Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a resolution in support of the Meatless Mondays campaign in support of comprehensive sustainability efforts, as well as, to further encourage residents to eat a more varied plant-based diet to protect their health, and to encourage restaurants and markets to offer a greater variety of healthier food options.
Item 11 Communication from Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Gonzalez and Councilwoman Price. Recommendation to request the city attorney to draft a resolution in support of the Meatless Mondays campaign. Okay. There's no motion. Councilmember Austin. Turn this over to Councilor Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'd like to thank my colleagues, Councilmember Gonzalez and Price, for joining me on this item. Before you are to consider a resolution in support of the Meatless Mondays campaign, the City Council has often had agenda items that merely seek to raise awareness about certain community issues. Just as in the past, when the City Council has passed resolutions in support or opposing propositions or in support of wearing a certain color for certain cause, it did not mean that we were expecting that everybody would necessarily vote a certain way or require that anyone wear a certain color in support of a certain cause. Tonight's agenda is merely a way to wear, raise awareness and add to the dialog about the need for healthier food options, including more fruits and vegetables to be available. And raising awareness on this issue, I believe, is important to Long Beach. A study a few years ago showed that Long Beach had the highest rate of obesity and overweight children between the ages of two and five, anywhere in California, a rate of 40%. Recent studies have indicated that nearly half of all fifth, seventh and eighth graders in Long Beach are considered overweight or obese by federal standards. Obesity, especially in children, can have lifelong health impacts, including diabetes, hypertension, heart diseases, heart disease and some types of cancer. Many cities have adopted similar resolutions in recent years. Meatless Mondays, including Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco. Many restaurants and schools have also embraced this concept and have expanded the healthy options that they offer if even for one day a week. People think a little bit more about what they're eating and consider trying new, healthier menu options. Then this resolution will have accomplished its purpose. I'm glad. I'd like to thank my constituent, Mr. Roy Drew Alexis, for helping me become aware of this campaign and bring it to the city council's attention. And I would ask for your full support of this, I think, worthwhile motion. Councilwoman Gonzales. Oh. I want to thank Councilman Austin for bringing this forward. I know that it's been a hot topic lately all of a sudden, but I signed onto the agenda item because having a different perspective, in my opinion, on eating habits is extremely important. Our eating behaviors have contributed to more than two thirds of adults and one third of children becoming overweight or obese. And I've also learned that my own alma mater, Cal State, Long Beach, their dining hall, encourages meatless Mondays, offering a variety of vegetarian options. In addition, the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee also made strong recommendations. Their advice, of course, is to adopt a plant strong diet, meaning more fruits and vegetables and fewer animal products. In addition, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization stated that the meat industry generates nearly one fifth of the man made greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change worldwide. And astonishingly enough, this statistic totals more than the emissions from transportation alone. This cuts down on your meat. Cutting down on your meat intake can help conserve water as well. And an estimated 1800 to 2500 gallons of water go into a single pound of meat of beef, whereas other meat alternatives such as tofu only take 220 gallons of water per pound. So in addition to being healthy and making this merely your recommendation, it's also a global idea of ensuring we're being sustainable, that we're being more environmentally conscious and friendly, and especially in a city that is moving more towards community gardens and healthy food options. And so I welcome my council colleagues to support this. And thank you, Councilman Austin and Councilman Price. Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I, too, want to thank Councilman Austin for bringing this forward. And I want to reiterate what he said, which is this is a a campaign to raise awareness. It's not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination. So I think that's important to to think about it in this context. The initiative was created in association with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. It's a campaign to promote healthy habits, and starting the campaign on a monday really promotes good choices for the start of the week. This is the same message that I shared with my family last night when they asked me why we were not having my famous spaghetti sauce that I use that has ground beef in it. I told them that we were not having that last night, that we were going to participate in Meatless