2023 PRESENTATIONS
11:00 – 11:50 pm: Jan Allegretti, D.Vet.Hom, Healthy Vegan Diets for Cats and Dogs
12:00 – 12:50 pm: Hope Bohanec, The Humane Hoax
1:00 – 1:50 pm: Eating Our Way to Extinction: Film Segments with Live Interactive Discussion and Q&A
2:00 – 2:50 pm: Dr. Jeff Pierce, Eating Whole-Food Plant Based: How To Prevent, Treat, and Sometimes Reverse Chronic Illness
DETAILS BELOW
11:00 – 11:50 am
Jan Allegretti, D.Vet.Hom
Can Dogs and Cats Go Vegan? The When, Why, and How of Creating a More Compassionate and Healthier Diet for Your Best Friend
You care about animals—all species of animals—and you’re concerned about the environment and the devastating effects of using animals for food. You may be considering adopting a vegan diet or maybe you’ve already eliminated animal products from the foods you choose to eat.
But what about the meals you feed your nonhuman family members? Did you know that approximately 25% of all animal-derived foods in the US are fed to dogs and cats? Have you ever wondered whether the sweet dog or cat you feed every day could join you in your choice of a more compassionate, caring diet? Or do you believe dogs and cats must eat meat in order to be healthy?
Jan Allegretti, D.Vet.Hom, has been a consultant and educator in holistic health care for nonhuman animals since 1988, specializing in nutrition, homeopathy, and lifestyle assessment. She is the author of The Holistic Animal Health Series, which includes the bestselling The Complete Holistic Dog Book: Home Health Care for Our Canine Companions, a comprehensive manual for health and healing through nutrition, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and a supportive home environment; and The Fresh & Flexible Meal Plan: The Easiest, Most Nutritious Way to Feed Your Dog and Cat, released in June 2023. She works with home caregivers, shelter and rescue organizations, and veterinary professionals through private consultations, workshops, and as a speaker at conferences and outreach events. Her work has been published in professional and trade publications including the International Animal Health Journal, the Journal of the Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy, and Vegan Life Magazine.
Jan is deeply committed to animal advocacy, writing and working to foster a better relationship between humans and other species. In 2006 and 2007 she successfully led a coalition to prevent the building of a slaughterhouse in her community; in 2007 co-founded the Mendocino County, California, animal advocacy organization CARE: Compassion for Animals, Respect for the Earth; and has been nominated for the American Red Cross (Sonoma and Mendocino Counties) Real Heroes Award in the Animal Category.
Supporting caregivers in offering healthy, home-prepared meals and, when possible, a vegan diet, to companion animals is a natural melding of Jan’s work as a healer and as an advocate for animals of all species. She finds great enjoyment in empowering humans to integrate their compassion into all aspects of their relationships with other animals—and in seeing the animals they care for thrive as a result. Her commitment to enhancing awareness and relationship among all species is evident in her writing, including her book Listen to the Silence: Lessons from Trees and Other Masters and the extensive library of articles archived on her website, HolisticAHA.com.
12:00 – 12:50 pm
Hope Bohanec, The Humane Hoax:
Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs
Join author and activist Hope Bohanec as we dig into her new edited volume The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs. Hope will examine the new trend of humanewashing and greenwashing in animal product marketing. We now see labels like cage-free eggs, family-farmed dairy, and grass-fed meat— but is this trend really the answer to the plentiful problems of raising animals for food? What do the labels really mean? Is free-range better for the environment? Is organic more humane? This presentation offers answers to these critical questions
Hope Bohanec has been active in animal protection and environmental activism for over 30 years. She is the Executive Director of Compassionate Living and the host of the Hope for the Animals Podcast. Hope co-founded the Humane Hoax Project, the Ahimsa Living Project and has organized hundreds of online and in-person events including the Humane Hoax Online Conference, the Humane Hoax Chicken Webinar, and the Sonoma County VegFest.
Hope has also published two books on the subject of humanewashing and greenwashing: The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat? and The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs. Over the last three decades, she has worked for the national non-profits United Poultry Concerns and In Defense of Animals as well as contributed chapters to two anthologies.
1:00 – 1:50 pm
Eating Our Way to Extinction: Film Segments with Live Interactive Discussion and Q&A
What we choose to eat and how our food is produced exacts an enormous toll on our environment. Narrated by Kate Winslett, this award-winning documentary uncovers the hard truths—and the staggering scale of the issues—by taking audiences on a cinematic journey around the world, telling the story through shocking testimonials from indigenous peoples together with insights from leading scientists and globally-renowned figures. Informative, confronting and entertaining, this documentary allows audiences to question their everyday choices, industry leaders and governments.
For this screening, film representatives Markus Levy and Jan Liband will be showing segments of the film accompanied by live discussion and Q&A with the audience.
Markus Levy has been a dedicated environmental and animal activist for the past 6 years. He is currently the Head of Educational Outreach for the award-winning documentary “Eating Our Way to Extinction.” Markus is also a regular volunteer for All Souls Animal Rescue, helping to care for horses, donkeys, pigs, goats, and chickens on this animal sanctuary located in Cool, California. Markus was a volunteer firefighter for 13 years and was a Silicon Valley executive.
Jan Liband is a Bay Area native, former Silicon Valley executive, activist and public speaker who has been a passionate environmental and plant-based advocate since the 1980s. After learning how our industrial food systems are neither sustainable nor healthy, Mr. Liband made big changes in his personal life and committed himself to researching and advocating solutions to critical global issues. Mr. Liband also holds a degree in Psychology from U.C. Santa Cruz.
2:00 – 2:50 pm
Dr. Jeff Pierce
Eating Whole-Food Plant Based: How To Prevent, Treat, and Sometimes Reverse Chronic Illness
In this presentation, Dr. Pierce will cover the many health benefits of eating a whole food plant-based diet and touch on the pillars of the exciting new field of Lifestyle Medicine. The talk will cover both the science and some of the practical steps you can take in order to start to see some real benefits. There will be time at the end for Q&A, so bring all your burning questions.
Dr. Jeff Pierce is dual board-certified in family medicine and lifestyle medicine. After his undergraduate studies at The University of Texas-Pan American, he attended medical school at Baylor College of Medicine. He did his residency at the Santa Rosa Family Medicine and later completed a fellowship in global health leadership at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital.
He has taught resident physicians and cared for patients in northern California and has worked extensively around the globe, particularly in Latin America and Africa. He is a volunteer assistant clinical professor at the University of California-San Francisco, and he continues to practice and teach high-risk and surgical obstetrics, mentor outstanding family medicine residents in global health, and teach point-of-care ultrasound through the Global Ultrasound Institute.
He is passionate about using a whole-food, plant-based diet and other lifestyle medicine modalities to help people get healthier, get off of medications, and live longer, fuller lives. He is a big fan of the big three wins that come with plant-based eating: good for the individual, good for the animals, and good for the planet. He sees patients locally in a mobile practice (jeffpiercemd.com), as well as alongside the stellar docs at Love.Life Telehealth. When not working, he can be found in his garden growing a lot of his family’s food which he posts on his Instagram account: @drjeffpierce.
