August 3, 2018


Rotary Club Kelowna Sunrise
VIA email: [email protected]

ATTENTION: Maribeth Friesen, President, and the Board of Directors

Dear Ms. Friesen and Board Members:

RE: Kelowna Ribfest

We recognize the exemplary efforts of Rotary Clubs across Canada’s dedication to promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene, saving mothers and children, supporting education, growing local economies. It is also very honourable that Rotary Club of Kelowna Sunrise is doing a fundraising event for KGH Foundation, JoeAnna’s House in Kelowna, Aug. 24 - 26, 2018.

We would appreciate your consideration, based on three areas of concern, why Ribfest events do not currently align with Rotary’s stated mission statement:

“to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, the support of education, and the alleviation of poverty”.


1. IMPACT ON HUMAN HEALTH (Consumption of Animal Products):

The following is quoted by health advocates, Dan and Sheanne Moskaluk of Naramata and the only Canadian cast members in the critically acclaimed 2017 health documentary film entitled "Eating You Alive" which also features Samuel L Jackson, James Cameron, and several renowned physicians and nutrition experts:

• The United Nations and the World Health Organization are encouraging world governments to adopt whole food, plant-based diets. For this reason, Health Canada is proposing changes to the Canada Food Guide. These changes promote more plant-based proteins and less consumption of animal products.
• There is a growing epidemic of Canadians suffering and dying from chronic illnesses, many attributable to the consumption of animal products. These illnesses are preventable and often reversible, simply by leaving animals off your plate.
• The numbers are staggering: 40 percent of Canadians report being overweight or obese.
• Diabetes rates are increasing. It is estimated that Canadians will see a 44% increase in diabetes between 2015 and 2025. More than 2 million Canadians have diabetes.
• In Canada, someone dies of heart disease or stroke every 7 minutes. Heart disease is an enormous financial burden to the Canadian economy costing Canadians $20.9 billion every year.
• 1 in 2 Canadians is expected to develop cancer during their lifetime. 1 in 4 Canadians are expected to die of cancer.
• An increasing percentage of Canadians are needlessly suffering. Why? Because of what we eat.
• Animal products are high in saturated fat, cholesterol, Insulin Growth Factor 1 and other hormones, antibiotics, heterocyclic amines (HCA) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH).
• The consumption of meat increases the risk of cancer. The World Health Organization has classified red meat as a Group 2A carcinogen (probable cause of cancer) and processed meat as a group 1 carcinogen, in the same category as tobacco, asbestos and plutonium.
• It increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes and increased risk of mortality.
• Adopting a plant-based diet has had a profound effect on both my wife and myself. My wife, Sheanne, lost 133 pounds and I survived terminal Stage IV kidney cancer by eliminating animal products from our diet.
• It pains us dearly to see fundraising initiatives being conducted in support of our health institutions and health support services by promoting the consumption of the very products that are actually putting people in our hospitals in the first place.
• The data is clear - eating animal products is detrimental to human health.
• Why then would the Rotary Club want, not only to participate in an activity that is so harmful, but promote it?
• Do the short-term fundraising efforts really warrant the harm that is being done to people's health?
• Now is the time for Rotary to take a leadership role in encouraging healthy lifestyles. Rotary's mission statement is to promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill and peace through its fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders.
• Fundraising by selling a product that not only harms human health, the environment and causes suffering to animal seems to fly in the face of your mission statement.
• Please reconsider your "Ribfest" campaign.
• It does not align with the core values of Rotary Club International.

PS: We would gladly arrange for a screening of the most recent health documentary film titled "Eating You Alive" for any Rotary Club branch in Canada

End Quote: Dan & Sheanne Moskaluk.

2. IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT:

Industrial agriculture is responsible for almost three-quarters of total freshwater use worldwide, and also the single largest consumer of water in Canada. It is estimated that 100 times more water is required to produce 1 kg of animal protein than to produce 1 kg of grain protein.

“By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions. For these reasons, it is reasonable to state that ILOs (intensive livestock operations), as the single largest industrial source of water stress, represent an extreme threat to the well-being of humanity.”
http://scienceforpeace.ca/the-environmental-impacts-of-intensive-livestock-operations-in-canada


3. ETHICALLY INDEFENSIBLE

Quote from Dr. Jodey Castricano, Professor of Critical Animal Studies UBCO, and Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics:

Inseparable from concerns regarding human health and environmental degradation caused by intensive agribusiness (CAFOs) such as hog farming, is the now ubiquitous understanding that farmed animals, such as pigs, are intelligent, emotional and cognitively complex. In fact, studies have shown that pigs have a level of intelligence greater than companion animals, such as dogs, with whom we share our homes, while other studies show pigs are at least as intelligent as a three-year old human child.

We would never agree to allow our companion animals to endure the suffering that pigs, who have been shown to form strong bonds with each other, experience in factory farms. Mother pigs (sows)—who account for almost 6 million of the pigs in the U.S., spend most of their lives in individual “gestation” crates. These crates are about 7 feet long and 2 feet wide, too small to allow the animals even to turn around. After giving birth to piglets, sows are moved to “farrowing” crates, which are wide enough for them to lie down and nurse their babies, but not big enough for them to turn around or build nests for their young. These highly intelligent animals experience profound distress and resort to behaviour that studies deem a form of psychosis.

Extreme crowding adds to level of distress and this experience is further exacerbated by transport conditions (Canada has the worst conditions in the world) where as many pigs as possible are crammed into a truck on the way to slaughter. Pigs are averse to getting in and out of trailers and are subject to electric prods applied to them, and when they enter the slaughterhouse, the sheer numbers of them going through the kill line causes extreme terror.

We know that the best way to distort reality is to deny it. But this is 2018 and in the industrialized world we eat meat not because we have to, but because we choose to. In 2018 we recognize that raising, transporting and slaughtering highly intelligent beings to satisfy one's palate is cruel and unethical, especially when there is plenty of scientific evidence to support a turn to a plant-based diet as the way to sustainable living on this planet.

End Quote: Dr. Jodey Castricano

Here is an excerpt from an article from Mississauga, ON, quoting City Councilor, John Kovak regarding Rotary Ribfest: http://www.insauga.com/mississauga-councillor-has-a-bone-to-pick-with-ribfest

“Finally, there is something distasteful about having statues of pigs and large garishly-animated vendor displays on our town square, right next to the front doors of City Hall. I find them cruel, some of these depictions, and it’s insensitive in general to make light of the misery and suffering of animals for human consumption.”

In addition, a downtown non plant-based Kelowna restaurant (who prefers not to be named) was offered a pig roast at their restaurant funded by a liquor vendor, but declined it because of the negative vibe they felt about doing it.

We understand Ribfests are one of the most lucrative fundraisers for Rotary Clubs in Canada in support of commendable humanitarian causes. Would Sunrise Rotary Club work with local professionals, volunteers, and businesses to create an equally lucrative, family festival which aligns more with Rotary Club’s values and missions?

Please consider our request and discuss with Sunrise Kelowna Rotary Club members, to work together with the community to change this event. In conjunction with the offer of a private screening of “Eating You Alive” to the membership and their families, we would also be happy to meet in person with any of your executive in person, to further discuss future alternative fundraising events that would be more in alignment with the growing segment of our BC population.

There is an online petition signed by those in favour to change/evolve Ribfest events to a healthier, kinder and environmentally friendly family festival in Kelowna and across Canada.

Sincerely,



Kim Gaalaas,
for concerned citizens of Kelowna

[email protected]
Phone: 250-575-3774

cc: Corinne Johnson, Interior Savings
[email protected]

Mayor and Councillors, City of Kelowna
[email protected]