Close to home…

I grew up in rural Herefordshire, entrenched deep in its farming community.  So this article strikes a very poignant chord for me as it goes to the heart of one of the hardest conflicts I have being a vegan with my background.  How can I be comfortable with and respect my friends and family who make a living doing something I intrinsically believe is cruel and wrong?  A lot of my farming friends are sadly turning to this form of factory farming of chickens in order to try and stay financially afloat.  I have huge sympathy for how hard farmers are finding it to make a living – especially the potato and dairy farmers, many of whom are going under all over the UK or having to diversify away from what they have done for generations.  But does that excuse them turning to such a depraved method of farming?  Who am I to think badly of someone trying to keep their family above water?  At what point do their immediate needs have to take priority over my ethical ideals?

As a passionate vegan everything about this form of factory farming appalls me – both ethically and environmentally.  But whilst famers feel they have no other option, they are going to continue down this route of desperate mass farming which only spells out bad news for us, the animals and the environment.  The responsibility ultimately lies with the consumers.  When will we wake up to the effects our everyday choices have on the world at large?    When will we stop demanding cheaper and cheaper meat and dairy products in greater and greater quantity at the expense of our own personal health, the animals’ rights and the health of the environment.

The below article is from George Monbiot’s website and was published yesterday in the Guardian:

Fowl Deeds

The astonishing, multiple crises caused by chicken farming.

(By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 20^th May 2015)

It’s the insouciance that baffles me. To participate in the killing of an animal: this is a significant decision. It spreads like a fungal mycelium into the heartwood of our lives. Yet many people eat meat sometimes two or three times a day, casually and hurriedly, often without even marking the fact.

I don’t mean to blame. Billions are spent, through advertising and marketing, to distract and mollify, to trivialise the weighty decisions we make, to ensure we don’t connect. Even as we search for meaning and purpose, we want to be told that our actions are inconsequential. We seek reassurance that we are significant, but that what we do is not.

It’s not blind spots we suffer from. We have vision spots, tiny illuminated patches of perception, around which everything else is blanked out. How often have I seen environmentalists gather to bemoan the state of the world, then repair to a restaurant in which they gorge on beef or salmon? The Guardian and Observer urge us to go green, then publish recipes for fish whose capture rips apart the life of the sea.

The television chefs who bravely sought to break this spell might have been talking to the furniture. Giant chicken factories are springing up throughout the west of England, the Welsh Marches and the lowlands of the east. I say factories for this is what they are: you would picture something quite different if I said farm; they are hellish places. You might retch if you entered one, yet you eat what they produce without thinking.

Two huge broiler units are now being planned to sit close to where the River Dore rises, at the head of the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, one of the most gorgeous landscapes in Britain. Each shed at Bage Court Farm – warehouses 90 metres long – is likely to house about 40,000 birds, that will be cleared out, killed and replaced every 40 days or so. It remains to be seen how high the standards of welfare, employment and environment will be.

The UK now has some 2,000 of these factories, to meet a demand for chicken that has doubled in 40 years*. Because everything is automated, they employ few people, and those in hideous jobs: picking up and binning the birds that drop dead every day, catching chickens for slaughter in a flurry of shit and feathers, then scraping out the warehouses before the next batch arrives.

The dust such operations raise is an exquisite compound of aerialised faeces, chicken dander, mites, bacteria, fungal spores, mycotoxins, endotoxins, veterinary medicines, pesticides, ammonia and hydrogen sulphide. It is listed as a substance hazardous to health, and helps explain why 15% of poultry workers suffer from chronic bronchitis. Yet, uniquely in Europe, the British government classifies unfiltered roof vents on poultry sheds as the “best available technology”. If this were any other industry, it would be obliged to build a factory chimney to disperse the dust and the stink. But farming, as ever, is protected by deference and vested interest, excused from the regulations, planning conditions and taxes other business must observe. Already, Herefordshire County Council has approved chicken factories close to schools, without surveying the likely extent of the dust plumes either before or after the business opens. Bage Court Farm is just upwind of the village of Dorstone.

Inside chicken factories are scenes of cruelty practised on such a scale that they almost lose their ability to shock. Bred to grow at phenomenal speeds, many birds collapse under their own weight, and lie in the ammoniacal litter, acquiring burns on their feet and legs and lesions on their breasts. After slaughter they are graded. Those classified as grade A can be sold whole. The others must have parts of the body removed, as they are disfigured by bruising, burning and necrosis. The remaining sections are cut up and sold as portions. Hungry yet?

Plagues spread fast through such factories, so broiler businesses often dose their birds with antibiotics. These require prescriptions but – amazingly – the government keeps no record of how many are issued. The profligate use of antibiotics on farms endangers human health, as it makes bacterial resistance more likely.

But Herefordshire, like other county councils in the region, scarcely seems to care. How many broiler units has it approved? Who knows? Searches by local people suggest 42 in the past 12 months. But in December the council claimed it has authorised 21 developments since 2000§. This week it told me it has granted permission to 31 since 2010. It admits that it “has not produced any specific strategy for managing broiler unit development”¤. Nor has it assessed the cumulative impact of these factories. At Bage Court Farm, as elsewhere, it has decided that no environmental impact assessment is neededɷ.

So how should chicken be produced? The obvious answer is free range, but this exchanges one set of problems for another. Chicken dung is rich in soluble reactive phosphate. Large outdoor flocks lay down a scorching carpet of droppings, from which phosphate can leach or flash into the nearest stream. Rivers like the Ithon, in Powys, are said to run white with chicken faeces after rainstorms. The River Wye, a special area of conservation, is blighted by algal blooms: manure stimulates the growth of green murks and green slimes that kill fish and insects when they rot. Nor does free range solve the feed problem: the birds are usually fed on soya, for which rainforests and cerrado on the other side of the world are wrecked.

There is no sensible way of producing the amount of chicken we eat. Reducing the impact means eating less meat – much less. I know that most people are not prepared to stop altogether, but is it too much to ask that we should eat meat as our grandparents did, as something rare and special, rather than as something we happen to be stuffing into our faces while reading our emails? To recognise that an animal has been sacrificed to serve our appetites, to observe the fact of its death, is this not the least we owe it?

