John Robbins was at one the heir apparent to the Baskin-Robbins Company and fortune, founded by his father and uncle.

But one day he walked away from all of it, and is today a vegan activist who regularly speaks out against the excesses of the dairy industry, as well as an author and speaker, who lives with his wife in a self-constructed, solar powered home in Northern California. His most recent book is the Food Revolution, which is subtitled, “How your diet can help save your life and the world”.

The Book: If you had to sum up your cause what would it be? John Robbins: It is about understanding that we’re part of the web of life, and that what we do to the planet, what we do to other species, and what we do to other people, we end up doing to ourselves.

Book: When did you arrive at this enlightenment? JR: I was in my early twenties. It was 1968, and I was living a double life. On the one hand, I was being trained by my father to succeed him, to run Baskin Robbins. On the other, I was involved in the free speech movement at U.C. Berkeley, active in the civil rights movement, I marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.--I really adored him. Then in April of ‘68, he was killed, and I felt as if a bullet went through my heart too.

Bobby Kennedy was killed in August. The one two punch of those assassinations was overwhelming. A few months later, Nixon was elected, and I felt like business as usual is insane. We’ve got to change things way more radically. So, in December of 1968, I told my dad I’m not going to have anything to do with Baskin Robbins, walked away from the family expectations and a lot of money, and began to live a completely different kind of life.

Book: Couldn’t you conceivably have used your inheritance for causes that matter to you? JR: At this point it’s a done deal. I have no inheritance. Sure, if my dad wanted to give some of his money to the causes I believed in, I’d rejoice, but I’m not going to ask him, because I think I may be in some ways the only unconditional relationship in his life. He once said to me, “everyone I’ve ever met has their price, except you, and it bothers me”, and I thought, well good that it bothers you.

Book: And he raised you, so he can take some credit for that— JR: yeah, what a cosmic joke, in a way. I couldn’t have written Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution had I remained tethered to the dairy industry, to the food industry. It’s very hard to objectively appraise something when you’re reaping financial rewards from it. You make excuses.

Book: What was your reaction to the happy cows come from California campaign? JR: It’s a joke. The California milk producers are putting a lot of money into campaign: “Good cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California.” It’s such a piece of crap. They have these beautiful pictures of cows in gorgeous pastures, talking about how great they have it in California, and it’s so opposite the truth. California has become the largest dairy state in the county, passing Wisconsin. Our dairy cows are in dry feedlots, they never see a blade of grass their whole lives.

Book: How do they get away with that in terms of false advertising? JR: They shouldn’t. This is criminal behavior. A number of animal protection, animal welfare, animal rights groups, and I’m involved with this, have been petitioning the State Attorney General to stop it.

Book: Does it bother you that the cruelty argument alone isn’t enough to convince people to consume less animal products? JR: Yes, it bothers me, but I think it’s because people don’t realize how cruel it is. Julia Child, the TV chef, was very much of the mindset that they’re just products for us to eat and it doesn’t matter how they’re treated. Then she was shown a veal operation and was completely changed. She said, ‘I never knew it was like that’—but people don’t see it. Ronald McDonald tells children that hamburgers grow in hamburger patches, like cabbages. But hamburgers are ground up cows. There’s a real effort to keep the veil in place. All the toys, and food as entertainment trivializes our connection to the earth and other animals.

Book: What do you think of the White House administration’s environmental policies? JR: It terrifies me. This administration’s energy policies are completely oblivious to the realities of global warming, to the imperative that we shift to less polluting and renewable sources of fuel. The tragic irony is that those alternatives are there. We know how to run vehicles with hydrogen, how to generate electricity with solar panels and windmills. It’s in place, ready to go. But we have this pro-oil mentality in the White House that is just insane.

Book: What is the focus of your current activities? JR: I do ongoing speaking tours on these subjects. I focus on food. That’s a place where people have some leverage that they often don’t recognize. It’s the power of the fork.

