Students for Environmental Action hosted the second-annual SEA free food banquet to promote local and organic food projects this past Tuesday in the Levin Ballroom.

The event featured two speakers who discussed the importance of animal rights and healthy food coalitions.

The first speaker, Alexis Fox, the Humane Society of the United States' state director for Massachusetts, spoke of the progress that Brandeis has made on campus, as well as what she and the HSUS are striving to achieve in the near future.

Fox is the leading innovator of the idea for Meatless Mondays, an initiative that she hopes will be taking place next year on campus. While the school had already agreed to this promise, the initiative has not been put into action yet, according to both SEA and Fox.

The event emphasized the importance of taking care of the environment, specifically what Brandeis students can do on campus and in their personal lives.

Fox noted that Brandeis was the first school in the Boston area to only use cage-free eggs. She added that this created a domino effect for the promotion of cage-free eggs in Boston schools: Harvard University followed the precedent, as did Amherst College.

Next to speak was Alex Goldstein '06, press secretary at the Office of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who recalled his path to politics and his experiences at Brandeis. A former member of Brandeis' Rugby Team, the Justice and False Advertising, Goldstein graduated with a bachelor's degree in Politics.

Once the speakers finished, the banquet portion of the event commenced.

This year, SEA hired Chef David Scott Gross from Manalapan, N.J. to cater the banquet. Among the items on the menu were black olive tapenade, pasta primavera and sweet potato fries. Gross graduated from Johnson and Wales University with an associate's degree in Culinary Arts and a bachelor's degree in culinary arts and food service management. He was joined by his sous chef, Justin Brown.

In an interview with the Justice, Gross explained that the ingredients for the banquet were both grown by local farmers and locally purchased and were all vegan and vegetarian.

When asked about his interest in the banquet, Gross commented that he's "all for eco-friendly foods and for helping out small businesses" and that he is "quite interested in making the food industry more eco-friendly and environmentally responsible."