Knowing what we do and what we induce others to do is a prerequisite for a life that is honest and meaningful. We owe something to ourselves as well: to overcome our disavowal, and connect.

www.monbiot.com

* Total purchases for household consumption (uncooked, pre-cooked and take-aways combined) rose from 126 grammes per person per week in 1974 to 259 grammes in 2013 (see the database marked UK – household purchases).

§ BBC Hereford and Worcester, 15^th December 2014

¤ Response to FoI request IAT 7856, 13^th August 2014

ɷ Herefordshire County Council, 22^nd December 2014. Screening Determination of Bage Court Farm development, P143343/F

The Green Party on Animal Welfare

I voted for the Green Party yesterday.  I believe in voting in line with your values and therefore, regardless of how they would perform nationally, I knew that this was the only party that I could vote for with a clear conscience.

Below is where they stand on Animal Rights issues.  In a world where I feel almost entirely alone in my thoughts on this it is an enormous relief to find a party that feels the same way:

Animal Rights

Background

AR100 The expansion and development of human society has inevitably affected the lives of many other species. Disruption to their lifestyles has been both accidental and deliberate and has resulted in suffering, death or even extinction. The prevailing assumption that animals can be used for any purpose that benefits humankind is not acceptable in a Green society.

Long Term Aims

AR200 To eliminate the wholesale exploitation of other species, foster understanding of our inter-relationship in the web of life and protect and promote natural habitat.

Short Term Aims

AR300 To stimulate public awareness of the rights and needs of animals, to pass appropriate legislation to act by both informing the electorate and implementing suitable district policies.

Policies

AR400 As part of the Environment Commission (see PL410), a section will be set up dealing with the welfare of all animals, wild and domesticated, to oversee their treatment and make appropriate recommendations.

AR401 Local Authorities to provide a local Animal Rights Officer with adequate staff to oversee animal warden schemes, etc., and to liaise with the Animal Welfare Department of the Environment Commission.

AR402 To take pressure off wild animals by voluntarily limiting our population, by actively discouraging and penalising pollution and by preserving and restoring stable habitats. (see ‘Pollution’)

AR403 In the UK, close to a billion farm animals are slaughtered for food every year. Many of these animals are farmed intensively, kept in cramped conditions and denied the freedom to express natural behaviour. High levels of frustration, distress, injury and suffering are common and painful mutilations are routinely carried out to reduce risk of injury. Antibiotics are used routinely to prevent outbreak of disease, resulting in antibiotic resistance and threats to human and animal health. Animals are often transported long distances to slaughter and suffer inhumane conditions both during transport and at the time of slaughter. Besides the impact on animal welfare, high levels of consumption of meat, dairy and other animal products in developed countries are ecologically unsustainable and are linked to many chronic health conditions (See also FA650–FA666).

AR404 The Green Party will phase out all forms of ‘factory farming’ and support a transition to small free-range units, mixed rotational farming and extensive grazing (see FA660-661). We support the highest levels of animal welfare in farming and shall ensure that the ‘Five Freedoms’ listed in the Animal Welfare Act are applied to all farm animals. In particular we shall press for maximum stocking densities and appropriate environments for all farm animals in order to permit expression of natural behaviour. We shall prohibit all caged rearing of poultry, including ‘enriched cages’. We shall prohibit all painful mutilations such as beak trimming of poultry and tail docking of pigs.

AR405 In recent decades, genetic selection has continually increased yields from farm animals, often resulting in endemic welfare problems, such as mastitis in cows and bone fractures in chickens. The Green Party will place limits on the ‘genetic yield’ of farm animals and will encourage farmers to use traditional breeds. 

AR406 The Green Party will phase out routine and prophylactic use of antibiotics in farm animals. We shall maintain a ban on the use of growth hormones and imports of food from animals treated with growth hormones. We support a ban on the use of GMOs in animal feed and oppose all genetic modification of animals (See FA720 and AR420). We shall maintain a ban on the use of, and importation of products from, cloned animals and their offspring (See FA666). We shall press for EU and international rules permitting restrictions on imports from countries with lower animal welfare standards (See FA502(c)).

AR407 The Green Party will seek to minimise live transport of animals and will work through the EU and locally to end all live exports for slaughter and fattening. We shall prioritise smaller, local abattoirs, prohibit piece-rate payment of workers and otherwise improve market and slaughterhouse conditions.

AR408 Undercover footage has revealed significant animal suffering in UK slaughterhouses, including animals slaughtered for organic meat. Mandatory CCTV will be required in all slaughterhouses. This will act as a deterrent and provide evidence for animal abuse prosecutions.

AR409 Overfishing and the harmful effects of fish farming are devastating marine ecosystems. Several billion fish are killed annually to feed the UK population, often by methods causing extreme suffering, and millions of fish are kept in cruel conditions in intensive fish farms. The Green Party will work for an end to overfishing, practices harming the marine ecosystem and avoidable by-catches (see MC323-330). We shall prohibit intensive fish farming (see FA657, FA660 and MC341) and restrict the use of fishmeal for animal feed (see FA661). We shall extend the Animal Welfare Act to cover all fishing activities.

AR410 A reduction in the consumption of animal products would have benefits for the environment, human health and animal welfare. The Green Party will support a progressive transition from diets dominated by meat and other animal products to healthier diets based on plant foods, through the use of research, education and economic measures, coupled with support for more sustainable methods of production such as organic and stockfree farming.

AR411 The Green Party will ensure that high quality, nutritionally balanced vegetarian and vegan menu options are widely available and promoted in all public sector establishments such as schools, hospitals and care facilities (see ED190, FA222, HE322). We shall ensure that catering and nutrition for vegetarian and vegan diets is included in all catering certificates and that lessons in preparing nutritious vegetarian and vegan food are included in food technology courses.