Book: What about the movement to get genetically engineered foods labeled? JR: This is a big thing that I’m working on, and I think there is a chance. The latest poll showed that 93% of the US public wants labeling, and it’s hard to get that high a percentage of Americans to agree about anything. Monsanto, the world’s largest biotech company, is opposed to labeling because this will scare people. What they mean is it will deflate their profits. And it will. Their ads claim that this is our best hope to halt the spread of hunger, as if you should feel guilty for opposing it. There’s no truth to that. If that’s what you were trying to do, you would be seeking to develop characteristics like greater yields, the ability to grow in marginal soil, higher nutrient profiles, certainly the ability to grow without expensive inputs of irrigation or fertilizer. Of the 125-130 million acres growing in the U.S. today, far less than 1% has any of those characteristics. Enhanced yields just aren’t on the radar. And yet their ads--call it propaganda-- say they’re doing it for the world’s poor. The world’s poor can’t afford their seeds.

Book: Are you lobbying? Organizing? JR: Yes. For the past five years, Dennis Kosunich, the Congressman from Cleveland, Ohio has been the sponsor of legislation to make labeling mandatory. Senator Barbara Boxer, of California, has been bringing the legislation to the Senate. With each session we’ve been getting more co-sponsors. We’re going to have to get two thirds, otherwise Bush will veto it. This administration is horrendously supportive of genetic engineering. Three quarters of the world’s genetically engineered acreage is in this country, and we’ve only got 4% of the world’s population. Bush’s Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, is a former director of Calgene, which is owned by Monsanto. He picks people from industry who use government to do industry’s will. We have the best government money can buy, from their point of view.

Book: Would it be possible at this point to get genetically engineered foods out of the food supply? JR: Interesting question. 75 % of soybean acreage is genetically engineered. Corn is at 30%. With soybeans it would be possible. Corn is a different story. Corn is an open pollinator. Pollen from genetically engineered corn has contaminated all the organic corn. I don’t think that there’s any 100% pure corn left in the world.

Book: Why does Europe have far more stringent regulation of genetically engineered foods? JR: I think that in Europe people have developed a real identification with their cultural cuisine. In America what is our cultural cuisine? We have a “fast food nation,” as Eric Schlosser titled his book, cheap food, high in fat and salt. It’s junk. In Europe there’s a sense of wanting to preserve and protect. They’ve that seen the consequences when you tamper with the way food is produced, mad cow disease for example. They have bans on growing genetically engineered food and there is strict labeling.

Book: Do you think your efforts, and the effects of books like “fast food nation” have had any effect on meat consumption and the American diet? JR: Diet for a new America, my first book was published in 1987, when the per capita consumption of beef was 74 pounds per person per year, and five years later in 1992, it had dropped almost 20%. But we’ve seen a backlash since then, where level of beef and poultry consumption has started to rise again.

Book: Why is that? JR: Because we have government policies that make it cheap to eat at McDonald’s or Burger King. For example, the government subsidizes the water use that’s involved in beef production. In California, if beef producers had to pay for their water what consumers pay, the average price of ground beef would be $35 a pound. They subsidize the grazing. We allow cattlemen to graze their livestock on public lands and charge them almost nothing. If the true costs showed up at the cash register, then you’d see a tremendous shift in a plant-based, organic direction.

Book: Why is organic food more expensive? JR: With organic agriculture you have diversity and smaller plantings, rather than huge monocultures that attract pests. It costs a little more to do it this way. And then the certification programs are expensive. Why do the farmers have to pay for that? Why don’t we do that as a public service? It’s like a tax on organic producers.

Book: After 9/11 the President told us to go out and shop. In your book you say, “I need to make my wants less.” The basis of this economy is consumerism. If everyone were to simplify, as you have, wouldn’t that cause a great shrinking and collapse of the economy? JR: It would cause a great shrinking of the tumor that has become our economy. It would alter the economy, creating different kinds of jobs. For example, we’d burn less oil, but there would be more jobs in solar, in windmill production, producing solar panels, putting them on peoples’ roofs, hooking up schools with solar electricity. Right now our economy is based upon this overheated, shortsighted consumption that’s not healthy for anybody, or anything. Why is it the US sells 90% of the world’s weapons and less than 1% of the world’s windmills?

Book: In the book you end on a positive note. Have events that have transpired since, made you more pessimistic or less hopeful? JR: Hope is the thought that things are going to get better. Fear is the suspicion that things are going to get worse. Fear tends to immobilize us. One has to find some way of engaging with the problems, even if they’re getting worse. I feel it’s a privilege to participate in the possibility of transformation. The way I think about it is, at least if things go down, it won’t be because I didn’t do my part.

www.foodrevolution.org°