and many of these one in six could not afford to buy produce dairy or protein. ... how are we going to feed 489 million americans on an

ongoing base dis-- 49. we give them affordable nutrition, the food bill on down is designed around cheap calories and expensive nutrients. high-fructose corn syrup and everything else. it is tough to find ways to have a sustainable system designed around affordable nutrition. so it was designed about the idea we can help try to recover some of this wasted food. by the way sasha and emily heard me say this before, i actually think we would all do ourselves a favor anyone in this fight, never using the word food waste again. because food waste is, food is modifier of what type of waste is it. this is something sanitation departments are designed to handle. they do a good job of it. no one in america want as second helping of food waste, no one. if you take the two words and flip them, nobody in america

thinks it is a good idea to waste food. this is excess. lettuce the wrong size. food that is at its sell-by date but has another two weeks or week or more. honey, et cetera that are at its sell buy in display codes. we're talking about healthy excess food. this is lot of what the issue is b daily table is what we bring down to retail store and offer pennies on the dollar. the reason we're selling it is it twofold. first and primary customers, told us we want to shop. we want to buy things of the we don't want a handout. if give us stuff we're embarrassed to walk in the store. if you sell something i don't care how cheap. bundles of kale for 10 cents. quarts of soup for 99 cents, chicken soup. it is okay. we're buying. it is a treasure hunt. we want to do that. that is one. second of course cornell did a bunch of research if you get someone to choose something they

will use it. school cafeterias put apple on kid's tray, goes right in the trash. get the kids to pick the apple high percentage of usage. the idea, at retail can we nudge them towards through demoing, sampling through information try things to eat a diet that is moving them towards a healthier outcome. the third of course is provides this issue right here, question of no time. economically-challenged is not be, when you're poor, you're not just poor economically. you're short of time. all of america suffers with a shortage of time. i mean virtually, more meals are eaten outside of the house now than they're eaten in. as you move down the economic pyramid it is tougher and tougher and tougher. the focus groups i have done in the inner cities and many 30 meetings between churches and neighborhood meetings, et cetera this issue comes up over and over again. we don't have time.

yeah you will sell it, wonderful produce and things, but we're getting off a bus at 6:00 6:30 at night we're tired. kids are hungry. i can't buy a whole bunch of stuff and cook. i'm expected to walk through the front door with dinner ready. change model of daily table basically a grocery store competing with fast-food and competing with grab and go meals. come in. wee cook stuff up. we cook it up, have it ready to come in, grab go for meals take home and eat. can't eat there. the reason is simple. want to eat with your family and eat at home. there is a lot of research for reduced drug use and gang participation with families that eat together. this one is 75%. that is the number kenny school did my fellowship. that is the percentage of the executive director's time maybe not sasha executive director's time spent in fund raising in america.

because if you're a non-profit fund-raising is the air you breathe. and to me i didn't want to build a model that had to have so much energy and time raising funds for a mission. no matter how pure that mission was. i would say in all honesty there is not food recovery or hunger relief agency that i know of that doesn't have a phenomenal mission. the challenge for each of them is funding. the idea for daily table first of all, if i can find some way which we can get revenue by delivery mission, instead of for delivery mission in some degree i'm not competing with the dollars out there. those that are out there don't look at me as competing and taking money out of the charitable pool already out there but just as importantly it allows me to try to do scalable work. so daily table did a partnership with cogman. it opens april 14th.

on four corners where they meet in that area of dorchester. it will have a teaching kitchen. it will have retail floor. a lot of kitchen space where we prep and do stuff. and, then, this is where we have children after school. there is a picture by the way this isn't daily table. i wish it were. i hope it will be. we have already a number of schools lined up and signed up for bringing kids after school for programs. they're free to learn about nutrition. to learn about education. to feed them at the same time. so last photo for me, i think all of us were gathered here the really big picture to me is that we owe it to the, food is a precious resource. whether you look at it from the environmental standpoint, you know and what happens with wasted food and greenhouse gas and water we're wasting or stuff, or look at it from the human side, we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our

kids owe it to our grandkids to make certain we're utilizing precious resource in such a way everyone, everyone, every kid in america ought to get an opportunity to be their best, neurologically develop and have access to affordable nutrition. [applause] >> not as good as you. all right. well i'm really excited. i'm always excited to be with such inspirational people on a panel out there every day pounding the pavement, getting amazing high-quality food and making sure it gets to people in need. and the role that we play in the space is really trying to figure out what are the laws of policies that make this hard. this is important, you know where we're getting food from

farms and farmers' markets to people in need in many different ways. some for free. some purchasing it in a setting that provides them with dignity but there are a lot of laws that get in the way. i will skip this. reducing work and food waste and improving options for food recovery is one of our key areas just to start here, a lot of people think what is the role of law in this space? actually there is a lot of impact our laws and legal system have on attempts to both reduce food waste and particularly to improve options for food recovery and get food to people in need and part of this is sort of across all of our food system. we've been doing business as usual for so long. we've been treating our food as this cheap thing as doug talked about. our food today in america costs less than it has ever cost in

any country at anytime and because it is so cheap we throw it away. we don't treat it well. we don't think about the people that don't have it. we don't make freight decisions. this is one area of that context i think our legal system has developed, forcing people to make better choices and in fact not allowing people like doug and like sasha and others to have creative ideas to use those creative ideas. current laws restrict opportunities to innovate. i will talk about a few examples of these exact policies. this is something we've been working on. how can we encourage more dougs and more sashas to be out there to be innovative and make that possible. to say it is great when food makes its way to food banks. there is still a lot of feed getting lost around the edges and wasted not used in ways that are sustainable. our laws fail to incentivize the reduction in food waste. we don't have, there are some

incentives which i talk about. we don't give people, say to people if you reduce your food waste, if you get it to people in need, go the extra mile or spend the extra, little bit of time to make sure that that food gets to the right place or get someone to your farm to glean it we're not giving people enough rewards to do it. we're not making it possible or easy. our laws fail to incentivize people for making unhealthy choice. crazy maybe to hold people liable for wasting food're throwing away a valuable resource we spend a lot of oil and fertilizer around pesticide to create and we throw it away if it is nothing. laws could help to scale up some of these successful experiments. if we find things that really work if sasha's method of getting food from these different places really works we can create a policy system that makes that possible.

i want to talk about a few examples of things we're working on in the space, hopefully to give you as people in this topic you could be advocating for things that would make this more possible. i would like to start with this picture upside down pyramid which is created by the epa the environmental protection agency, and it is meant to if i have us a sense of how best to use our food resources. i think it is really important, everyone knows landfills are at the bottom right? that is the worst place for food to go. i think actually as we're thinking about how we put in place policies or organizations that try to address and reduce food waste we stay at these top levels. i think both people mentioned this we don't want more food waste, even if it is really great food, the food that sasha is picking up from harvard or the lettuce that dug mentioned, the too short lettuce from the field. we don't want more. first thing we should do is reduce at the very top and realize this is valuable

resource. we want to be more thoughtful how much we're producing and making sure there is not extra of that. if we're not doing that we want to feed hungry people. there are some people in need. this really matters. this is really important. then beyond that, feeding animals and so on. i think that a lot of the laws we have in place right now aren't thinking about this they're not remembering that we want to start at the top of the pyramid to work our way down. i want to start on work with date labels which doug mentioned. we got started in this work in the first place after i met doug and hearing about the work he was trying to do at daily table. he said, we want to be able to use food close to or at its date but laws won't let us do this we said, why would the laws not allow that? what do those dates what is going on with the dates? what do they actually mean? we embarked on several years of research that brought to us this report and i will tell you a little bit about what we found.

