PAINA Gathering: True Food Safety

Photo credit: Ka'ohua Lucas

---

Last Friday, we held our quarterly PAINA gathering: a coming-together of people across the Kalihi food system, working together to (re)establish our relationships to land, culture, and each other through food.  This gathering’s topic was True Food Safety – in light of federal regulations, we wanted to engage in a deep conversation about how we define for ourselves what food safety means for a local, resilient, and sovereign food system.

Thanks to Ho‘oulu ‘Aina Nature Park for providing a beautiful space to hold this conversation, and to our community conversation shepherds, Frederick Reppun of CTAHR, Joshua Noga of Hawaii Center for Food Safety, and Pono Jones of Ho‘oulu ‘Āina.

Mahalo to Kaʻohua Lucas for capturing these images

Our themed meal to spark the conversation included:

Pollinator Salad

featuring plants, herbs, and flowers that our bees love

(for pollinator health)

House-Fermented-Kimchi Fried Rice

(with beneficial microbes for gut health)

Assorted Fermented Pickles

(with beneficial microbes for gut health)

Thai Larb in Organic Lettuce Boats

with Two Ladies Farm pork filling

(for the health of our animals)

-or-

Luluku Farms kalo filling

(for the health of our water and soil)

`Uala Berry Bite

with coconut nectar dollop

(for worker health*)

House-made Kombucha

with a drop of effective microbes (EM)

(for soil health and gut health)

Most of our ingredients come from Oahu farms. Most ingredients are organic.

*Berries are fragile and so require a lot of human labor, unlike other crops which can be managed with machines.  As a result, large agribusiness berry farm workers often suffer from unfair labor practices and pesticide exposure.