Vegan Starter Guide
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VEGAN STARTER GUIDE Why go vegan? • How to become vegan • Recipes Inspiration: The reason for this booklet very day, we at Friends of Animals Vegans also avoid leather, down, fur, honey, meet people who are thinking of wool, silk, and other animal by-products. E going vegan. Maybe you are think- The term vegan (pronounced VEE-guhn) ing about it too. And you might wonder why was adopted in the 1940s by Vegan Society people become vegans, why we consider founding members Donald Watson and Elsie the commitment so important, and what Shrigley. Dorothy (Morgan) Watson had first the decision means in everyday terms. In offered the word to Donald—at a dance they this booklet, we’ll explore some of the many both attended. (We thank Patricia Tricker reasons people decide to live vegan, and and George D. Rodger of The Vegan Soci- offer you some recipes and resources. ety for this intriguing piece of information.) As people dedicated to ending the exploi- The word came from the first three and last tation of animals, we strive to cultivate in our two letters of vegetarian—“because vegan- own lives what we wish for our society. Our ism starts with vegetarianism and carries it work includes a full spectrum of advocacy: through to its logical conclusion.” initiatives to stop hunting and its use as ani- While vegetarianism is normally dis- mal control; legal protection for free-living cussed in terms of a diet, veganism embod- animals and their land, water, and air; man- ies a worldview. We have found that egg, agement of a sanctuary for primates (Primar- flesh, and dairy consumption can be hazard- ily Primates is just that; it does accept birds, ous to the human body and to our environ- cows and other animals in need too); and ment; and that animal husbandry involves our Marine Animal Rescue project, on call unjust treatment of other conscious beings. constantly at the Los Angeles County coast. We don’t want to play a role in that injus- We who facilitate these projects adhere to a tice. Nor do we wish to be at war with free- plant-based diet in support for other animals living animals. As vegans, we strive to live in the world, and in the spirit of empathy harmoniously with the planet and all its we’re advancing. inhabitants. WHAT IS A VEGETARIAN? VEGAN FOR THE ANIMALS WHAT IS A VEGAN? Human beings create unspeakable mis- Vegetarianism is commonly defined as a ery wherever we turn other animals into plant-based diet. Many people believe a consumer goods. To process living, feeling vegetarian can use dairy products, eggs, beings into food for an entire society means honey, and leather, or that some will eat that most of the industry will be based on fish and birds. high-volume production, with chickens (so But applying logic, we perceive dairy easily stacked and stored) treated the way products, birds, and birds’ eggs as taken companies would treat any object in an from animals, just as flesh is taken. And, as assembly line, and animals in their prime seen you can imagine, all the beings subjected to as performing or ready for processing, kept in animal husbandry end up in the same place. cramped conditions, vulnerable to disease, So vegans avoid such products—and use injury, and immense stress, causing owners to the word vegan, to avoid misunderstandings. attempt to solve problems with big doses of antibiotics. Producers (factory or free-range— year. So they’ll continually produce milk, Hol- it matters not) mutilate animals to make them stein and Jersey dairy cows endure repeated easier to manage in groups. Sometimes, the pregnancies (which last nine months, as ours shock of mutilation, such as the searing off of do). a chicken’s beak, is enough to kill. Drink milk, and veal happens. Most dairy Farm animals can’t choose their relation- calves will be cutlets. These cutlets-to-be are ships. They’re conceived through a variety confined to restrict muscle growth, deprived of artificial or forced insemination modes, of iron to stay pale. But just for four months: and the young are taken away from their par- their age at death. A new trend involves con- ents. Dairy and egg managers kill most male verting to group housing; but without their babies—because these animals won’t grow parents, calves are nervous and competi- up to be pregnant or provide dairy products. tive. They are tethered around meal time to Most animals are transported in horrific control aggression and stress. Human beings create unspeakable misery wherever we turn other animals into consumer goods. conditions, after being intimidated and The eating of cheese automatically results forced, zapped and beaten to move quickly in the production