AR412 The Green Party will make it illegal to import and/or sell foie gras andany product that is the result of force-feeding.

AR413 To prohibit the import, export and sale of all fur, whether wild caught or factory farmed, and to ensure a ban on fur farming in the UK stays in place. The import of other animal products such as ivory, reptile skins and whale oil, will be prohibited.
AR414 In the UK, millions of animals are used each year in experiments which can cause great pain and suffering. There are significant differences between the physiology of animals and that of humans and the reliance on animal testing and experimentation increases the risks of adverse reactions and hampers progress. A large proportion of animals are used for non-medical testing and for duplicate research which could be avoided. There are now many techniques available for testing of chemicals, drugs and medical procedures and for researching disease that do not use animals. However, these alternatives are often not used and are not adequately funded or supported.

AR415 The Green Party would ban all experimentation and research which harms animals, including harmful procedures used to obtain animal-derived materials. ‘Harmful’ is defined in this context as ‘having the potential to cause pain, suffering, distress, lasting harm or death in animals, except where it is designed to benefit the individual animals concerned

AR416 Government research funds will be transferred from animal tests to non-animal technologies, including epidemiology, computer models, micro-dosing, imaging, DNA chips, microfluidics chips and the use of human tissue. Much greater use will be made of epidemiological evidence and clinical data. Greens would also fund more research into prevention of disease, looking at diet, environment, family history and lifestyle.

AR417 The Green Party is opposed to the harmful use in education of animals and of animal-derived materials where the animals have been killed specifically for this purpose. The Party supports the replacement of the use of animals and animal material with methods such as models, mannequins, mechanical and computer-based simulators, films and interactive videos, plant experiments and observational and field studies, and human studies including self-experimentation. The Party supports the educational use of animal cadavers and animal-derived materials where these have been ethically sourced, such as animals who have died naturally and animals who have been euthanased for humane reasons.

AR418 The Party is opposed to the wholesale breeding, manipulation and destruction of those animals who are chosen as companions to the human race. We will introduce measures to regulate the care and conditions for such animals including a two-tier system of dog-licensing [breeding and non-breeding], licensing of all animal breeders and dog owners, subsidised spaying and neutering, the implementation of good animal warden schemes and a prohibition on the import of exotic animals for the pet trade.

AR419 The Green Party would introduce a requirement that all dogs be microchipped. It would be a legal requirement that when the animal was sold or ownership transferred the owner’s details be updated on the database otherwise the owner listed on the database would be deemed to be responsible for the dog.

AR420 The Green Party will end puppy farming by banning the sale of young puppies and kittens unless the mother is present.

AR421 Patents will not be granted on any animal and strict controls will be introduced to prevent genetic manipulation for profit or curiosity. (see ST363)

AR422 To extend the 1911 Protection of Animals Act to protect both captive and non-captive animals from unnecessary suffering. This will be used to prohibit hunting with hounds, shooting, snaring, coursing and various other abuses of our animal population. The Green Party is fundamentally opposed to all blood-sports. We oppose the killing of, or infliction of pain or suffering upon, animals in the name of sport or leisure, and will work to end all such practices.

AR423 To amend the Firearms Act to prohibit the use and private ownership of firearms and lethal weapons, such as air rifles, crossbows, etc., except on registered premises.

AR424 In view of the fact that animal acts in circuses are cruel and degrading to performer and observer alike, we will immediately prohibit the import of, and sale from other sources of, all animals to circuses. We will immediately prohibit the use of animals in circuses and will encourage the re-homing of all existing circus animals to sanctuaries or other suitable establishments with relocation to the wild wherever possible.

AR425 To abolish zoos and private collections of animals except where they are for the benefit of the animal concerned. Licences will only be granted to establishments involved in either captive breeding of endangered species for eventual return to the wild or else those offering genuine sanctuary to animals unable, through injury and other cause, to be returned to the wild and where their living conditions are as close as possible to the animal’s natural habitat.

AR426 The Green Party will end the exploitation of animals in horse racing, greyhound racing and all  situations where animals are commercially raced. There would be an immediate ban on the use of the whip in horse racing and in jumps racing, and on the use of a non-linear track in greyhound racing. A single regulatory authority would be put in place for each sport, tasked with establishing and enforcing strict welfare standards. There would be a requirement for full traceability of all animals involved in racing  throughout their lives (using microchip technology where applicable) and full publication of injury and  death statistics. These statistics would be used as evidence to close dangerous tracks and ban trainers with poor records. Breeding and import of animals for racing will be tightly regulated and monitored to  improve welfare and prevent over-breeding. There would be regulation on the conditions and times of  transportation of animals used in sport as well as the housing of all animals. A high level of compulsory levy  would be imposed on all betting, to be used solely for welfare improvements.

AR427 The Green Party will endeavour internationally to initiate and develop an Animal Rights Division within the United Nations Organisation.

AR428 The Green Party opposes all lethal or harmful uses and treatment of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises). In particular, whaling is a premeditated, deliberate and unnecessary cause of animal suffering. It is not justified even if supposedly undertaken as ‘scientific research’ or ‘subsistence hunting’ rather than for commercial profit. It endangers the survival of various cetacean species. The Green Party condemns those governments who seek, through the International Whaling Commission and otherwise, to continue whaling. We call on all governments to outlaw whaling. The Green Party is fundamentally opposed to all lethal and harmful commercial utilisation of cetaceans. This includes all whaling, so called scientific whaling and any whaling conducted under the cover-all of ‘aboriginal subsistence whaling’. The Green Party opposes any move to end the current moratorium on commercial whaling. We call on all nations to declare the waters under their control havens from whaling, to provide sanctuary throughout those waters for cetaceans, and to co-operate in achieving global sanctuary for cetaceans in the longer term.

AR429 Xenotransplantation: The Green Party would abolish research into, and the practise of xenotransplantation (the transplantation of nonhuman animal organs, genetically engineered or otherwise, into human beings). Treating nonhuman animals as “spare part” factories is both immoral and inhumane, and is therefore completely unacceptable in an ecological society. Xenotransplantation is yet another instance of corporate profit being prioritised over public health and the rights of nonhuman animals. Xenotransplantation carries the grave danger of virus transferral from nonhuman animals to humans, raising the real possibility of the unleashing of an epidemic amongst the human population.