basically every group that had been looking at date labels as a driver of food waste saids date labels are causing a lot of waste. people should understand what they mean and how we can make them bert. this is challenge we took on. this is good challenge for a legal clinic because it is looking at laws. let me tell you about our findings. the first one is the probably the most surprising to people is that date labels are really undefined in law and they're just a suggestion by manufacturers of when a food is at its peak quality. for those of us who might have thrown food away, i won't make you raise your hands. i imagine most hands would go up. if you ever thrown food away because you nhought or someone you were feeding it to would get sick after that date. that is absolutely wrong. those dates have nothing to do with food safety. there is no safety tests done on the foods. if companies do any testing at all, it is just taste testing. so the have people eat them one day, two days, three days, so

on. they will find the date where most people start to say it didn't taste as good. it tasted yesterday. to be overly protective they will set the date even a few days before that to make up for shipping, storage conditions et cetera. that is if they do anything. some companies don't really do testing. they pick a date and put them on there. there is really no law behind that. no one enforcing or telling companies about that date or not. funny at a company for food justice there is frame put on our food we're following like lemmings and throwing our food away on that date over and over again rather than thinking about it saying that date passed because tasted totally fine. for shelf stable foods like honey doug mentioned. you can eat them forever, vinegar, bottled water. nothing happens to them. bottled water will always be water. no change within the water.

no federal standard for expiration dates. that sort of ties into that first point about dates not being defined in law. that's what we mean by this. there is really no federal law that defines them or requires them or requires them to be created in certain way. in fact the food and drug administration has chosen not to regulate dates because they said, these don't have to do with . as consumers got further and further away from the farm, consumers said we want the dates on our food.

we should know when we eat it. we want this indicator. states, took up that charge. they put together all these regulations. what is most interesting about this is that the state regulations are totally different from one another in terms of what they require. then the second map shows then there is 20 states including massachusetts which actually restricts the sale or donation of those food after the date. let's think about that for a moment. we just said these dates have nothing to do with safety. >> i think the posts are behind it. >> oh. someone is very angry about this. i'm also angry. okay. so we just said these dates have nothing to do with safety. but then you have states like massachusetts saying we're going to require dates on all foods that are perishable or semiperishable. any food that would go bad within the 0 days is required to have a date. other foods can have dates if they want to and then we'll make it really difficult for to you sell the food or do anything with the food after that date.

so the bulk of that food winds up straight in the trash because there is nowhere else to go. it is helpful to think about what differences are. milk tells you how crazy the system is. so some states require that milk has a date label, a certain number of days after the date of pasturization. in pennsylvania that is 17 days. in montana it is 12 days. 12 days after pasturization there is, not a different climate between the two them. there is no reason for that to be. it points to how absurd this is that these dates aren't really linked to science. they're not really linked to safety. as one example i said already, massachusetts has some of the restrictive requirements for dates. by contrast, state of new york, which has new york city which is big city, doesn't require date on any food. new york city used to require date labels on milk. got rid of it in 2010.

this doesn't make anyone safer. our state doesn't have any requirements. they eliminated it. this is very important to keep in mind. sometimes i get into this place, obviously the foods that have expiration dates on them often are packaged foods and processed foods but they're also foods we put the most energy into creating. we took them from the farm. we transported them somewhere. we process them. we put them into something. we put them in package. we spent refrigeration energy to hold them in a store. we'll throw them away because of these dates that are unclear. this is just, to give evidence, this is actually a study from industry that shows, no matter what the label is on the date, whether it is used by, sell by, best by expires on, enjoy before which is one that doug and i have had laughs over before people throw those food away. 90% of the consumers say i throw food away at least sometimes on the date just because i'm afraid of safety. this is really impacting the way

that consumers are using that food. this really gets to why where law and policy comes into this. so we said the federal government does not regulate states due but not based on science. even in the states that require dates they don't require the label be something specific. they don't require any method of setting dates. they just say we want all food to bear dates on them. what you wind up with very confused consumers. not just primary consumers but food recovery organization and don't know what to do with the food. restricted from giving it away or don't want to give it away because they want to make sure people are safe. we're pushing for consumer safety label that would make sense that would be standardized would help people understand this so to avoid the amount of food we're wasting. in preliminary focus groups we conducted with a colleague at johns hopkins we found the term freshest before made the most sense to people. think about it.

used by, what will happen if i doen't use it by that date? so some of these other dates people get really confused. freshest before made sense to people this was about quality. but after that date, it still tasted fine and smelled fine you could eat it and you wouldn't get sick. it was just your choice. do you want to make a commitment not to waste food or use it after that date. [. we think 1% of the food supply where there might be some risk, these are foods like deli meats that could be previously contaminated. because we don't cook them they actually could increase the amount of listeria contamination if they were previously contaminated this is very small group. we're not telling anyone about those risks either. let's make that really clear. the system we have isn't really serving anybody. so those could have separate label. there is very small list of

those. fda knows what the foods are. tell people what the foods are. allow sale and donation of food after this date. once we put a label on it that makes sense. once we educate people we don't have to worry as much. don't need to have all the people concerned and throwing that food away. that is one big one. i want to talk about one other. these are two other areas where the law is really important. i want to talk about one sort of something that i think ties into our discussion and is really timely right now. so, going back to this hierarchy. i think expiration dates impact source production because it means we're throwing away less food out of the food supply before it gets to people or before it gets to people's homes but impacts getting people in need and feeding hungry people. another way the law impacts our opportunity to feed hungry people in terms of protection for food donors and incentives for food donors. this is a new area we've been working on. we talk a lot about this, how

many people are in need but if we redistributed just 30% of the food we lose in the u.s. along the food chain, that could feed all of the food insecure americans. every single meal that they needed. so as i think doug talked about, people they're eating something. they're just not getting enough but we could feed them their entire food supply just by redistributing 30% of the food that we're throwing away. yes, only 10% of the food is recovered in the u.s. and this is for a lot of reasons. it is because of liability concerns which i circled there. you know companies, they want to do their is about. they want to do business as usual. they do not want to give food to some with fear they will get sued. this is huge. we have really good protections in place. but we're not getting message out to people. we're not encouraging them enough. we're not making protections. that could be broader even more. that is one thing we're working on. the other big issue is cost. this came up a little bit.

say a farmer is on the last field of beans as sasha talked about. it doesn't make sense for them costwise to pick the beans to get them to market. so we need to give them an incentive to help cover those costs. this is an area we've worked on around tax incentives. at the federal level there actually is a tax incentive that would pay a food donor for donating that food. the problem is this incentive right now is limited to only the biggest corporations. for many years it was expanded open to anyone. farmers who are not generally big corporations small mom-and-pop stores restaurants were able to get this incentive. that has expired. there is an attempt right now to get that incentive back out there. i think, it comes up a lot. i think about it a lot in the context of farmers because farmers often especially small farmers working at such low profit margins any extra money they could get to support the

extra field of beans that got to people in need will help them growing beans and things to get to people. it is fresh food and healthy food. it is getting wasted in the field as we heard which are not good reasons. they're not linked to expiration date or being on a shelf for a while. really it is just economics of getting to people in need that. is one issue only c corporations are eligible for this tax deduction. the other big issue, this goes back to the point doug made making some of these food recovery efforts sustainable. a lot of people have good ideas how they can get a revenue stream. there are people who want to pay, willing to pay some amount of money for these foods or a way to process them into something people would buy. right now the tax incentive goes away if any money changes hands. this is old-fashioned way of looking at food waste and food recovery thinking everything has to go through a big food bank to

get to someone in need. in fact there are a lot of opportunities for innovation and new models we could be encouraging and allowing if we said we want to get the food to people in need and we'll really incentivize new people coming to the table. new business with farmers trying out new models. this is what we've been working on. several states have state level incentives. at federal level there is a lot we can do. the other area we'll not talk much about i'm happy to mention in people's questions, around liability protections. the real issue we have great ones in federal and state law yet every single corporation is not donating food said because of their liability concerns. we have awareness problem. we have an education problem. not only can they donate the food we as consumers don't want to shop at companies throwing away all their food, instead of reducing from the source or getting it to people in need. i think there is a lot we can do there. this is new work for us.