Mondays and and explain to them the benefits of using the opportunity to have more fruits, vegetables and salads in our diet. It's something that we don't do. And I think it's a really great opportunity for them to learn different alternatives in terms of their diet and making healthy choices. This initiative has been embraced by multiple school districts because they want to encourage healthy eating at a young age. In fact, it's interesting. In 2010, Fox News Sunday House Call with Dr. Isidore Rosenfeld aired a segment featuring Meatless Mondays. He cited that studies showed that meat consumption can impede weight loss and is unhealthy. Dr. Rosenfeld still presents a healthy Monday tip on his show each week. I thought that might be a relevant fact this evening. Studies have led to lots of policies and initiatives over the years that are embraced by local governments smoking laws and prohibitions , restrictions, snack offerings at school, promoting healthy snack options for children. This is just another opportunity to raise awareness within our city and to encourage our residents to think about their lifestyle, their welfare, their future health, and really to take it as an opportunity to choose if they want to try something different. On Mondays, why not give it a shot? Thank you, Councilman Austin, for bringing this forward. Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Bear. I want to commend my colleagues for bringing this forward. It's obvious that there are many studies that show that meat can be very harmful to one's health. And having one day out of the week to just stay away from eating meat products is, I think, commendable. One of the things that I always look forward to in terms of meals is that diversity and the opportunity to eat and try other things and doing it once a week, I think, is does it provide any greater harm than it than trying to do anything else and anything in in great quantities? Having great quantities is always going to hurt you. So I want to commend my council members on this. I support it and I look forward to Meatless Mondays. Maybe something less Tuesdays, too. Okay. Thank you. I have Councilwoman Mango. Thank you. I would be remiss if I didn't offer a few alternatives. How about pro veggie Monday or care about what you eat Monday or sugar free Monday? I've had calls from some businesses specifically that serve meat and steak and things like that, and it really contributes to the health of their business. And we as an organization could encourage or encourage restaurants and eateries to. Expand their selection. But if we were really passionate about meeting Meatless Monday, then maybe our own cafeteria should be meatless. I really am going to stand with the businesses today. I do support eating salads. I had a salad for dinner last night and I think it's a great thing. I just don't think that city government really should be in the business of telling people and making proclamations based on preferences. But thank you for bringing the item forward. It is important and I hope that our city and our constituents and our our children will really look at the sugar intake that they have and how that impacts obesity, because I do have diabetes in my family. Okay. Thank you. We're going to go now to public comment. So please come forward for public comment and then we will come back to council. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, vice mayor and council members. My name is Drew Alexis. I'm a Long Beach resident, and I support the issuance of a Meatless Mondays proclamation. And thank you for your service to Long Beach and for allowing for this discussion. Some may fear that a proclamation is government intrusion into one's personal choices. And I want to get some background on the campaign, because the campaign is really designed to do nothing more than provide information concerning the impact of our food choices on our health and on the environment, and simply to encourage us to make healthy decisions. Meatless Monday started during World War One. It was a campaign to urge Americans to reduce their consumption of staples to aid in the war effort. Meatless days were introduced to encourage Americans to show support for the war and free resources to furnish to our European allies. The campaign was established again during World War Two to help the nation's Second World War effort. And in the immediate postwar years, the campaign was continued to help feed war ravaged Europe. In 2003, researchers at Johns Hopkins University recommended cutting meat intake by 15% to lower the risk of preventable diseases. The School of Public Health launched the Meatless Monday campaign as a public health awareness campaign, and of course, Monday was selected because research shows that Monday is the perfect day to kick start healthy weekly behavior. Since 2010, Meatless Monday proclamations have been passed in 16 cities, including five in California. Many of these cities have found that passage of a proclamation is an opportunity to involve the community in the values expressed in the campaign. In Loudoun County, Virginia, for example, one of the most conservative Republican counties in Virginia. After passing a meatless Monday proclamation, the county partnered with area restaurants to offer special dishes, discounts and a lottery for free meatless meals, not