The Green Party would promote more sensible and effective approaches to enhancing health, such as preventative health measures, increasing the pool of human donors, research into artificial organs, and the surgical repair of damaged organs.

Amazing Vegan Burgers!

These are sensational and well wroth the effort.  Recipe from One Green Planet

Sweet Potato Burgers With Green Tahini [Vegan, Gluten-Free]

Serves 12-14

Ingredients

• 1 red bell pepper
• ½ red onion
• 2 cans chickpeas
• 1 cup packed cilantro or parsley (or half and half)
• 
3 cloves garlic
• 1 cup almonds
• 2 tbsp cumin
• 3 tsp coriander
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• 2½ tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes (1½ cup), steamed or baked, peeled and mashed
• ¾ cup quick-cooking oats

Green Tahini Sauce:

• 
1/2 cup tahini
• ½ cup water
• 
juice of 1 lemon
• 1 cup packed fresh mint, cilantro, and parsley (or your favorite fresh herbs)
• 
1 tsp sea salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Preparation

Burgers:

1. In a food processor pulse and chop the red bell pepper and red onion. Pour the chopped veggies into a large mixing bowl. Place the chickpeas and cilantro/parsley into the food processor and blend until the chickpeas are a thick mealy texture. Pour into the mixing bowl with peppers and onions. Place the garlic, almonds, and spices into the food processor and blend until the almonds are a crumbly texture. Pour into the mixing bowl.
2. Mash the sweet potato with a fork, or place it in the food processor and blend until smooth. Pour it over the contents of the mixing bowl followed by the oats, and stir well to combine the ingredients. Season to taste with more sea salt and spice.
3. Place the burger batter in the refrigerator to firm up for an hour or longer.
4. Preheat oven to 375°, and line one or two baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop about ¾ cup of the batter into your hands and form into a tight patty. Place the patty onto the baking sheet, and repeat with the remaining batter. Make sure that the patties are not too close to each other on the baking sheet (2 inches separating is good). Bake for 40 minutes, or until cooked through. After removing them from the oven, allow the patties to cool for at least 15 minutes before trying to remove them with a spatula or your hands.
5. Serve with green tahini on bread, lettuce, or solo. Bon appetit!

Green Tahini Sauce:

1. Place the tahini, water, lemon, herbs, and sea salt into a blender. Blend until smooth, slowly add in the olive oil.

Gooey chocolate brownies!

At last!  A recipe for vegan chocolate brownies that actually works!  And proper sticky rich gooey ones too.  This recipe has been 2 years in the finding and along the way there have been a lot of charred chocolate casualties.  But this one is a keeper and totally idiot proof so get your chocolatey chops around this…

From The Vegan Society website:

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 oz / 75g margarine
• 1 1/2 oz / 45g / 5 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 1/2 floz / 75ml soya milk
• 7 oz / 200g caster sugar
• 6 oz / 160g plain white flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 oz / 20g / 2 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 4 oz / 115g caster sugar
• 6 fl oz / 170 ml soya milk
• 1 1/2 fl oz / 45ml vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C, Gas Mark 4.
2. Combine first four ingredients in a saucepan and gently bring to the boil. Simmer for 1 minute, stirring well. Put saucepan into a bowl of cold water and beat sauce until it cools and thickens. Set aside.
3. Sieve flour, baking powder, cocoa and sugar into a bowl. Mix soya milk, vegetable oil and vanilla essence together. Stir flours, soya milk mixture and sauce together – do not overmix.
4. Place in a greased and lined tin roughly 10″ x 8″ and bake for 30 minutes.

I ate mine warm from the oven with Booja Booja’s vanilla ice cream.  Heaven!

Best green smoothie recipe

I may have discovered the best green smoothies recipe. Well I haven’t discovered it, The Minimalist Baker has. Here it is – http://minimalistbaker.com/my-favorite-green-smoothie/

I used frozen strawberries and raspberries and also added in a tbsp of chia and a tsp of spirulina and wheatgrass. The peanut butter disguises their flavour perfectly and it just tastes like a creamy bananaey peanut butter milkshake.

All three girls nailed it for brekkie too which is the ultimate green smoothies test.

Success at last!

Mother’s Day vegan brekkie

That’ll do! This is what Ed and the girls have produced this morning for me. Vegan hollandaise sauce (recipe from http://www.hotforfoodblog.com/recipes/2014/2/27/vegan-hollandaise-sauce) on mushrooms, baby spinach and avocado, on delicious multi seed toast.

Completely delicious!

X

No such thing as humane slaughter

I’m writing to a lot of ‘meat processing units’ at the moment asking if I can come along one day and have a look around and watch the slaughtering process in person. Unsurprisingly no one is rushing forward to invite me in. This short 1 minute video is of a mobile slaughter unit and is about as ‘humane’ as any slaughtering facility you are likely to come across.

And yet watching this both sickens and saddens me. It just shows, even at the best end of the miserable spectrum, how totally inexcusable it is to take these animals lives just because they taste good. Slaughter at it’s most humane is sickeningly inhumane and does not belong in this day and age. When will we all wake up and see how immoral and unethical our treatment of farmed animals is? It just makes me feel incredibly sad that we live in a world where this is the mainstream diet and veganism is still viewed as extreme. Just bonkers!

What will our great grandchildren think of us? Will they think of us like we do the nazis? Just not be able to fathom how we could behave in a way so obviously at total odds with all of our values, morals and principles. It will be inconceivable to them I think. They will wonder how we could possibly have not seen how barbaric and wrong what we were doing was and we will offer the same feeble excuses – well everyone else was doing it. We’d been doing it like that for hundreds of years. It tasted good. I just didn’t really think about the animals. I probably knew deep down that i wasn’t entirely comfortable with it but I never had to look it in the face. It all happened behind closed doors so we didn’t really make the connection.