we're working better to understand the barriers. to increase awareness of laws and protections like those liability protections. to align the policies so that we can try to figure out how to get to ate per future where we're not wasting 33 to 40% of the food we produce in the u.s. so with that, i'm excited to have a conversation and to hear your questions. [applause] >> thank you everyone. we'll open it up to question. we'll use the mic they used in the keynote of the as people are getting up. i will ask the first question. you can walk slowly to the microphone. so in a very timely way molly anderson, our keynote speaker said something to the effect of, and i'm paraphrasing, poor people don't want your food waste. and it was very timely because this was actually my first question anyway but she really gave us a sound bite for it,

there is this pushback about if the recovering food that wealthy people quote, waste to distribute to low-income communities, is that insulting to communities? i would love to hear feedback on that statement from our presenters. >> sure. so i'll start. food for free was really fascinating when i joined. i joined just over 2 1/2 years ago. we've been around 34 years. i came to learn that a large part of our staff over time, even currently, are recipients of the emergency food system. we have this tremendous volunteer base that rides trucks and helps our drivers that basically i guess another form of dignity. they want to work all day to sort of take that food home. food for free wasn't, it is not wealthy people giving anybody their food waste. it is people in the community saying hey, look at this insane thing that's going on.

why is that stuff going in the trash when our community could use it? and they are stepping up and collecting that food and eating that food and sharing that food with others in the community helping to make sure those who need it get it. i think food for free anyway. more successfully -- certainly in the case of food for free, there is nothing about out siders giving poor people food waste. it is people in community making a sensible decision saying hey look at that, i'm going to get it. i will use it if i need it. i will share it with my neighbors. the stores similarly. my husband wasn't rich. still isn't. farmers are not rich. the folks at whole foods giving us that food are not rich. this is a community of people working together to solve a problem and at least in my experience at food for free from what i understand for the last 30 plus years it has been

a real community-building event. this issue just hasn't come up which is great to see. >> so i have a slightly different take. not one contrary but shall we say adding a different perhaps element which is in my work going down into dorchester and talking about early work in the bronx, new york, that first of all, i absolutely resonate with the statement. i think it is fair to say, if you go out and ask poor people do you want some food waste? the answer is no. it is in the framing. if you ask people, you know, hey, you know what? we'll get some stuff out of the trash. would you like it? the answer is no, of course not. if you are going to say, listen, there is some perfectly healthy good food here that is, you know going to go to waste that was mangoes almost ripe, would

you like a mango that is almost ripe? yeah i would like a mango that is almost ripe. et cetera. it is about framing we second class citizens are we getting something less than what other people get? because we feel we don't want to get and be treated like second class citizens. issue of dignity. issue of feeling we have a right for something more than that. which is why in daily table i happen to think, of course i do, right? maslow said if you're a hammer all the world is a nail. so i grew up in retail. spent 35 years basically in retail. retail is the solution for everything right? and one of the things about retail that i do like is that when i'm down there can you talk about affordable nutrition? you talk about, we understand we're having a hard time struggling. get into real conversation with groups often twice this size down in the community. they will start to ask you some really pointed, really tough

questions because they're struggling. and it is like, yaw he talk about this stuff. what is affordable to you might not be affordable to me. who defines affordable. here is the nice thing about retail. if i'm selling you something you define if it is affordable. if imgiving you a box handing you stuff you didn't chooses it. you choose what you want. you choose what it is healthy or tastety, first and foremost. is it convenient? was it easy to use? was it prized right? does it seem safe and first rate? does it look nice? we don't want a store that looks like an outlet second rate. we're against that. we want a first-rate looking store. we want to spend money making sure daily take, spend as little as money as possible, looks first rate. doesn't look like it's a salvage operation. not what they want, very, very clear. there is some truth in the fact

that yes, if you simply frame it up like heard the story how many people are never fav obamacare? as soon as you call it that, percentage in favor -- how many people like the affordable care act? oh yeah, affordable care act, i'm in favor of that. there is a lot do poor people want food waste? do you want -- no. do they want to have access to affordable nutrition? absolutely. do they want, do they think food is a resource that shouldn't be wasted? absolutely. so i think a lot is how we frame it, how we present it. then it is truly as sasha said, it is about the community recognizing it is a story of us, not a story of them. clearly to the degree that i perceived as someone from the outside coming in to solve a problem it is not embraced. to the degree we're hiring and we're creating a community from within the community that is solving a problem together then it is embraced.

>> i want to give two answers to that zooming out from our discussion, talking about this food that is getting wasted. who is impacted by the cultural system. by externality pest is a side runoff fertilizer runoff, climb at change? people who are poor. people who are in less well-resourced communities. so the extent we're not eating 40% of our food. i think the food justice component starts all the way back there. before the food finds a home at the end. the more we can make that, tighten that system up and make sure after we spend all these resources to grow that food someone will get to eat it. that is so important.

looking at some of the things we talked about, food in america is cheap but there is still a cost to all the food we throw away at the retail level in particular. if stores know certain amount of food will always get wasted because as sasha says at the end of the night the grocery store feels like they need piles of lettuce, apples and whatknot no there are certain amount of food thrown away they have to build in a certain model to account for that. if there are ways food doesn't get wasted, no matter who ends up with the food, we're benefiting everyone by making sure the system is not having externalities, that food costs right amount it is supposed to cost. i think what is nice having worked with doug so many people want to shop at the daily table. it is good for the community it wants to serve but many people

say i want to buy the food because i want a better, more sustainable food system. it is not food that not everyone wants. it is important to get it to the people in need of it. but the fact of food we're talking about many people are interested in buying it, eating it. more we put in place where all people are able to access that, to show this is good healthy food everyone wants i think is really important. >> doug, this is the question for you daily table sounds like a fantastic idea and i'm just curious of actually a couple of things. one is, what percent of your costs do you anticipate covering by the retail revenue in the first year or first few years? or how will your revenue model work? and also since seems like a it is a mission-driven organization. are you planning to hold the organization accountable for specific health outcomes for the population you're serving?

just beyond like the pound served or people that come through. >> two great questions. harvard i learned about theory of change and logic change all that stuff. first and foremost, certainly few companies certainly not the size of sasha or daily table can afford to do the thorough social impact sort of stuff. that is extremely difficult. even outcomes are tough. when you're talking about one factor on an ocean of factors. so daily table, yeah we eat some meals. if we're able to get customers to regularly eat dinner. eat lunch somewhere else or something else for breakfast we're nudging them and helping them but it is extremely difficult. here is the real fundamental thing, in the focus groups we did we were told in no uncertain things two things. one, the question is, who can shop here? and, you know, so the question was who do you think should shop

here? how would you like it? if it is only store for the poor i'm not coming. i don't want to be seen walking in there by neighbors, oh you're poor. if everybody can't get to shop there you will not get target audience. we're not going to come. second thing was interestingly enough, that our model was really designed around, as i said, trying to be a trojan horse for health outcomes. as retail. to meet them where they needed to be met. and that, they did not want, they said, i don't want this to be like a program store. if i come in, i originally thinking on saturdays we'll have someone from square health center to measure bmi and give them cholesterol and maybe if you're prediabetic, head clinic store. we're your partner and it was like no way.

