate introduced Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), our keynote speaker. Senator Booker serves on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee and the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. In 2021, Senator Booker reintroduced the Farm System Reform Act to crack down on monopolist practices and invest billions in the transition to a more resilient food system.
Carole Hyde, Director of Programs, Palo Alto Humane Society, and Ellie Victor, Co-CEO ZOOM Marketing, kick off the session and introduce Nate Salpeter, Co-Founder, Sweet Farm
Here are a few highlights from Cory’s inspiring remarks:
What Martin Luther King, Jr. said is right: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." And that doesn't just mean human beings. It means all living creatures. You are living the spirit and the spiritual messages of our ancestors.
Our food system is tragically broken for:
Independent family farmers and ranchers who are being squeezed from all sides by anti-competitive practices
Workers who have had to risk their lives during the pandemic. Our country has a history of putting people to work in our fields that have no voice or no vote—from enslaved people to today’s undocumented workers—and we are exploiting these folks. Many of today’s farmers live like sharecroppers controlled by big multinational corporations
Our environment. We are a nation that poisons people with the pesticides, some of which have been banned in Europe. Rural communities are forced to live near massive manure lagoons, unable to breathe due to the horrible stench of air pollution. They've had their clean air and water stolen from them by these large factory farms
Farm animals who are treated as nothing more than just widgets in a large factory farm machine, and billions of whom each year are treated with immense cruelty, so much so that consumers are forced to look away rather than to admit the horror that is a daily reality for our farm animals
Our public health. Scientists and public health professionals are telling us in unmistakably clear terms there’s a serious risk that a factory farm in the U.S. could be the source of the next pandemic
Our individual health. Poor nutrition is the leading cause of poor health in the U.S., and it kills about half a million Americans each year. Certain types of cancers, kidney disease, heart disease, diabetes, all of these things are coming from the horrific diets that Americans have, and we know, as a result of this, we're bankrupting government. One in three dollars in the federal budget goes to healthcare. But no one wants to talk about the cause of this crisis. The activist, Ron Finley from South Central Los Angeles says, “We have ‘drive-by’s’ and ‘drive-throughs,’ and the ‘drive-throughs’ are killing more people than the ‘drive- by’s.’”
I’ve made reforming our food system my top priority in the Senate
The destiny of humanity is wrapped up in the destiny of animals. And right now, we are doing horrible damage to the future of humanity by allowing what's going on right now on the planet earth, which uses mass extinction for many animals. So, the plight of farm animals is an injustice that bothers me every day
I feel like we're in the early 1950’s in the larger civil rights movements that grew and finally changed the moral imagination of this country about who we are and who we can be to each other
Regarding President’s Biden’s support for overturning Prop 12, senator Booker said California should have the right to protect farm animals from allowing the cruelest practices
My kids can buy a Twinkie, which has animal products supported by farm subsidies in it, cheaper than an apple. Only 2% of our agricultural subsidies go to good food, the foods another part of our government tells us to eat
Lives are depending upon what we do in this movement. We are a nation that is screaming towards an environmental crisis, a health crisis, a biodiversity crisis, just by what we're doing through our agricultural practice. We are in a crisis, but we cannot in any way let ourselves send into despair or surrender to cynicism
We have the capacity to change this, and we are a few in numbers nationally, but we're growing this consciousness of our country
Whether people approach these issues from the environmental perspective, workers’ rights perspective, farmers perspective, or animal welfare perspective, we can build together like we did for the civil rights movement. It wasn't a movement of black people, but a rainbow coalition of people coming together to create a greater justice
Stay faithful. We help and heal each other because it's going to be a long fight, and then we encourage each other to understand. Ultimately hope is not the absence of despair. Hope is the act of conviction
Thanks for being part of our Humane Planet speaker series where we strive to preserve a planet where all people and animals can live a humane life. We look forward to sharing more news and upcoming speakers soon!
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About Palo Alto Humane Society
The Palo Alto Humane Society is a 501(c) 3 nonprofit, charitable, volunteer-supported organization. One of the few humane societies nationwide with no animal shelter, we work to keep animals out of the shelter through humane programs in intervention, advocacy, and education. For a century, our mission has been to alleviate the suffering of animals, increase public sensitivity to animal issues, and elevate the status of animals in our society.
About Sweet Farm
Sweet Farm is the first non-profit sanctuary in the world to address the global climate impacts of factory farming across animals, plants, and the planet. Our food web is incredibly complicated and it’s impossible to move forward without first understanding how these pieces are connected. By linking climate education, veganic agriculture, farm-animal rescue, and the technology that is sustainably disrupting food and agriculture production—Sweet Farm is redefining what it means to be a sanctuary.
About ZOOM Marketing
ZOOM Marketing is Silicon Valley’s first and longest-lasting agency focused on brand positioning. Our clients gain leadership through data-driven positioning that builds and differentiates category leaders. ZOOM’s clients are the positioning leaders in their market, including Snowflake, Databricks, ThoughtSpot, FloQast and Infoblox.
Sweet Farm co-founder Nate Salpeter hands off the keynote address to Senator Booker after a tour of Sweet Farm’s new 50-acre climate sanctuary in upstate New York
Sweet Farm believes in a “progress over perfection” approach to make incremental change to address the impacts of animal agriculture. Here is Nate with Sweet Farm's youngest goat, Cali, rescued from a live market.