Well make the connection. Don’t turn a blind eye. Do the right thing. Live by your own principles. Live by your own moral compass. You don’t want to cause harm or suffering or death to anyone so why would you when it is so unnecessary to your health or happiness? Go vegan today and it will change your life for the better in more ways than you could possibly imagine.

Rant rant rant. Tired. Bed time. Night night.

Mango and coconut raw cheesecake

Here’s today’s pud. Super easy and quick to make. Looks sensational and the perfect thing to celebrate and welcome the first days of Spring! Hoorah!

Full recipe can be found at http://honestlyhealthyfood.com

Neat little poster…

Skool of Vegan

Skool of Vegan is a new initiative aimed at trying to get people to look at their eating habits and attitudes towards animals in a more critical way.  Their mission statement is: ‘Because making the connection is child’s play’.   It certainly makes for some uncomfortable reading and I admire their original approach.  Whether you like the drawings or not its hard to deny the underlying truth and i think they do a good job of highlighting the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of what we teach our kids.  I think it’s probably a little too heavy handed for most people’s taste and therefore I doubt they will reach people in the way they’d like to.  Perhaps a less aggressive tone might have spoken to more people…?  What do you think?  Here a few…

Something to bear in mind as Mother’s Day approaches…

Next time you eat a piece of meat, take a moment to think about the fact that it had a mother.

If it’s pork you’re eating – think about that piglet being removed from it’s mother within just a few days of being born and slaughtered within 3 – 6 months.

If it’s lamb you’re eating – know that it was removed from its mother within a few months of being born and killed within 3 – 10 months.

If it’s chicken you’re eating – know that it was never even allowed to meet it’s mother and was killed within 6 weeks of being born.

If it’s beef you’re eating – know that they have been slaughtered within just 1 to 2 years.

If it’s dairy you’re eating, know that the calf which this mother had to bear in order for you to steal and consume her milk, was taken away within the first 2 days of its life and either shot or slaughtered at 16 – 20 weeks for veal.

And if this thought alone doesn’t make you reconsider eating meat then please take a long hard look at these photos and ask yourself how you can possibly justify stealing any animal’s young away from them for the brutal and shameful act of slaughter, merely because you like the way they taste.

These beautiful images are all from this website:

http://m.atchuup.com/wild-animals-and-their-youngs/

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Arcadia’s rude awakening…

So my daughter (Arcadia, 5 yrs old) has started to notice that Ed and I don’t eat meat, eggs or dairy and is beginning to ask questions.  This shouldn’t be tricky but of course it is because all I want, as a parent, is to be able to answer any questions my children might ask me, as honestly and thoughtfully as I can and with eating animals this is tricky.  For example… here’s yesterday’s conversation:

Arcadia: “Mummy why don’t you eat sausages?”

Me: “Because sausages are made from pork which comes from pigs and I don’t want to eat pigs”.

Arcadia: “Sausages don’t come from pigs mummy they come from shops”.

Me: “Yes we buy them from shops but they are made from pigs that have been raised and killed for their meat”.

Arcadia: “But that’s horrible.  Why would people kill pigs?”

Me: “Because they like the taste of sausages”.

Arcadia: “Maybe they don’t know their sausages come from pigs – I think we should tell them.  Or maybe it should say pig on the packet and not sausages and then people would know not to eat them.  I don’t think the school knows that sausages are pig because then people wouldn’t eat them”.

Now why people would choose to kill and eat pigs when they don’t need to is completely flabbergasting to me so how on earth I explain it to a 5 yr old I don’t know.  Because of course it makes entirely no sense to her – as it doesn’t to me. Now I could tell her what my parents told me which was that pigs and cows are here to provide us with food.  I could say that they live long and happy lives on Old Macdonalds farm before one day, after a long and happy life, they wander down the lane to the cosy slaughterhouse and get turned into scrummy sausages for the lovely butchers.  But of course I can’t because we all know this is utter bullshit.  So I am left with trying to tell her the truth, to arm her with the facts so that she can then make up her own mind, without leaving her entirely dumbstruck, appalled and confused because these aren’t things that a 5 yr old should be feeling.  But the facts leave her feeling all of those things.

Luckily there is a Rastafarian boy in her class who is vegetarian and a Hindu girl who doesn’t eat beef and a Jewish boy who doesn’t eat pork and only eats kosher and lots of Muslim children who only eat halal so she can discuss all of their food choices with them and make up her own mind.

Today she told granny that she didn’t want to eat the fish that she’d bought her for lunch because she didn’t want to ‘kill fishes”.  Granny promptly cooked and fed her fish anyway so its clearly going to be a long and bumpy road…

Any advice from parents, teachers, siblings etc who have fielded questions on the subject from curious small people is very welcome!

“Going vegan changed my life”

The following article was published by the Daily Express on Feb 23rd 2015.  Thought it was worth sharing as is always interesting to hear other people’s stories, how they came to veganism, what they struggle with, what their advice is etc…

Healthy living guru Angela Liddon explains how giving up animal products helped her overcome an eating disorder

Veganism is a big trend for 2015. Beyoncé announced recently that she is launching a vegan food delivery service and she is just one of many celebrities who have decided to cut animal products out of their diet completely.

For healthy living guru Angela Liddon however, going vegan wasn’t just a celebrity fad. Instead she says that after years of suffering from an eating disorder, it gave her life back to her.

Angela’s problems started when she was just 11.

“When I hit puberty, I started to get curves and gained a bit of weight. I felt I wasn’t thin enough like the girls in fashion magazines so I started to diet,” she explains.

Starving herself for days on end, then binge eating, Angela, now 32, fixated on how much fat she was eating and the amount of exercise she could do.

“Even though I was very thin my body image was worse than ever. I thought that by losing the weight I would accept myself more but found I only became more critical of how I looked. It was a vicious circle,” she says.

It wasn’t until Angela was in her mid-20s that she decided enough was enough. “I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I lacked energy in my day-to-day life and I desperately wanted to change,” she says.