if you do that i'm not coming you know? i don't want to be reminded of my problems when i walk in here. don't talk to plea about illness and morbidity issues and obesity and. that the food killing me what i'm eating. if you do that i'm not coming, negative negative, negative. instead talk to me about, my kids will do their best, feel their best. so i come up with these two lame kind of marketing things in my mind. don't know if we use them. we create food to die for, not die from. the other is, we're trying to create food that moves you forward doesn't hold you back. and it is way too much they said. don't talk to us about nutritious. that is the n word. honestly said don't us the "n" word. i was like, did someone use the "n" word? not that nutritious thing. that turns us off. it is really interesting. it was such a learning for me,

how sensitive what the sensitivities were. in this particular population. i'm not saying that is everybody. in this community in dorchester where we're going in, that community had real sensitivity, we one want everyone to shop there. two, we don't want to feel part of your program. turns out in order to get 501(c)(3) from irs it is membership store. if you're not in zips that are economically challenged you can't shop with us. but anyone this those zips, those zips include ash month hill, which has million dollar homes. there are plenty of people economically middle class or higher but the majority of the population by far is our target audience. and because we're going to have free membership, we're going to be able to track. it is kind of a back doorway. it wasn't what we intended. that is how we provide a service

to the community. give us a zip code you live or work in, and a phone number to tie that too. you don't need membership card. actually we'll know how many times you come what you buy. we'll be able to come back to follow that up with harvard school public health, about ways in which they can take that data and come back it did these outcomes. economically ideally we'll be break even. it is a non-profit. our intention and mission is not to make money. our intention and mission is to deliver affordable nutrition even if we have to go out to fund raise. i hope we don't have to do much fund raise except for the initial brick-and-mortar to get the store out. i hope we are able to recover cost closes to what we are. we want to pay people well. have them have benefits. we're paying at or better than competitive in the marketplace. you can get a job at kfc across the street from us or daily

table. we want to pay better than kfc with better benefits and you have a mission you're proud of. that is the target. it is idealistic. we're perfect right now because we haven't opened yet. when we're open and rubber hits the road it will be interesting to see if it works. >> awesome thanks. >> my question is for emily but i wanted to mention very briefly, i moved to london couple years ago. i remember first time i went to the market. i was looking for the eggs. i was looking in the refrigerator section. i couldn't find them. i said where are the eggs. they're over there with the baking supplies on the shelf. just blew my mind because, for me eggs are refrigerated and that is required otherwise they will go bad. over there they don't refrigerate their eggs. my questions when you have findings about the date, the meanings behind the dates and misunderstanding people have about them have there been any

consumer education campaign about it? is anyone working to spread the news about that? is there anything we can do to help i guess? >> that that is a great question thank you. what was so interesting, our report when we came out coming from, we're out of law school. we're very focused on law and policy we wrote this great report that went through all the things. here is the policy change. and it got a lot of press. there was a lot of news coverage. it was really great. all of the news coverage really about the consumer, hey moms at home here is how you can waste less food. that is very, very important. i'm glad it got the press it did. i'm glad it got the message out. the problem with unone time thing with message getting out, it doesn't change things over time. not like every year we can have more news reminding people about that. one of the biggest challenges with our current, with our current lack of a date label

system, i won't even call it a system because it is not well-thought out. it is impossible to do consumer awareness and education. they may or may not mean different things and may be different in different states. there is no education we can put out a message on a federal level. that is one of the ben if we change the policy to have one standard label. we can say to everyone, americans here is this label here is what it means. if you see this other label on the small, as i mentioned that small class of food it might be safety, this is what this means. this is what you should do. you can see, when usda or, i think usda is probably the best guidance on date labels. basically they say, if your food expires on this date, if you're keeping it if it is refrigerated food and it is refrigerated it still should be good. that is meant to help people. it is hard to do consumer awareness. that said we're working on

legislation. we were approached by some congressman and representatives saying what can we do? we want to change this. we're working on that. to reframe the message to make it about policy. this is a place where it is a win-win, win for everyone if we change this. we're working on a small film which we're cited to be doing this like pin eighted documentary and talk about this be opinionated documentary to get this out. that will hopefully come out this year to get policy changes in legislative level. >> educated an informed, not opinionated? >> educated and informed and opinionated as well. >> fair and balanced. >> yes. as we do this, they will need everyone in the room, your friends and families, everyone that cares we'll need a push to say, this doesn't make sense. we in the u.s. are so far behind other countries looking at food

waste. we're doing very little compared to, you mentioned london. the u.k. has done so much the they have campaigns and tracking data. we have a national mission to avoid this france also has a national mission to avoid food waste. in the u.s. we don't have a national mission to do much with regard to food. certainly not to avoid food waste and we think we should. >> i have to speak to the egg thing. i recently looked into that. so people do no, in this country it is how the eggs are prepped. here we do washing of eggs which makes them more susceptible they are refrigerated here, you can get farm fresh eggs can leave them on the counter forever. this is not about the processing. i discovered that. i never understood it myself. >> for first twelve years at trader joe's they were unrefrigerated. and they were not refrigerated. what happened somewhere in america salmonella issue with someone that had issue with eggs with salmonella. suddenly everyone refrigerated their eggs.

you would be terrified to buy an egg in america that wasn't refrigerated. >> it was a great panel. i want to thank all of you for the work you're doing. it is really important. so emily when you're talking about legal barriers to sharing food and nutrition, i was thinking about breast feeding which is an area that i do some writing on, call it first food justice, right? one of the problems is when women have trouble breast feeding, it is not easy to access excess breast milk from other women because there is a huge regulation system in place where incredibly expensive. so it is also elitist as well as inaccessible for almost everybody. i was wondering if that anything anyone approach you about or your clinic talked about doing? >> that is a great question. we actually have, this has not been something present in our work although, we as component of our clinic we have a fellow

in the mississippi delta, i mentioned earlier today in my welcome that is where i got started doing food related work. our fellow there has been working a lot on breast feeding policy because it is so important particularly in low-income communities. it is free food that can get to kids that is so important and nutritious. in the same communities they're often the communities that get the least resources and knowledge and advice about breast feeding. on this topic, not something that i know that much b. you're right, talking about food all across the food chain and for all kind of ages but something worth looking at. >> we should talk more. >> thank you. >> thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. i am erin shults i'm a student at business school. you can tackle about some of the tension non-profit models doing

this and fund-raising dollars versus for-profit models of being able to, capture more food waste on the non-profit side or for-profit side and think there is potential doing in the market? >> i'll start and sasha can finish that. so daily table is nonprofit because i thought non-profits are better or more pure or they are are just and for-profit companies are unjust. it was because of the section 170 enhanced deduction, if we weren't a non-profit, then those who are going to give fused couldn't take advantage of that enhanced tax deduction. it was also some feeling that in the community, for coming down a non-profit would be easier, embraced with the idea we're not trying to make money off of

them selling food. at the time i thought i would have to push hard on expired food. turns out vast majority with sale, almost all of it will be in code because of cooking up, or preparing. 75% of all sales will 14 days or so cooking up fresh in the spot i know the people that started b-lab really well. the b corps, the social contract that a number of states have different once, there are 31 or 35 states allow for a corporation, a for-profit corporation to have a social benefit charter that says that investors can get a return on their money but that return is then either tied to a certain set percentage or based upon the social benefit almost like social contract bonds. you probably heard of those also? i think started in england but

there are some here now. there is a lot of different ways we can hybrid. to some degree panera for instance, ron sheikh who i got a chance to know, in my work at conscious capitalism, panera cares, walk in pay what you want. they're in areas on edge of tough part of town. he is not in the heart of tough part of an town. frankly wouldn't work there. he puts them on 20% of the shoppers come in pay more. 60% pay whatever you ask and 20% pay nothing. and so that model works well to be a break even. it is kind of a hybrid which is non-profit within panera panera care is a non-profit. whether you're b corp profit non-profit, what it is really about, are you efficient, are you effective, are you utlizing are you meeting customers needs? it is all market based sort of

