Petition for Individuals to Eat Locally-Sourced Food Spreads Nationwide

This July 4, celebrate the bounty of your local community by declaring your food independence and eating a locally-sourced holiday meal.

That's the vision of a grassroots group of individuals, passionate about the healthful and economic benefits of local food, who have created Food Independence Day, encouraging people to source local and sustainably-produced ingredients for their meals.

To date, more than 5,000 individuals have visited the Food Independence Day Facebook page and/or www.FoodIndependenceDay.org and pledged to eat a meal made with local food on July 4.

Once on the www.FoodIndependenceDay.org site, some participants are also sharing details, photos, menus and locations of their own locally-sourced 4th of July meals.

Organizers of Food Independence Day are Kitchen Gardeners International, with support from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Food and Society Fellows Program. The initiative follows Kitchen Gardeners International's campaign, Eat the View: Replant a White House Victory Garden, which earlier this year garnered more than 100,000 signatures to
successfully petition the Obama administration to plant a garden on the White House South Lawn.

Food Independence Day brings the spirit of the White House garden effort to a state by state, and even house by house level, said Roger Doiron, founder of the nonprofit Kitchen Gardeners International and current Fellow with the IATP Food and Society Fellows Program. We hope to foster enough interest and momentum that our 50 governors and their families will take note and enjoy their July 4 celebrations by feasting on local
produce, meats, beverages and desserts from their own states or as nearby as possible. In doing so, we hope they set an example for and encourage their constituents to do the same.

Contact:
Roger Doiron
roger@kitchengardeners.org
207-883-5341
or
Lindsey Frey
lindsey@modernstorytellers.com
612-372-6449