“My eating disorder also negatively impacted on my relationships as it made me insecure, moody and withdrawn. I knew something needed to give if I was going to have healthy relationships in my life and most of all learn how to accept myself.”

After hearing about how healthy a vegan diet can be she decided to try it out for herself. Soon, she was hooked.

“Eating a balanced plant-based diet gave me so much energy straight away,” she says. “I felt happier, balanced and like I could accomplish so much more. It was a revelation.”

Inspired by her new lease of life Angela, who lives in Ontario, Canada, decided to start a blog to share her struggles with food and how going vegan had turned her life around.

After its launch in 2008 she was inundated with messages from readers. “I was amazed and humbled by all the people who wrote saying that my blog changed their life,” she says.

During the past six years she has created more than 600 vegan recipes and built up six million regular readers. Now, as she launches her first cookbook, Angela says she hopes her journey eating her way back to health will continue to inspire others to go vegan too.

The Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon, published March 4, (Penguin, £16.25) is available from amazon.co.uk

FIVE GOLDEN FOOD RULES

1 MAKE TIME

Set aside time each weekend to prepare food for the week ahead. Roast a couple of pans of seasonal vegetables, soak and cook chickpeas and prep kale and homemade dressing for salads. This will make throwing together weeknight meals much easier.

2 DON’T WORRY ABOUT OTHERS

If you want to make changes, do so for you and you alone. Don’t let outside opinions put you off. You never know, if you feel good, look healthy and your skin’s glowing others may want to do it too.

3 SWEAT EVERY DAY

You’ll feel your best if you get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. It can be as simple as walking outdoors but make sure whatever it is you enjoy doing it. Mix it up to keep it interesting. Try indoor cycling classes, brisk hill walking on the treadmill, weights and hiking.

4 EAT BREAKFAST

Skipping breakfast is never a good idea as you’ll end up starving by lunch and over-eating. If you want something light have a green protein smoothie or a bowl of vegan overnight oats.

5 MAKE ROOM FOR TREATS

Depriving yourself will only make you want something more. Therefore include room for desserts and treats in your diet, in moderation of course.

Try a raw chocolate pudding made with blended banana, avocado, cocoa powder, vanilla, and sea salt topped with roasted hazelnuts and whipped coconut cream. It’s easy to make and, while sweet, it’s full of goodness.

SMART SWAPS TO BOOST YOUR DIET

Ditch: COW’S MILK

Try: Almond milk. Choose the unsweetened kind and use it where you would normally use cow’s milk.

Ditch: DAIRY CREAM

Try: Full-fat coconut cream. You can whip it just like you would regular dairy cream. It’s great in desserts, puddings, soup and more.

Ditch: BUTTER

Try: Virgin coconut oil. You can use coconut oil in just about everything from raw desserts to baked goods to stir-fries.

Heart-healthy, it has antifungal and antibacterial properties. However if you’re not a fan of the flavour you can use refined coconut oil.

Ditch: MINCE

Try: Lentil-walnut taco “meat”. A mixture of toasted walnuts, lentils, chilli powder, garlic, olive oil, cumin and salt.

Ditch: DAIRY SOUR CREAM

Try: Cashew sour cream. Blend soaked cashews, water lemon juice, cider vinegar and seasoning until smooth.

Live and Let Live

Have just watched this feature length documentary on veganism and would highly recommend it to everyone, vegan or not.

It examines our relationship with animals, the history of veganism and the ethical, environmental and health reasons that move people to go vegan.
Food scandals, climate change, lifestyle diseases and ethical concerns move more and more people to reconsider eating animals and animal products. From butcher to vegan chef, from factory farmer to farm sanctuary owner – Live and Let Live tells the stories of six individuals who decided to stop consuming animal products for different reasons and shows the impact the decision has had on their lives.
Philosophers such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Gary Francione join scientists T. Colin Campbell and Jonathan Balcombe and many others to shed light on the ethical, health and environmental perspectives of veganism.
Through these stories, Live and Let Live showcases the evolution of veganism from its origins in London 1944 to one of the fastest growing lifestyles worldwide, with more and more people realising what’s on their plates matters to animals, the environment and ultimately – themselves.

And it has a lovely soundtrack too…

“A French chef says no to beef”. Well I never….

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/bruno-loubet-i-am-not-vegan-or-vegetarian-but-beef-is-out-9970350.html

Easy cheap delicious quick vegan supper!

Tonight’s delicious supper:
Quinoa cooked with bouillon
Chickpeas fried in coconut oil, cumin, paprika and turmeric
Steamed broccoli, edamame beans and baby spinach
Sprinkling of toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds
Drizzle of oil and season.
Voila.
Super cheap, super tasty, super healthy, super quick, super easy!

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10152792653215560&id=8382915559

Top 10 Vegan Pancake Recipes!

Tomorrow is of course Shrove Tuesday, so in case any of you are wondering how on earth you are going to honour such a day without access to eggs, then fear not.  Here are my top ten tried and tested vegan pancake recipes – all of them eggless and still eggcellent!

1. One Ingredient Chef’s Classic Vegan Pancakes  

2. Jamie Oliver’s Vegan Blueberry Pancakes

3. Post Punk Kitchen’s ‘Puffy Pillow Pancakes’

4. BBC’s ‘Vegan Mushroom and Tomato Pancakes’

5. OhSheGlows’ ‘Strawberry Shortcake Stacked Pancakes’

 

6. Hungry Curious’ ‘Three Ingredient Vegan Pancakes’  

7. Vegan Insanity’s ‘Lemon Poppy Seed Pancakes with Blueberry Compote’

8. Minimalist Baker’s ‘Oreo Cookie Pancakes’  

9.  Deb Gleason’s ‘Chocolate Protein Banana Pancakes’

10. Why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone and make your loved ones some Valentine’s themed vegan pancakes, with Vegan Woman’s ‘Valentine’s Day Chocolate Chip and Strawberry Pancakes’

Vegan at the Baftas…

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/08/veganism-celebrities-baftas-beyonce-health-animal-welfare

Quick fry up…

Here’s a super quick, easy, cheap and healthy vegan fry up I made this morning to lure everyone out of bed on this fararararareeeeezing February morning.