stuff. at end of day funders run, they get fatigued. just as investors do. if you have a for-profit that has to keep coming back to the well because you're not getting traction with a customer and giving service they want, investors also get fatigued and go we're done giving money. funders the same way. if it looks like you're not making significant contribution to the challenges funding. each of the models can be great. depends how you approach it. what your purpose is and the design and intent is. >> i definitely if you're serving food for free for example, or the people doug are serving poor people, if you're serving a population that doesn't necessarily have money to make that profit for you you're taking some risk if you're setting yourself up to have that tension that i need

to make a profit to stay in business. i have to, if the people that are paying me are folks without money, it's a challenge. not to say it can't be done. i agree with doug, whether you're not-for-profit or a b corp or corporation isn't necessarily the point. it is a question of where is the funding coming from? one of the things i think, longer term could potentially happen with the help of laws or incentives if you look at retail stores, supermarkets that we go to, they get a significant tax deduction for giving us the food that they give us. they also stopped paying significant waste hauling costs and composting costs. my opinion, running a non-profit that is picking all that food up is that, there is some money right there, okay? all of that benefit financially is going back to the retail

store. not covering any costs to getting that food back into the community. i don't blame the retail stores as it is. that is how it is set up. they are driven by profit and shareholders. there is plenty of room to get creative how we as community and nation address food waste as natural challenge. oh these poor people need food. the issue is that food waste affects everybody. it is environmental and everything else. that is where you could deal with the funding, whether to a not-for-profit or to a for-profit. >> i wanted to jump in too really quick on that point. it is not necessarily about structuring food recovery middleman, what sasha and doug do but on the retailer or

private actors themselves, massachusetts pass ad really interesting law that went into effect this fall which is a background of some of our work that they failed to mention, they now ban an institution from sending more than one ton of food waste or food a week to landfills. so this is an interesting regulation. there is a few other states that have ones like this. but the idea basically this is the responsibility of everyone. we're going to put some burden back on those private retailers or institutions to say you can't keep sending food to landfills. once it is in landfills, one of the biggest contributors to methane which is really bad greenhouse gas. for all the reasons we talked about, it shouldn't be in the landfill anyway. this is interesting law. we'll require businesses to change their habits so this doesn't happen. reducing amount of waste they have in the first place. getting it to people in need. one of the challenges i think a lot of it will end up in compost

which is great much better than a landfill. all of us here are obviously of the mind the more that can go to people the better. so this law doesn't actually have any incentive. they don't care where the food goes as long as it is not the landfill. maybe starting with this as baseline. there is real incentive not just with hauling fees to the landfill as sasha mentioned. but you will get fined if you have the waste. let's set up all the systems. make a better process to get to people that need it. >> i think we have time for one more. >> great. hi my name is andy. i'm serving as an a mayor core volunteer. americorps volunteer. mainly for doug and sasha, you're doing amazing work to make a more efficient food system. but nestly you will have food waste of your own and what do you directly do with it in your business? >> i will start.

because we're already doing something with it i'm sure. anyways. that is so, timely question. so we, actually used to, our building if you know central square, there is sit hall. there is house behind city hall, that is where we're housed. owned by cambridge economic opportunity committee and give us space there. we've been there as far as i know for 30 years. we used to have a big compost pile in the back, that we have a backyard. but there were rat issues among other things. so that went away. we tried all these different things. many of my drivers would go to whole foods down the street and put the compost there. you're talking about whole foods pull as bunch stuff from the shelves. they compost some of it. they give it all to us. we then sift, many so of it is not good enough to pass on. we get rid of it. pass it on to the food pantries and meal programs. there is another step there. we were trying to bring it down

to the whole foods composter. it was too much. shouldn't matter, it was their food to begin with but i understand. so the city of cambridge is starting to compost. they're starting a program where they're actually covering composting for us because we, we share the building with a food pantry which a lot of our food goes to. it is amazing, talking about redoings the waste. doesn't entirely reduce it, coming out of the food pantry and food for free, part of the compost never leaves my house. it is a lot. we are at least composting it. and think oh one other thing we do in the summer we go to the copy farmers' market, we bring a bunch to the big farmer there so he can take it back. in the end of the day organic waste at that point. it is food but not edible food. >> we thought a lot about this. one of the things we want to make sure to collect our food ourselves, end up tossing it,

end up being wasted. one of the keys is, emily talked about we have to change customers perceptions of what a store should look like an hour before they close. because in england, first time i went to marks and spencer i walked in 2 1/2 hours before they close, this is the mid '80s. the place look like it was going out of business. it was gutted. perishable sections, they were like, i thought they were doing a remodel. i even actually went up to someone, so, hey what is going on? he said what do you mean? it is like, cuban missile crisis? did i miss something. no no. come back tomorrow morning. it will be full. yeah but right now -- isn't great. we sold out? yeah that is great. but you're is missing sales. that sort of missing sales that is the that is retail facing. customer facing though is that,

such that, emily said, sasha said, if you're in there and you're not stocking the product at 8:30 at night i come back several times you don't have lettuce i'm going to your competitor. one thing we'll do, we have commitment among our team we'll produce only what we think we can sell and get rid of. we'll have dynamic pricing. because we are designed around affordable nutrition, we already done studies out, by the way fast-food isn't cheap? big breaking news to everybody. turns out when you study, what do you actually get at kfc and burger king? forget about the cost per nutrient, there is not a lot of nutrients but calorically what you pay? not that cheap. but, so our whole goal, our promise, we'll be less than that, but more importantly if we get out a batch of product and it is 3:00 in the afternoon we're not going to sell it, you know what? everyone comes in gets one free. pause because we need to get rid

of this. we want to get rid of this. we believe if someone comes home to try the product, it is delicious. like demo. buy this, get one free. we have too many of them. so i think that, we're committed to try to make certain that we have as little as possible. . . >> know right away that we get more

than we can use instead of going, oh, gosh we can't deal with someone else. no let's call somebody else that they can use this product. >> we've received -- >> you've received some stuff. >> yeah. >> so i think the more that we as organizations that are in this field stop siloing, working together to, you know ways that make sense, not being pollyannaish, just ways that make sense, i think we strengthen each other and i think actually the system itself works better. >> thank you very much. [applause] so right before you guys leave -- yes, thank you to our wonderful presenters. [laughter] >> thank you ooma. >> and a quick pause for boston area attendees in two weeks we are screening just edith and the producers are coming monday,

april 15th, 5-7 p.m. in the law school, and we're really excited to have them here. thank you. [applause] >> congress is on break this week and each night we're taking the opportunity here on c-span2 to show you booktv programs that are normally only seen on weekends. tonight authors on books about waging war. beginning at 8 eastern with diane preston who wrote "a higher form of killing: six weeks in world war i that changed forever the nature of warfare." at 9 p.m., andrew coburn, author of "kill chain." and at 10:05 p.m. eastern gabriela blum and benjamin wittes who wrote "the future of violence." the republican presidential race has another contender today. former new york governor george pataki announced his candidacy

this morning at an event in new hampshire. he's been out of public office since 2006, and he is the eighth republican to announce his candidacy. you can see his speech tonight beginning at eight eastern on our companion network, c-span. also coming up tonight during american history tv prime time on c-span3, it's the 150th anniversary of the civil war and a look at abraham lincoln's funeral, and that's at eight eastern on c-span3. >> this sunday night at eight eastern on "first ladies: influence and image," we'll look into the personal lives of three first ladies; sarah polk, margaret taylor and alabama bail fillmore -- abigail fillmore. sarah polk often helped her husband james make political decisions. zachary taylor enjoyed telling margaret she -- people margaret was