surprisingly, and to address Councilwoman Mango's comment, many restaurants and communities that have adopted these proclamations actually support the proclamations completely because Monday is traditionally not a busy day for restaurants. That's a community based campaign to promote meatless meals on Monday may serve as a very good business opportunity for many of our local restaurants. In a few moments, you will hear from individuals who will share some important environmental benefits of eating meatless on Mondays. I wanted to to share a few words as to why Meatless Monday is also beneficial to our health. To quote Dr. Lawrence Hansen, a professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine who spoke at a school district meeting in San Diego. I have five reasons why the district should adopt Meatless Mondays heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity. It is no surprise that many hospitals and 28 teams from the most prestigious U.S. public health schools support the campaign as a tool to fight these awful and often preventable diseases. It is also no surprise that well-respected organizations working to advance public interest, such as the American Public Health Association, also endorse Meatless Mondays. According to a study by UCLA, 40% of children in Long Beach are obese. The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends reducing meat consumption to decrease the risk of various health problems, including obesity. And the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health concluded that by replacing meat with an equal serving of legumes, healthy grains are nuts. One day a week would reduce the risk of early mortality by as much as 11%. Given the staggering rate of obesity in Long Beach we can afford, can we afford not to take reasonable steps to influence our residents to enjoy meatless meals at least one full day per week? I encourage you to vote in favor of this resolution. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Vince Plods in. I moved to Long Beach in the late seventies while attending Long Beach State. I have watched the city grow and become a great place to live. My family and I reside in Susy Price's district. As as we all know, California is in a historic drought. Neither the short or the long term prognosis is encouraging. We are all being asked to take major steps to conserve water. Shorter and less frequent showers, brown lawns, etc.. And this is fair. This is not just a governmental issue. This is a citizen and a community problem. However, this is literally a drop in the bucket. We are ignoring the elephant in the room. The meat and dairy industry is responsible for almost half of California's water usage. Production of meat and animal products use more than half of the U.S. is freshwater supply. More of California's total water usage goes to livestock than any other cause. This is not sustainable. The estimated water to produce a pound of beef is a conservative. 1800 gallons. 700 gallons for a pound of pork, 430 gallons for a pound of eggs. Cattle need more water than any other large land mammal. Dairy cows range between 30 to 50 gallons per day. At first I found these numbers staggering, almost unbelievable. I researched it further and verified it with multiple sources. My next question was How can Ralphs or McDonald's possibly show a profit? Agro farming is very heavily government subsidized, so you are not just paying for your burger, you are paying for everyone else's. There is a very real connection between animal based diets and devastating water shortages. A vegan, meaning no meat or dairy diet, averages between three and 400 gallons daily. Vegetarian diet includes dairy jumps to approximately 1000 gallons daily. A heavy meat based diet can rise to 4000 gallons daily. Consequently, it takes less water to produce a year's food for a vegan diet than to produce a month's food for a heavy, carnivorous one. If these numbers do not seem important, I believe they will. Cutting animal products from meals one day a week would save an enormous amount of water. Change always comes with criticism and scrutiny, as it should. The perception that meat is necessary for protein is a myth. There are cultures and religions that are meatless and have and have sustained for many, many centuries. No one is going to be force fed broccoli or broccoli, only diet. This is merely a suggestion that we keep an open mind and look at all of our options. Here are some of the people already on board for Meatless Mondays. 50 school districts, 100 colleges and universities. Over 650,000 meatless meals are served in the L.A. Unified School District. And Meatless Monday resolutions have been passed in Dallas, Boston, Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco. Think of it like Taco Tuesdays, but with many, many more options and healthy benefits. On a personal note, my parents, members of the great generation, dine primarily on the American diet, meat and potatoes. My father died of heart disease. My mother passed of diabetes. I don't serve. I'm sorry. Time's up. Time's up. But I don't think you call it. I just think this is a I would respectfully encourage that. The Long Beach City Council. Thank you. Serve time. Time is over. And I thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Genesis Butler and I'm eight years old. I go to school and Monica Elementary and I love the city of Long Beach. I'm a vegan child. And one of the main reasons I went vegan is because of the damage. Eating meat is taking not only your health but the environment too. I researched the meat industry after my mom told me some facts and that is when I found out raising cattle and killing cattle for food is taking a toll on the planet. The animal and agriculture industry is hurting our planet. 