Garlic mushrooms, plum tomatoes and fresh spinach on toast. Sprinkle some pine nuts, coriander and fresh chilli on top for a bit of zing.

Now we’re ready to face the weekend. Happy weekend all x

Go wild for the Wild Food Cafe

I finally made it to the Wild Food Café in Covent Garden today.  I’ve been meaning to go for months and months and it was well worth the wait.

It’s tucked away above Neal’s Yard.  It’s cosy (seats about 40 people) but bright and airy.  It’s a really lovely space with the kitchen in full view bang in the middle and you can either sit at the bar that runs all around the kitchen and watch them cooking or at one of the 4 big tables overlooking Neal’s Yard.  Today it was absolutely freezing outside but the sun was pouring in through the large bay windows and it felt like a little haven of friendly, cosy, welcoming, warmth on an Arctic London day.

 

It describes itself as a ‘raw-centric food restaurant’ and uses ‘wild, fresh, colourful gourmet ingredients & plant-based (vegan and vegetarian) cuisine’.  The vast majority of the menu is vegan and a lot of it raw.  For anyone who is nervous of the phrase ‘raw vegan’ and presumes they will be faced with a plateful of rabbit food sprinkled with bird feed then fear not – it is astonishing what these guys create and you really don’t even notice that it’s raw.

I started with their ‘Incredible Green’ super smoothie –  apple, celery, lemon, banana, kale, fresh coconut, fresh aloe vera, fresh irish moss.  It’s £6 which is pretty expensive but it’s almost a meal in itself.  A hearty comforting glass of goodness.

Then I ordered THE WILD BURGER – scrumtious shiitake, raw olive & dulse burger with in-house cultured Wild Sauce, tomatillo salsa verde, caramelised onions, baba ganoush & crispy gem lettuce in a wholemeal sprouted organic wheatbread(V)(N)(R) £12.  Completely delicious and filling, although not the biggest plate of food for £12.

 

 

  Ed had the WILD PIZZA SPECIAL – raw, dairy-free young coconut cheeze, wild sea purslane & basil pesto, raw cultured tomato & goji berry marinara, Turkish olives, artichoke hearts, avocado(V)(N)(R) £12.5  This was the star of the show and honestly one of the most delicious meals I have ever had in my life.  It made me want to rush out and buy a dehydrator immediately!  

The desserts looked amazing but we ran out of time sadly – but now I have an excuse to go back as soon as I possibly can…

Oh and the waiting staff are really knowledgeable and helpful… and exceedingly attractive which is always always a bonus!

Wild Food Café has a real community feeling about it.  They offer cooking courses, full moon feasts, meditation sessions, gourmet meals with guest chefs etc… Go check it out!

Wild Food Cafe

And go Fox Mulder! The truth is out there…

http://www.ecorazzi.com/2015/02/02/david-duchovny-tackles-animal-rights-veganism-in-new-book/

Vegan recipes you’d never know we’re vegan!

https://www.homemadebyyou.co.uk/articles/cooking/its-vegan-7-delicious-recipes-youd-never-guess-were-vegan

15 great Veganuary recipes from food52.com

If you’re running thin on recipe ideas then here’s some inspiration from the fantastic food blog food52.com :

I don’t love New Year’s resolutions, especially those that involve the words “diet,” “detox,” or “cleanse.” But if the start of 2015 has you thinking about incorporating more meatless meals into your repertoire, then so much the better. This is a wonderful time of year to explore a plant-based diet, and see where small changes take you.

In my experience, it’s easiest and most enjoyable to explore veganism one recipe at a time. Fortunately, there’s a vegan recipe for everyone. Whether you love soups and stews, hearty casseroles, crispy kale salads, or a crunchy platter of seared tempeh, you won’t be disappointed in this round up of hearty — but healthy — favorites from The New Veganism.

Warm Kimchi Bowl with Spicy Broccoli and Sesame-Scallion Wild Rice

Lemon Tahini Dressing

Raw Buckwheat Breakfast Porridge

Tofu Breakfast Scramble

Vegan Pad Thai

Apricot, Date, and Cashew Snack Balls

Snow Pea, Cabbage, and Mizuna Salad with Marinated and Seared Tempeh

Wintery Mushroom, Kale, and Quinoa Enchiladas

Farro with Leeks and Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Yam and Peanut Stew with Kale

Hearty Kale Salad with Kabocha Squash, Pomegranate Seeds, and Toasted Hazelnuts

Raw Kale Salad with Lentils and Sweet Apricot Vinaigrette

Green Smoothie with Avocado

Tempeh and Sweet Potato Hash

Black Bean and Corn Burgers

Photos by James Ransom

For the full article and links to all the recipes then just head here

New vegan boots!

I’ve been looking for a good pair of vegan boots to replace my old leather ones and have finally found them!  These are from Vegetarian Shoes and are made from raw bucky material.  They are super comfy, warm and cosy and are lined with a synthetic woollen-look fleece.  Made in Portugal.  £79 which is great value I reckon.  Highly recommend!

Horrible and gruesome photo – but reminds us how barbaric ‘humane’ animal slaughter is.

Vegans are extreme?

Simples

We have absolutely no need to eat either.  So stop.

Best vegan pesto recipe…

Here’s a recipe I found on Food 52 for a delicious vegan pesto.  I make a huge vat of this on the weekend and use it all week on pasta, in baked potatoes, drizzled on tomatoes, in sandwiches, wraps, on toast, crackers – anything basically.  The kids love it too and you’d never know it was dairy free as the nutritional yeast gives it a deep cheesy kick!  It’s packed full of flavour so a little goes a long way.

