Winter 2010 Highlights

World Preservation Foundation Conference

Vegan Society CEO, Nigel Winter, attended this conference on 3 November in Central Hall, Westminster.  He displayed literature and distributed our new film Making the Connection.  The conference was well attended and was also broadcast live on the internet.  He talked to some of the speakers including Dr Ester van der Voet who was one of the lead authors of the UN Environment Program’s report Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Production and Consumption and Professor Arjen Hoekstra who is scientific director of the Water Footprint Network.  Vegan MP Kerry McCarthy also gave a talk and Wally Fry, the owner of Fry’s Vegetarian gave the closing talk.  Wally emphasised how strong ethical principles made good business sense and he explained how he and his wife Debbie had developed vegan foods and created a very successful international business.  He hoped he could inspire industrialists to commit to more ethical practices.  The conference emphasised why switching to a plant-based diet was a priority to tackle climate change.

Facebook Update

Engagement through Facebook continues to go from strength to strength.  In mid-December we had over 52,000 fans.  Many familiar faces hang around to help those trying out veganism for the first time, swapping recipes or discussing the issues of veganism. 

We are encouraging people to make ‘real world’ actions, from asking for vegan options in restaurants to organising their own events.  We’re finding that asking for small actions can lead to big results – watch this space for future developments.

Interesting topics of discussion in the last few months include:

• Coping with meat eaters
• Is it ‘natural’ to be vegan?
• Human rights and veganism
• Vegans who cannot breastfeed
• Tattoos
• In-vitro meat
• Should my ethics be flexible?
• Vegan Christmas recipes!

Many thanks to all of our supporters!

Vegan School Dinners

We have been working on a series of vegan recipes for schools.  They have been nutritionally analysed and the next stage is to get them tested.  If you are able to establish contact with schools or caterers that could test dishes to serve 30 people please get in touch with Rebecca Henderson:  advocacy@vegansociety.com  The aim is for these recipes to become the vegetarian option in schools.

The Vegan Pledge

We are receiving increasing numbers of requests to take The Vegan Pledge with over 1,000 new pledges in 2010.  The good news is that a significant number of those people are staying vegan. 

Sponsorship

We continue to sponsor events throughout the UK and elsewhere.  Some events are local food fayres held in village halls and others are large events such as Vegfest in Bristol.  We also sponsor things like a vegan category at Hospitality at the NEC where competitors are invited to prepare, cook and present an imaginative, nutritionally balanced vegan main course in 30 minutes.