praying for other people to win. sarah polk, margaret taylor and abigail fillmore, this sunday night at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series, "first ladies: influence and image," examining the public and private lives of the women who fill the position of first lady and their influence on the presidency from martha washington to michelle obama sundays at 8 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3. and as a complement to the series c-span's new book "first ladies: presidential historians on the lives of 45 iconic american women." it's available as a hard cover or e-book through your favorite bookstore or online bookseller. >> nato secretary general jens stuttenberg was in washington d.c. this week and stopped by the center for strategic and international studies to talk about challenges facing the transatlantic alliance. he discussed russian aggression against ukraine and what he

calls russia's nuclear saber rattling. this forum begins with an introduction by csic ceo john hamre. it's about an hour. >> well, this is the quietest and most polite group we've ever had. [laughter] normally it's just rustling around in here, but great we're delighted to have all of you here. thank you for coming. my name is john hamre, i'm the resident norwegian, not to drop names or anything here. but i'm also the president of csis. and before we do public events we always start with a little safety announcement. i'm your responsible safety officer. so if anything happens today you're going to follow my directions. if i ask you to go out the exits here i'll ask you to leave. the stairwell is right in that corner. we'll go downstairs. if we head out the back we'll go over to national geographic, if we head out the front we're going to go out to that

beautiful park, and i'll arrange for food or entertainment. just follow me if we have to do anything we'll be fine. secretary general stuttenberg i've had a stance to see him from a distance for quite a few years. as i said, i wasn't kidding, i am the resident norwegian and i do have a very fond attachment to my old home country. and in that capacity, watched the secretary general when he did a marvelous job as prime minister in norway. and i would say he's the first prime minister i know of that started off as a statistician, you know, in the government -- [laughter] which tells you his attention to detail is impeccable, but his policy interest and scope is vast. and i think it's a combination of skills we most need now in nato. we're facing some very, very big challenges for nato in a way and i think all of us had hoped

that the cold war had ended and it had changed the trajectory of history. we're now back into a scratchy relationship, and we're grateful that someone of his talent and caliber is leading the way for all of us during these rather trying times. in our conversation i've -- we were just talking about all of the challenges that america faces today and we've got a lot of them around the world, but no place do we have the foundation of strength that we have in nato. and it's on that foundation that we're going to build a successful strategy going forward. so i would ask you with your applause to please welcome the secretary-general of nato, his excellency herr stuttenberg. [applause]

>> ladies and gentlemen, it's really a great honor and pleasure to be here and address this distinguished office and to be in this beautiful building. and you told me, john, when we were sitting in the room behind there that your family's from norway and that's great. but you told me more than that, you told me your family's from -- [inaudible] and that's as perhaps the two most beautiful places in norway at the west coast. the only problem is that when i was prime minister i was responsible for building a power line -- [laughter] and that was one of the big big conflicts i had during my time. so i've never been back since i -- [laughter] since i built the power line. but if you go together with me, i will dare go back. [laughter] and also know that you are very proud of your viking roots and there are many reasons to be proud of that.

and in addition to that, you have received the royal norwegian order of merit, and that is the highest honor my country can bestow on foreign citizens. and combined with the fact that you for many many years have worked so hard to develop can the bonds and the -- to develop the bonds and the cooperation between north america and europe the transatlantic bonds which are so vital for our security, i think the fact that you have these viking roots that you have the royal norwegian order of merit and your engagement there at the csis, all of that makes you the perfect host to a norwegian nato secretary-general and how we change the security environment

and what we as a transatlantic community need to do about it, about the changing security environment we are facing. so we are at the turning point for atlantic security. we face raising challenges. the very fabric of security order is at stake, and we must be prepared for the long haul. and that is why we need to adapt. to the south the challenges are complex and diverse. the arab spring has turned to brutal winter. failed and weak states are fueling regional instability and sectarian strife. isil and other extremist groups spread terror and intolerance and inspired attacks from paris to texas. and people move in large numbers, many to flee and others

to fight.ç nato is playing its part in addressing these challenges in the middle east and in north africa. and i am ready to set out what we are doing in great detail during our discussion. but let me in my opening remarks not address the challenges we see to the south, but focus on the challenges we are facing coming from the east. and then i promise to answer questions related to this afterwards. the challenges we see coming from the south are clear and they are coming from a resurgent russia. russia's illegal and illegitimate annexation of crimea and its continued destabilization of ukraine have brought armed conflict back to europe.

this conflict has already cost over 6,000 lives. there are continuous ceasefire violations and heavy fighting could flare up at any moment. that is why i fully support the efforts of the united states as well as germany and france to find a political solution to the crisis in ukraine. the path to peace is the full implementation of the minsk agreement, so i urge all parties to take that path. russia has a special responsibility. it supports the separatists in eastern ukraine with training, weapons and forces. and it maintains a large number of troops on ukraine's border. but we cannot look at russia's aggressive actions in ukraine in

isolation. they are part of a disturbing pattern of russian behavior that goes well beyond ukraine. and this undermines key principles of european security. respect for borders, the independence of states, transparency and predictability of military activities and a commitment to resolve differences through diplomacy, not force. first, let's look at respect for borders. the u.n. charter and the helsinki final act are clear. russia actually helped to draft these documents and sign them. but it has broken its commitments. crimea has been part of ukraine since the country became

independent. but russia sent in troops without insignia. organized so-called referendum which met no national standard and seized part of another country. president putin even admitted publicly that crimea's annexation had been planned in advance. after the russia/georgia war many 2008 russia recognized two georgian regions as independent states. it has taken almost full control over both and built fences between them and the rest of georgia. it has also sent troops into moldova, but moldova wants out and which russia pledged to withdraw in 1999. so russia has been violating the territorial integrity of its

neighbors for years and continues to do so. that brings me to my second principle the independence of states. ukraine's desire to move closer to the european union was met by force. so was georgia's aspirations -- as prayings to join nato -- aspiration to join nato. moldova has also received clear warnings about closer moves toward europe. russia's leaders claim that its neighborhood represents a zone of privileged interests. but its efforts to create the sphere of influence risk taking us back in time to when greater powers when great powers drew lines on the map at the expense of smaller states. and nations were not free to

decide their own destiny. this could create a sphere of instability for us all. and it's not the sort of europe we want -- we will accept 25 years after the end of the cold war. the third principle is transparency and predictability in military activities. for decades we built a stable european security system based on fewer forces, fewer weapons and fewer large exercises. and more information sharing and on arms control agreements to build trust and confidence across former dividing lines. these agreements reduced risk of conflict and miscalculation.

