ShiftCon Conference - Real Food Media

september, 2015

Event Details

Anna is excited to be participating in the ShiftCon 2015 Eco-blogging Conference in Manhattan Beach, CA.

Keynote Panel: Moving the Needle | 8a-10a

Moderated by Robyn O’Brien. Panelists: Lisa Leake, Jenny McGruther, Vani Hari, Anna Lappe & Gunnar Lovelace

And while you’re at it, register for the whole weekend: The conference lineup is full to the brim with fantastic speakers and resources.

Attack on Organic – and How We Can Fight Back | 1:30p-3p

In this panel, Anna Lappe, Stacy Malkan and Kari Hamerschlag will discuss the research from their new report — Spinning Food: How front groups and covert communications are shaping the story of food — and strategies for how we can amplify our power to tell the true story about the possibilities for creating a healthy food system.

The authors will discuss their research on:

Follow the big money:

From 2009 to 2013, chemical and big food corporations spent hundreds of millions of dollars to spin the media, drive consumer behavior and advance their policy agenda;

This includes $126 million spent by 14 front groups – with names like the Alliance for Food and Farming — that often appear as independent sources in the media, but are backed by corporate interests;

Four trade associations spent more than $600 million in just five years to promote and defend the agendas of pesticide, biotech and conventional food corporations.

Sneaky PR tactics include:

Targeting female audiences by trying to co-opt female bloggers, elevating female spokespeople and promoting messages to disparage “organic moms” as elitist bullies;
Infiltrating social media and creating seemingly independent social media engagement platforms, such as GMO Answers, that are in fact run by industry PR firms;
Attacking the credibility of scientists, advocates, consumers and journalists who raise concerns about industrial food production methods and impacts.

The panel will include a robust discussion about the ways in which we are winning anyway – for example, with much larger and more powerful online communication networks – and how we can take our game to the next level and press our advantages to make sure everyone has access to the truth about the healthier food choices available now and the path forward to a healthy, sustainable food system.

The future of food is in our hands!

Panelists:

Anna Lappé, a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and the Small Planet Fund; head of theReal Food Media Project, a new initiative. Her latest book: Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It (Bloomsbury).

Stacy Malkan, co-founder of U.S. Right to Know and also the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, author of the award-winning book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (New Society). In 2012, Stacy was media director for the California Right to Know ballot initiative (Prop 37) to label genetically engineered foods

Kari Hamerschlag, senior program manager for Friends of the Earth’s Food and Technology Program where she carries out research and implements market campaigns aimed at reforming animal agriculture, reducing consumption of factory farmed animal products and promoting sustainable, fair, healthy and resilient food and farming systems.

Time

september 24 (Thursday) - 27 (Sunday)

Location

Calendar GoogleCal