Vegan Month

What is a Vegan?

Vegans, like vegetarians, do not eat animal or fish flesh. However, vegans also avoid eating products that contain eggs, milk and honey. The vegan diet is 100% plant-based, and very healthy it is, too!

What do vegans eat?

Pretty much the same as everyone else, just without the animal products. Try: soups, stews, pies and pasties, casseroles, curries, bangers 'n' mash, roast dinners and gravy, Thai, Chinese and Japanese foods, pasta and pizzas and fry ups!

Five good reasons to go vegan

Animal slaughter

Egg-laying hens begin their lives in giant hatcheries. The male chicks born in these units are useless to egg farmers, as they cannot lay eggs, so they are gassed to death or tossed alive into giant industrial shredders. For more information watch the undercover footage on the video page.

Dairy cows have their calves taken away from them soon after birth, so that the milk meant for them can be bottled up for humans. Some female calves join the dairy herd, others are killed for pet and baby food, or so that parts of their stomachs can be used to make rennet (an ingredient used in cheese). The males are regarded as 'waste by-products' as there is limited demand for the 'low-quality' beef for which some are reared. 'Surplus' calves are shot or sent on punishing journeys to continental veal farms. For more information watch 'Secrets of the Dairy Industry' on the video page.

Animal suffering

The dairy cow is one of the most exploited of all farmed animals. Subjected to a constant cycle of pregnancies, she is pushed to her limit and forced (through selective breeding) to produce as much as 60 litres of milk every day, which is many times more than is natural. The repeated separation of mother from her calves is incredibly distressing for both, and causes the mother to bellow for days. Around half of her life will be spent confined in a crowded, dirty, dank shed with hard, concrete floors - a major cause of lameness. Another cause is her swollen udder, which prevents her from standing and walking properly. Due to the relentless milking, she is likely to suffer from mastitis - an acutely painful infection of the udders, from which traces of pus seep into the milk. By the age of five she is no longer a profitable 'milk machine' and will be slaughtered. Naturally she would live to be 25 years old. More and more cows are subjected to 'zero grazing' regimes. They are kept almost permanently confined inside sheds with hundreds of other cows.

More information on the suffering of dairy cows

The egg-laying hen will most probably spend her short life in a battery cage with four or five other hens in a space not much bigger than a microwave oven. She will barely be able to move or stretch her wings. Selectively bred, she will lay up to 300 eggs in a year - 30 times the amount she would lay in the wild. The unnaturally high level of egg production uses up calcium from her body leading to osteoporosis and brittle bones, and causing her legs to break easily. At just 72 weeks old, she is no longer producing commercial quantities of eggs and will be killed and made into cheap meat products. Naturally she would live to be 10 years old.

More information on the egg industry

Health

Eggs and dairy products are not essential for optimum health. They contain saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, and eating them can inhibit the absorption of iron. On a balanced vegan diet there is no risk of calcium, iron or protein deficiency. In fact, consuming dairy products can actually lead to osteoporosis and weak bones. This is because eggs and dairy products are rich in animal protein, which makes the blood more acidic. The body tries to neutralise this by drawing calcium from the bones. Scientific studies show that a plant-based diet is ideal for optimum health and lowers your risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and some cancers, as well as increasing your life expectancy.

More information on health

Planet

Animal farming uses much more land, energy and water and has a far bigger effect on climate change than plant-based agriculture:

A vegan diet requires half the amount of land used to produce a typical vegetarian diet and one fifth of that used for a typical European omnivorous diet.
In terms of an individual's carbon footprint, switching to a vegan diet would have a greater impact than switching from a traditional to an eco-friendly car.
It takes only 1,000 litres of water to grow one kilo of wheat, yet 11,000 litres to produce just one quarter-pound beef burger, and between 2,000 and 4,000 litres for a cow to produce one litre of milk.

More information on the planet

Feed the world

Almost half of the world's food harvest is fed to farmed animals and almost all of those calories go into simply keeping the animals alive. Feeding crops to animals is exceedingly wasteful of the world's resources.

An acre of cereal can produce five times more protein than an acre devoted to meat production. Putting animal products at the centre of food policy diminishes our ability to feed the world's human population.