Episode 128: “The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.”

Welcome to the 128^th episode of Our Hen House, featuring Jon Camp, Vegan Outreach‘s Outreach Director. 
In today’s episode, we’ll report back to you from The Seed: A Vegan Experience, where we spent all last weekend immersed in the hottest vegan event in history. We’ll tell you about our two talks – one that covered our 10 tips on going vegan, and the other, in which Jasmin interviewed vegan goddess Kathy Freston. We’ll also give you the skinny on everything from the Raising Vegan Kids panel, to the panel on Vegan Blogging, to the lowdown on talks from such luminaries as James McWilliams, Jenny Brown, Dr. Michael Greger, and, of course, Dr. Joel Fuhrman. You’ll hear about our favorite vendors, and you’ll learn what food truck drove up from Miami to be part of the festivities.

Mariann and Jasmin at The Seed. Photo by Splice Photography. http://www.splicephotography.com/

We’ll also discuss the unfortunate and disappointing update on  Eating Animals author Jonathan Safran Foer. We’ll tell you about the delightful three and a half hour dinner we had with Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, and we’ll give you an update on how our plans are coming for our upcoming cross-country trip in the Grandma-mobile.
Joining us today is longtime activist Jon Camp, Vegan Outreach’s Director of Outreach. Jon, who has recently handed out his eight hundred thousandth leaflet on veganism, has spent the last eight years traveling the country for Vegan Outreach’s Adopt a College program. He will tell us all about his experiences, and how we can use the warm summer weather to be the best grassroots activists possible, no matter our experience with animal advocacy.
For our review, we’ll give you our take on the new documentary Lunch Hour, by James Costa, which exposes the ugly underbelly of the national school lunch program.
All that, vegan banter, and of course, current events from the world of animal rights.
This week’s news items include:

• “Preliminary Victories and Setbacks on Federal Animal Welfare Issues” from Animals & Politics 
• “To fix the climate, take meat off the menu” from The Washington Post
• “‘The Simpons’ Co-Creator is Buying Sea Shepherd a New Ship” from Ecorazzi
• “Rhode Island Enacts Legislation to Prohibit Extreme Confinement Crates for Pigs and Calves and the Routine Docking of Cows’ Tails” from HSUS
• “Ticks causing mysterious meat allergy” from CNN

“The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.”  Matthew Arnold
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Photo at top of blog: Courtesy of Splice Photography