Youth Food Movement Australia

This page features articles on Youth Food Movement Australia (YFM), including links between the organisation and livestock sector participants, such as Meat & Livestock Australia, Australian Dairy Conference and Dairy Connect.

An example of those links involves co-founder Joanna Baker, while still in senior positions with YFM, spending nearly two years as manager for membership, communications and policy with Dairy Connect, an organisation advocating on behalf of the dairy industry.

The other co-founder, Alexandra Iljadica, was a speaker at the two-day 2016 Australian Dairy Conference, sharing speaking duties with high-profile industry participants. She was given two speaking opportunities; a plenary speech and a workshop, with the title of the latter being, “How to herd consumers toward Australian dairy: A workshop in human behaviour change”.

The articles featured on this page cover the period from January to December 2017. I had also raised queries with the organisation on social media prior to that period.

Joanna Baker resigned from YFM in November 2016. Alexandra Iljadica resigned as CEO in November 2017, after having been appointed to that role around the time of Baker’s departure.

When announcing her resignation, Iljadica said she would be “taking a seat on YFM’s board”. At the time of writing (five months later), she was not appearing on YFM’s “Team” page among the four “Board Directors”, but was listed as a “Director” in the “responsible persons” list on the website of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).

Confusingly, the term “Board Member” was used for some of the responsible persons on the ACNC page, and “Director” for others, with one referred to as “Chairperson”. Adding to the confusion was the fact that a “Board Director” (Caitlin Rowe) on the Team page was not appearing on the ACNC page, while three responsible persons on the ACNC page (Iljadica, the new CEO Thea Soutar, and Mark Thomas) were not among the “Board Directors” on the Team page.

The material shown here includes the text of an email I sent YFM on 1st December 2017, after they had requested me to do so on Facebook. I treated it as an open email, which I felt would be consistent with their professed values of transparency and authenticity. However, they have not responded.

In my view, YFM fails to adequately inform those who follow their work of the negative impacts of livestock industries in terms of animal cruelty, environmental damage (including climate change) and human health. Although I have submitted questions, I am not in a position to explain the organisation’s position in relation to those critical issues.

Open email to Youth Food Movement Australia (1 Dec 2017)