Back to Table of Contents
Back to Archives Main Page
Section: Online Content
Howard Lymon's World
By Julia Burke
 |
|
Howard Lymon.
|
Howard Lyman is not a Greenwich Village hipster, a San Francisco hippie or a Denver ski bum. It turns out that one of the nation’s most powerful voices against factory farming, a man who describes himself as a “hardcore vegan,” hails from Montana and is a fourth-generation farmer.
A cattle rancher of nearly forty years, Lyman made waves in 1996 when he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and revealed the dangerous impact of factory farming on our country’s health and safety, a topic on which he expanded in his book Mad Cowboy. Now, Lyman will stop in Buffalo, to appear as the keynote speaker at the Daemen College World On Your Plate conference on October 9 and 10, an event that will include more than 20 workshops that focus on current food issues and sustainable living.
Lyman applauds the growing awareness of health and food safety that has developed as a result of films such as Super Size Me and Food, Inc. He’s noticed a more friendly social climate lately than when he began advocating vegetarianism in the early ’90s, he says. “Back then if you said you were a vegetarian, people thought you had a communicable disease. Now you can go to any truck stop and they may not think they have vegan food, but they do.”
Lyman cites the national concern over health care as a primary catalyst in the movement toward better food. “The train has left the station,” he says. “There is no doubt in my mind that in my lifetime, the majority of Americans will be eating a plant-based diet. Health care costs are skyrocketing. It’s exactly what happened with the smoking issue — it’s reached such a crises we no longer can lock it up in the closet. The only question is whether we will change soon enough to save the planet.”
Responding to the notion that plant-based diets are for upper-class city dwellers rather than residents of what are often referred to as “the flyover states,” Lyman simply observes, “Diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer don’t just happen to yuppies.” Regarding concerns about access to healthy food for low-income families, Lyman points out that the cost of wholesome food “is more than reasonable if you look at the cost of health care and the environmental cost of factory farming.” When we consider these long-term costs, Lyman maintains, it’s easy to be green.
The sixth annual World On Your Plate will take place October 9 and 10 at Daemen College, 4380 Main Street in Amherst. Pre-registration tickets are $20 at www.worldonyourplate.org or $25 at the door. Organic snacks and lunch are provided.
back to top
back to table of contents
|
|
|