of veal. Most cheeses con- during loading. Many develop shipping tain rennet, an enzyme complex that coag- fever on the way to slaughter; and when ulates the milk, causing it to separate into they stagger off the truck they’ll meet the solids (curds) and liquid (whey). The rennet is badly paid workers who might or might taken from the stomach lining of unweaned not stun them before changing them from calves. These stomachs are also a product of animal to product. Even at farms touting veal-making. So most cheeses contain flesh humane handling, the conditions and fates from animals as well as animal milk. of the animals depend on the whims and If a gaze into the dairy case reminded the wallets of the shoppers, to whom the us of the calves carted away forever from animals are, in the end, a product. the cows (who, farmers admit, cry for their young), we’d understand the reality of DAIRY PRODUCTS cheese, cream, and milk. Picturing the veal Cheese and milk represent tremendous calf strengthens the resolve of many vegans disrespect and hurt, and there is no reason to say no to that cream or cheese. to think it is less than that which goes into For quite a few of us in the Americas and the processing of flesh. Artificial insemina- Europe, resisting cheese has been the big- tion is used at most gest difficulty in dairy farms; most of the transition to these farms have vegan living. If you no need for males, feel you just can’t who are sent off at live without cheese, an early age to the take heart; there’s veal producer. Dairy hope! Inventive cows are forced to cookbooks will see produce youngsters you through, such for the owners each as Jo Stepaniak’s 3 The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. And if you our power to stop confining, catching, and have yet to experience the joy of Chef Miyoko killing them. Schinner, you’re in for a wonderful surprise. Fish suffer from capture, of course. The To delight your palate and bring delicious experience of stress for a fish is documented. conversation pieces to a party by learning Dr. Jonathan Lovell of the Institute of Marine to make your own gourmet vegan cheeses, Studies at the University of Plymouth has look for Say Cheese: Vegan Alternatives to Make observed: “Fish don’t have a five-second You Smile (publication: summer 2012). memory. They have a long-term memory.” Biologist Culum Brown, from Edinburgh Uni- versity, Scotland, concurs. Brown observed one fish remembering the placement of a hole in a net nearly a year after first finding it. In 2011, a video of a fish using a tool was announced in the journal Coral Reefs by Gia- como Bernardi, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. In the video, the fish excavates sand to get a shell, then swims for a substantial time to find a good spot to crack the shell. Bernardi said, “It requires a lot of forward thinking, because there are a number of steps involved.” The moves in Photo by Peter Wallerstein the video resemble a number of previous ANIMALS OF THE WATERS reports in which a fish would use a rock as People might assume fish swim free before an anvil to crush shellfish.² being caught; but increasingly, businesses As a vegan culture grows, the stress we have shifted to enclosed ponds. We now impose on seals, whales, dolphins, pelicans treat fish as farm animals. And carnivorous and other sea birds will lessen. Not only do aquatic animals such as shrimp and salmon vegans refrain from using gear that traps eat between two and four times their own marine animals; we also withdraw our market weight in wild-caught fish. Many participation in the massive slaughters of sites being converted into shrimp ponds seals and other animals, which are justi- are mangrove swamps which lose their vital fied because these animals compete with environmental role: filtering impurities from humans for cod and other fish. Vegans no waters and wetlands. longer view marine animals as seafood, and To enhance profits, farmers crowd the fish. that makes a world of difference. Large, com- Stress renders fish vulnerable to diseases. No mercial slaughters of seals, whales and other wonder fish farms introduce chemicals and marine animals reflect corporate influence antibiotics into ecosystems. The growth- on governments, which subsidize those promoting antibiotic oxytetracycline seeps massive killings in order to reduce compe- into sediment below the pens.¹ tition for fish products—a major component Some fish farms have installed filters. of feed for animal agribusiness, including Some use yeast-based proteins, rather than fish farming. wild-caught fish, to feed “sustainable stocks” but they can’t keep up with the burgeon- LEATHER ing human population’s appetite for fish.