the conventional forces in europe treaty put limits on number of movement and movement of equipment like tanks and fighter planes. but russia unilaterally suspended implementation. the open skies treaty allows us to look at each other's territory from the air to increase transparency. but russia is obstructing these activities. the vienna document sets out rules for reporting large military exercises and allows for inspection. but russia has found ways around it to avoid notifying the largest military exercises in the post-cold war era. three of these snap exercises have included over 80,000 troops. moving great distances and at

great speeds. one such snap exercise in february of last year was used to deploy forces to annex crimea. others masked to support or separatists in eastern ukraine and led to the buildup of force toes on ukraine's border. -- forces on ukraine's border. as i speak russia is conducting yet another snap exercise with 250 aircraft and 700 pieces of heavy equipment. nato, on the other hand, strives to create transparency and predictability. our largest exercise many 20 years -- in 20 years will take place next fall in italy portugal and spain. it was announced one year ago it was not a snap exercise. national observers including

russia will have access to our exercise. and you can find the schedule of a planned exercises on nato's web site. because we have nothing to hide. whereas russia is doing all it can to minimize the transparency of what its forces are doing. and this brings me to my final principle resolving differences through dialogue, not forces. through the pattern i have described in ukraine, in georgia and in moldova russia has shown the will to use force or to coerce its neighbors. and russia's recent use of nuclear rhetoric exercises and

operations are deeply troubling. as are concerns regarding its compliance with the international nuclear forces treaty. president putin's admission that he considered putting russia's nuclear forces on alert while russia was annexing crimea is but one example. russia has also significantly increased scale number and range of proactive flights by nuclear-capable bombers across much of the globe. from japan to gibraltar from crete to california and from the baltic sea to the black sea. russian officials announced plans to base modern

nuclear-capable mission systems, and they claim that russia has the right to deploy nuclear forces to cree mia. crimea. this will fundamentally change the balance of security in europe. we learned during the cold war that when it comes to nuclear weapons caution predictability and transparency are vital. russia's nuclear saber rattling is unjustified destabilizing and dangerous. all of this takes place against the background of russia's significant rearmament program. some of its new military systems were put on parade during this year's victory day celebration.

and russia is deploying many of its most modern systems and basing military units near nato borders. ladies and gentlemen these are not random events. they form a bigger picture which is of great concern. russia is a global actor that is asserting its military power, stirring up aggressive nationalism, claiming the right to impose its will on its neighbors and grabbing land. we regret that russia is taking this course because when might becomes right, the consequences are grave. for 25 years we have worked hard

to include -- not isolate -- russia. our aim was a strategic partnership. borders were opened, trade went up and trust increased. the g7 expanded to become the g8 and russia was invited into the world trade organization. we created the nato -- [inaudible] council and offered to work together on missile defense. we cooperated in many areas from countering piracy and terrorism to helping afghanistan. all of this benefited us, and it benefited russia. but today the choices made by moscow have taken our relations

with russia to the lowest point many -- in decades. we are not back to the cold war but we are far from a strategic partnership. so we need to adapt to deal with the challenges that may be with us for a long time. this adaptation, we are doing it in three ways. reinforcing our collective defense, reinforcing our deterrence and defense, managing our relations with a resurgent russia and supporting our european neighbors. first, strong defense. nato's core task is collective defense. our commitment to defend each

other enshrined in article v of the washington treaty is as strong as relevant today as ever before. that is why we are implementing the biggest reinforcement or collective defense since the end of the cold war. we have increased our presence in the eastern part of europe in the air on land and at sea. boosting our air policing and beefing up our exercise programs. we are doubling the size of nato, of the nato response force. its centerpiece is the lead elements ready to move in as little as 48 hours. seven european allies have volunteered to lead the spearhead force over the coming years, and we are establishing new nato command units across

the eastern part of our alliance. to make it easier for our forces to exercise, deploy and reinforce. yesterday i thanked president obama for his leadership and for america's quick and substantial contribution to reinforcing our collective defense. through the $1 billion european reassurance initiative and operation atlantic resolve. everywhere i go across the alliance i meet u.s. servicemen and women. the president sends a clear signal: america stands with europe and european allies are in lockstep with the united states. this is transatlantic teamwork. but for all of us, there is more to do.

before the nato summit in warsaw next year and beyond we are enhancing our cyber defenses and making clear that the cyber attack could trigger a collective response. we're actively developing how we deal with hybrid threats including by working closely with the european union. we are speeding up our decision making, and we are deepening our intelligence sharing. we are carefully assessing the implications of what russia is doing including its nuclear activities. keeping nato strong does not come for free so we must redouble our efforts to meet a defense investment pledge we made last year. to stop the cuts and gradually increase spending to 2% of gdp and spend better.

because we cannot take our security for granted. and this brings me to my second point. a strong nato is not only our best protection, but it's also -- but it also provides us with the best foundation to manage our relationship with russia. we do not seek confrontation with russia. nor do we seek its isolation. we still aspire to a constructive relationship with russia because that would benefit the euro-atlantic security and the whole international order. but russia has changed and we must adapt. in doing so, we will not change who we are. we are sticking to our principles and to our

international commitments. we are committed to preserving european security institutions and agreements. we will remain transparent and predictable, we will continue to respond to disinformation with information, not propaganda. and we will keep the channels of communication open with russia. both military-to-military and diplomatic. because there is no contradiction in strengthening our collective defense and staying open for dialogue. a vigilant dialogue where actions speak louder than words. and in this dialogue, we will firmly uphold the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of all european countries. and this brings me to my third

and final point, supporting our partners in europe. it is in our interest as a transatlantic community to have neighbors that are stable and independent. that is why nato is working with georgia, moldova and ukraine to help them to carry out reforms and build strong institutions. these nations are not buffer zones, they are independent, sovereign states. .. this in

europe and we built a lose order that benefits us all. and as our challenges increase we must adapt to ensure our security, to protect the values of our open and democratic societies and to support our partners. this requires continued commitment and solidarity. the world is changing and we are changing. but one thing that will not change is our determination to stay and stand united. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you. that was a clear, concise message that is urgently needed. i thank you for that. good morning, everyone. i am heather conley and what a privilege it is to this i believe, your first public address. >> that is true. >> we are glad you are here. what we thought we would do for the next 30 minutes so is take you up on your kind off of

questions, particularly russia. i think the most challenging part of my job was limiting my questions. after we have a few moments, we welcome the audience and i know it is an audience that asks very tough questions. we look forward to engaging in a conversation. you have been on the job for six months starting after the nato summit in new port. and you offered a frank discussion on military exercise. i welcome your frank assessment of nato's exercising as we have seen certainly not the same scale but could you offer reflection on how nato have been exercising? we have not done this type of collective defense in a long

time. what are your reflections? >> every nation as the right to exercise forces. so my point is not to argue against exercise. if the forces have exercise d that is obvious. but russia is conducting the exercises through the mind and predictability and especially this. after the state, they have used these exercise for annexing part of another country. an annexing crimea to support the separatist separatist. so using these exercise as a way to the sky disruptions and by

doing so and having all of these exercise without any warning there are decreasing stability and increasing uncertainty. and that is exactly the opposite of what the intentions over the open skies agreement and all of the other agreements we have that are aiming at transparency and predictability. we avoid misunderstandings and we avoid the incidents are under control and that is why we are from a nato side transparent. we can firearmly follow exercise to be there just to make sure they are transparent. we would be more excited because it is part of our response to

actions of russia and ukraine and we will do even more exercise as part of the enforcement of collective attempts. but we will do it in a transparent and predictable way so that exercise a creating problems in themselves. >> two follow questions. is it best to return to the documents they find whether that is open skies or do they need something new? some suggested we need a code of conduct to get to this notification of exercise. we are concerned that russian military air craft turned off transponders flying into crowded air space over northern europe. how do we meet this challenge? do we need something as a codes of conduct in the future? >> just the implement the agreements we already have. that is a very straight forward thing to do. and to fully respect all of the

documents we have related to relationships in these areas of activity. then of course we will also look into how we can develop these kind of agreements and documents. this isn't a nato agreement. this is within the frame of oc but all of our allies are taking part in this. and we have a special focus on risks connected to increased air activity. russia has increased its air activity by around 50 percent. that is also one of the reasons we have increased air policing from the nato side intercepting more russian flights now than just a few years ago and the european aviation security

agency provided a report recently addressing the challenges related to the increased air activity and flying without the transponders and nato was commended for the way we conducting our military flights. it was stated that military flights without transponders pose a risk to air traffic. so to turn on transponders and do military flights and civilian air traffic is something that can be done immediately. and it will of course increase the predictability and reduce the risk for air traffic. >> secretary general you painted a stark picture of russia's increasing aggression.