18% greenhouse gas emissions are from animal agriculture. That this is more exhaust from all transportation, from animal agriculture is also leading ocean dead zones, water pollution and habitat destruction. It is also affecting our water supply. Right now, we're in the worst drought in history. We kept being told to take shorter showers or not. What are you? But that's only 4%. California's water footprint is linked to direct household use. The water footprint for meat and dairy is 47%. It takes it makes much more sense to urge people to limit eating meat. The footprint is a lot higher than the footprint for direct household use. I'm a kid and I'm really scared about the drought. I'm afraid I won't have water near the future. We can do something about this by having Meatless Monday for our city. I really think people will accept it and want to give it a try after they learn how much water it takes to make a meat dish. Did you know it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat? That's the same as a cup of showering. I know children will also be willing to give it a try when they learn. When I eat my lunch with my friends, they always throw away all their school lunch and only the piece of fruit or dessert. Because I see the rest of the nasty. They all they always eat all my food, my meatless lunches. My mom sent me when she even had to start sending me more food because they were eating all my food. Recently with Congressman Tony Cardenas said, We all have the tools to make a difference. Sometimes they're disguised as fortune knives. Let's put them in a good use. I agree with Mr. Cardenas. The city of Long Beach can save hundreds of millions of gallons of water each week by saving by not having me one day out of the week. Kids like me, that's their future, where they won't have to worry where they're getting the water from. Please consider Meatless Mondays. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next. Any of the public speakers, please come forward. If there's any others, please come line up so I can use our last one on the topic. Okay, then I'm going to cut off the speakers list, please. My name's Robin Hicks. I'm in the fourth District District, and. We actually make sure that we lift up your right. Just to follow with that, Justin. So I'm a 30 year vegetarian, ten year vegans, very healthy. When you're talking about personal preferences is not a personal preference issue with topsoil erosion, with the Amazon destruction, which most of it is due to cattle ranching, some of it that ends up here with dead zones in the rivers, with water , with the drought situation. This is not a personal preference issue. People's meat habits affect everyone because the environment is all of our environment. So when people are having a heavy meat diet, it is not a personal preference issue. It is affecting everyone. It's infecting the entire environment, affecting the rainforest, affecting topsoil erosion, affecting the drought. It is not a personal preference issue. It's affecting everyone. And please support Meatless Mondays. Thank you. Thank you. And oh, we do have another one. Please come forward. Okay. Hi. My name is Ashley. As a member of the Long Beach business community, I wholeheartedly support this resolution. I'm the general manager of a restaurant. In the arts district, and I believe. That a program. Promoting healthy, plant based eating will be beneficial for us as a community on two. Fronts that haven't already been mentioned. So the first one is that restaurants are notoriously slow on Mondays, whether they're a vegetarian restaurant or a steak house, whatever, because everybody goes out on the weekends. And so restaurants typically take. A big dip in sales on Mondays. So encouraging our residents to go. Out and eat healthy on this day is a great. Marketing tool that will be beneficial for all the restaurants in our city. The second thing, which is a little closer to home for me, is that I was born in Long Beach. I've lived here my whole life. I've traveled all over the world, but I've always called Long Beach my home because Long Beach is such a forward thinking and beautiful community. So Long Beach has raised me to be well educated, cultured, and simultaneously compassionate. To all living beings. And because it's so progressive and still remains to keep its integrity, I think encouraging our residents to eat a healthy, plant based diet once a week seems like the next natural evolution for our city. So thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to turn to the public. Please come forward. Is there anyone else for public comment? Please line up. If not, I'm closing the speakers list. Hi, my name is Barbara and I'm a registered dietitian for 30 years and a lot of the issues that were just addressed right now had to do with the environment and health. And this is all true, but meatless Mondays in the school district is really addressing our children. And I work in dialysis unit and when I see everybody with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and yet I asked them what you know, what are you eating? It's always a hamburger, it's always the meat. And I have to specifically say, do you eat any fruits and vegetables? So the whole idea of Meatless Mondays is that our children grow up to know about eating fruits and vegetables. Dialysis where I work is $1,000,000,000 a year strain on Medicare. We all know Medicare is running out. So let's try to prevent dialysis, diabetes, obesity and save our children in doing so. Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think this discussion has brought out one very critically important question, and that is, what school does this young lady attend? Yeah. So I'm going to write that down. I just want to say congratulations to whatever strategy was employed to make this happen. I think your family must be doing a great job, and raising your family is really a testament when you see your daughter and and to have her at the city council dais to talk about an issue and and really articulate it better than any of the other speakers today, I think really says a lot about Long Beach schools and a lot about your family. So I just want to chime in and say how impressed I am and best of luck. And when you're ready for an internship or a job, just just give us a call. We're hiring policy interns. Next, there's Councilwoman Mangum. I, too, want to say how impressed I am. You've made it on Twitter. You're being followed by a bunch of people in the Long Beach Post. I think you did a really good job articulating it. And I want to give a particular thank you to the members of the community who actually listen to the things that councilmembers say and address those issues instead of coming prepared with what they want to say because they want to say it because they have a point to make, but not really being able to have a dialog. I think that one of the the challenges that the process of the parliamentarian rules have is that we don't really get to have a dialog about it unless you contact our offices in advance of the meeting when the agenda is posted. And I'd wished that I'd heard some of these options in advance, I still don't know that I feel that it's a council decision to say Meatless Monday, but I am open to the ideas of pro veggie Monday. I am an owner of a community garden. I've eaten more vegetables in the last year than my whole life combined probably, and I think it is good for awareness. We're also asking the community businesses, restaurants specifically to do some farm to table. So there are other initiatives out there. I'd be interested in seeing an option where we utilize this as a promotional tool for restaurants so that they would come together. I would be supportive of something like that. The meatless part is really not not excellent for our steakhouses and others, and even if they are struggling on Mondays, I wouldn't want to contribute to that. But thank you for the alternatives. Thank you for the options and I hope that we'll do a campaign together. I'm contact my office and I'm open to helping the restaurants in my district and citywide. Thank you. We have a couple other council speakers. Councilmember Austin. Yes, I'll be short. I just wanted to say thank you for all of the speakers when I thank my council colleagues for chiming in. This has been a very healthy conversation and healthy dialog. As a city council and as elected officials, I think we do have a responsibility to promote a healthy community. And in promoting a healthy community, we are promoting a healthy workforce which is going to be a more efficient workforce and is going to help us attract the the big businesses with great jobs too. Long Beach, where Beach City and we have a lot to offer in this campaign, I think is is just a it's an awareness campaign that we should all have and I think we've all been to I really feel good about bringing this issue before us because those of you in the audience and those of you watching at home, you've been educated a little bit more about this issue. And so, again, I look forward to hopefully everybody supporting this worthwhile resolution this evening. Thank you. Councilmember Andrews. Yes, thank you, Mayor. You know, at first I wasn't that excited because I've been getting so many negative comments at school and I love about Meatless Monday, but I thought about it because my wife, she's vegetarian. But after getting the statistics from this young lady, I know I'm not going to eat any meat on Monday. I mean, it's just you just tremendous young lady, because I didn't know anybody but you with the statistics you just gave me. How could I not? Thank you again. And everyone, listen, I don't know what to say. I just hope my little granddaughter could just go to your school, too. Thank you again. Thank you. With that, we have closed the speakers and coming from the council. So we're going to call for a vote with a motion in a second. Members, please go ahead and cast your vote. Earlier in the. Okay. Okay. Motion passes, seven two. Thank you. Moving on to item 12, please. Item 12 Communication from Councilwoman, Mango, Chair, Economic Development and Finance Committee Recommendation to refer the Economic Development Commission. The issue of marketing the open counter software.