at last september's new court summit there was a series of actions taken, you mentioned the high readiness task force as we look forward to next july's summit do you see it as a summit that checks the implementation of what happened in newport or a long term posture for nato. last week we had a visitor arguing for strategic adaption and a long term permant presence in nato's east. what are your thoughts? >> in order to change the security we have to adopt to this fundamentally new policy

and the patient has to be centile centile centile and what i believe they will do in warsaw is chop their way toward nato both when it comes to military adaption and political and institutional adaption. we have been doing this to our defense and we will have to more. and addressing things like cyber, important of intelligence hybrid warfare and other elements where we have to work and develop new capabilities and adapt. then i will add that in addition to outlining the next phase, it

is important to take note of the stock we have done. because implementation is important. i have been a politician for decades. and i am sorry to admit many politician politicians make plans but they don't implement them like they should. i think it is important they implement what they are ready to do and not least when it comes to defense investment that we are stopping the residents and stopping to increase the defense spending as promised. >> just a quick follow-up question on the speed of

deployability. i think it wasw mentioned there is a time gap as russia goes toward the baltic state borders there is a 48 hour deployment. it could be faster using hybrid tactics. are you concerned with timing and how fast nato can deploy in worse case scenario it needed to respond to a border crossing? >> the preparedness is readiness is key. i am coming from norway and of course over the decades we felt safe during the cold war and feel safe today. not because we have nato troops based in norway but we believe in attendance and we believe that nato troops u.s. will be

there, if needed. and then this is the combination reinforce and also natural forces and the first responders. and i welcome that for the baltic states, poland, and others are increasing their investments in defense. we will establish persistent presence in the way we will establish nato communities in the six eastern allied countries. and that is something new. i think it is important. it is not it controls the units but it will be a nato presence there. it will be important for planning for exercises and it will also make reinforcement easier. so national presence increased

preparedness and readiness and in addition to that we need rea reassurance and more air presence troops on the ground and more presence in the baltic and black sea. it is the whole combination that provides deterance which is so important for nato. >> one last question before i open the floor for questions. another aspect of managing our relations with russia is about nato's enlargement agenda. and i cannot let you go unles asking you a question about enlarge enlargement. secretary clinton mentioned after the chicago summit it would be the last summit where the enlargement was dealt with.

as we go toward warsaw, love your thoughts on the open door not just for georgia and ukraine, but today's finland coalition suggest that even they are keeping their option open for nato. there is a path forward in the open door policy for nato? >> the open door policy has been a historic success. it accounted for the freedom in europe and transform europe in a very good way. i think it is important to underline a fundamental principle that every nation has a right to decide its own path including what kind of security arrangements they want to be part of.

this is enshrined in many documents. the consequence of that is if another country is going to be a member of nato it will be determined by that country and the 28 allies. no one else has the right to veto or design a sovereign country to join the alliance. we will make decisions on montenegative -- montenegro -- why the -- by the end of the year. i am looking forward to talk

about this. they are neighbors of norway and if i say anything about that i think it would only go to say it will be a positive. so they have to decide whether they abide and then the invitation will be lake any other. >> thank you, secretary general. you have been warmed up. we are ready to unleash the audience. we have about 15 minutes. can we bundle a few questions? if you could please identify yourself and your affilation. we have microphones passing around. sometimes you have to speak directly into the microphone. it can be a little hard to hear. why don't we start in the back? i see questions in the back there. face the microphone. thank you. >> thank you.

i am from the national endowment for democracy. i should recall i had the pleasure of meeting you a few years ago when i was a young activist of social democrats in georgia. now my question i applied with this question for the naval defense college but i was denied and i would hope you would help me find an answer. well nato reshaped the soviet union and in large helped the organization to maintain its ranks. why question is regarding georgia and the upcoming warsaw summit. would you think that georgia would make another step toward membership or if not where would georgia benefit from the long

term membership. >> good time to talk to you about internships. erick right there. >> erick here. thank you for your work. i wanted to see if i could push you on the issue of sweden and finland. we have had a lot of developments since the whales summit. how do you see this relationship going forward as a partnership? and in terms of the membership we heard signals from the finish government about keeping the options open. i want to get your opinion how useful it would to help sweden and finland be a member of nato? and would that be provoking to russia? >> we will take one more. >> i am the italian ambassador

and former jeopardy deputy secretary of nato. we are one of the seven nations that would be one of the lead nations for the reaction force and we are actively con trutributing to the listonia issues. you didn't comment on the chal challenge challenges to the south. >> georgia sweden/finland, and the complexties of the south. >> good to see you first. i don't have the manner to drown them in scholarships for the

nato nato. so let's take a look. we are really doing substantial activities with georgia and i think that is important. also the defense capacity building in georgia which increases georgia's ability to defend itself and i think that is important for georgia in that region. so a constant membership i

think i have nothing more to say than what has been stated again and again i was at the summit in 2008 where we made the decisions with georgia. those decisions are restated later on at the summit in whales and what we decided also in whales was the first i want to address is montenegro. and on sweden i appreciate the cooperation with georgia and georgia is helping many nato patients so we have an important partnership already that we to participate and develop. and on sweden they said if you try to push further you will not

succeed. i can talk to come but i will not say anything more of substance about that. and it is ease tee joke about it but i think it is so important that it has to be a swinging branch. i think everything i say about this how different things affect the debate, can only be misused and misunderstood. if i was a scientist or anything else but i am the secretary of nato so i can say this and answer this. that is the reason i am saying this. but the basement in sweden and finland has to be followed and it is a democratic nations and

countries to decide if they want to apply and we will assist the application. but we have accomplished and we have developed and they are opportunity partners and we are doing more and more to get with them. now we are exercising together with the sweeds and finland people. we are sharing information and working more closely with them. and at the foreign meeting of nato two weeks ago we decided to go further in developing our partnership with sweden and finland. so they are really co-partners. we do a lot of work together with them and i welcome them. >> the south. >> the south. the east we see challenges

threats, related to estate and we respond in a way that is familiarly with collected defense and so on. to the south, we meet and are faced with non-states. that is a mixed and complicated picture. we see people crossing the line. we see paris attacks taking place in our streets inspired by ice and other areas in the south. i welcome all nato allies con

contributte to ending isis. and they have learned how to work together to the corporation in nato and to princeton working together on nato missions. even though this isn't a nato-led operation i think of nato improbability is useful for fighting isis. then in addition nato we decided in the way small i think this is key for the south. by building local institutions,

we can take more responsibility for all security for deploying all countries. we have talked with jordan, and we are in the process of assessing a request from the government of iraq to help them building institution reform increase stability, and actually even if we don't build this what we are doing in afghanistan is defense capability. we are helping the afghanistan people building their capacity to take full responsibility for the future of their own security. and to develop the ability of countries in the region to make

more ronsibility for their own security is important for the countries in the region and also for nato. >> we will take a lightning round of questions. this one in the back. >> thank you. voice of american youth. i would like to ask we here in the united states hear more voices now in the media and on the internet the stand off with russia is mostly a european problem. what would you say to the people that said this could be european countries putting more effort into the resolving the crisis and it should be germany or france leading the way.

>> one more. there in the back. >> so good morning, i am paul tennis, a british exchange officer here in washington, d.c. there was an exercise considering a russia scenario and one of the most interesting things was interaction with the audience and there was no agreement on defining resolution five and speak with dealing with an adversary who stays below that threshold. >> i think with time i will have you respond to those questions. >> first about ukraine ukraine

sin europe but it only affects not only european country. it will underline world order. so it is important for the global order when international law is piloted in the way we see ukraine and the an annaxation of crimea. france and germany in particularly are in need. it is great to have the united states taking part in the efforts and the united states is doing that. canada is providing supply and support for ukraine.