Makes 1 generous cup

• 2 cups tightly packed fresh basil
• 1/2 cup walnuts or pine nuts
• 1 to 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped (to taste)
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 1tablespoon lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast

1. Place the basil, walnuts or pine nuts, and garlic in a food processor. Pulse to combine, until the mixture is coarsely ground.
2. Turn the motor on and drizzle the olive oil in a thin stream. Add the sea salt, pepper, lemon, and nutritional yeast, and pulse a few more times to combine.

Voila!

If you must eat meat, save it for Christmas

Here’s a great article by the wonderfully eloquent and engaging George Monbiot which was published in The Guardian on the 16th Dec 2014.

From chickens pumped with antibiotics to the environmental devastation caused by production, we need to realise we are not fed with happy farm animals.

What can you say about a society whose food production must be hidden from public view? In which the factory farms and slaughterhouses supplying much of our diet must be guarded like arsenals to prevent us from seeing what happens there? We conspire in this concealment: we don’t want to know. We deceive ourselves so effectively that much of the time we barely notice that we are eating animals, even during once-rare feasts, such as Christmas, which are now scarcely distinguished from the rest of the year.

It begins with the stories we tell. Many of the books written for very young children are about farms, but these jolly places in which animals wander freely, as if they belong to the farmer’s family, bear no relationship to the realities of production. The petting farms to which we take our children are reifications of these fantasies. This is just one instance of the sanitisation of childhood, in which none of the three little pigs gets eaten and Jack makes peace with the giant, but in this case it has consequences.

Labelling reinforces the deception. As Philip Lymbery points out in his book Farmageddon, while the production method must be marked on egg boxes in the EU, there are no such conditions on meat and milk. Meaningless labels such as “natural” and “farm fresh”, and worthless symbols such as the little red tractor, distract us from the realities of broiler units and intensive piggeries. Perhaps the most blatant diversion is “corn-fed”. Most chickens and turkeys eat corn, and it’s a bad thing, not a good one.

The growth rate of broiler chickens has quadrupled in 50 years: they are now killed at seven weeks. By then they are often crippled by their own weight. Animals selected for obesity cause obesity. Bred to bulge, scarcely able to move, overfed, factory-farmed chickens now contain almost three times as much fat as chickens did in 1970, and just two thirds of the protein. Stalled pigs and feedlot cattle have undergone a similar transformation. Meat production? No, this is fat production.

Sustaining unhealthy animals in crowded sheds requires lashings of antibiotics. These drugs also promote growth, a use that remains legal in the United States and widespread in the European Union, under the guise of disease control. In 1953, Lymbery notes, some MPs warned in the House of Commons that this could cause the emergence of disease-resistant pathogens. They were drowned out by laughter. But they were right.

This system is also devastating the land and the sea. Farm animals consume one third of global cereal production, 90% of soya meal and 30% of the fish caught. Were the grain now used to fatten animals reserved instead for people, an extra 1.3 billion could be fed. Meat for the rich means hunger for the poor.

What comes out is as bad as what goes in. The manure from factory farms is spread ostensibly as fertiliser, but often in greater volumes than crops can absorb: arable land is used as a dump. It sluices into rivers and the sea, creating dead zones sometimes hundreds of miles wide. Lymbery reports that beaches in Brittany, where there are 14 million pigs, have been smothered by so much seaweed, whose growth is promoted by manure, that they have had to be closed as a lethal hazard: one worker scraping it off the shore apparently died of hydrogen sulphide poisoning, caused by the weed’s decay.

It is madness, and there is no anticipated end to it: the world’s livestock population is expected to rise by 70% by 2050.

Four years ago, I softened my position on meat-eating after reading Simon Fairlie’s book Meat: A Benign Extravagance. Fairlie pointed out that around half the current global meat supply causes no loss to human nutrition. In fact it delivers a net gain, as it comes from animals eating grass and crop residues that people can’t consume.

Since then, two things have persuaded me that I was wrong to have changed my mind. The first is that my article was used by factory farmers as a vindication of their monstrous practices. The subtle distinctions Fairlie and I were trying to make turn out to be vulnerable to misrepresentation.

The second is that while researching my book Feral, I came to see that our perception of free-range meat has also been sanitised. The hills of Britain have been sheepwrecked – stripped of their vegetation, emptied of wildlife, shorn of their capacity to hold water and carbon – all in the cause of minuscule productivity. It is hard to think of any other industry, except scallop dredging, with a higher ratio of destruction to production. As wasteful and destructive as feeding grain to livestock is, ranching could be even worse. Meat is bad news, in almost all circumstances.

So why don’t we stop? Because we don’t know the facts, and because we find it difficult even if we do. A survey by the US Humane Research Council discovered that only 2% of Americans are vegetarians or vegans, and more than half give up within a year. Eventually, 84% lapse. One of the main reasons, the survey found, is that people want to fit in. We might know it’s wrong, but we block our ears and carry on.

I believe that one day artificial meat will become commercially viable, and that it will change social norms. When it becomes possible to eat meat without keeping and slaughtering livestock, live production will soon be perceived as unacceptable. But this is a long way off. Until then, perhaps the best strategy is to encourage people to eat as our ancestors did. Rather than mindlessly consuming meat at every meal, we should think of it as an extraordinary gift: a privilege, not a right. We could reserve meat for a few special occasions, such as Christmas, and otherwise eat it no more than once a month.

All children should be taken by their schools to visit a factory pig or chicken farm, and to an abattoir, where they should be able to witness every stage of slaughter and butchery. Does this suggestion outrage you? If so, ask yourself what you are objecting to: informed choice, or what it reveals? If we cannot bear to see what we eat, it is not the seeing that’s wrong, it’s the eating.

Hoorah for more vegan options…

This article was published in The Guardian last week – good news for vegans!

Missing the entire point!

Susannah Constantine has caused outrage by posting a picture of her ten-year-old daughter Cece proudly clutching a dead duck and with her face smeared with blood to mark her first kill.

I’ve been reading all the various reactions from people and mostly the debate has developed into whether or not you should be honest with your children about where meat comes from.  And this is missing the point entirely.

1. How much of the meat that you eat on a daily basis was killed on a country estate by posh people for ‘sport’?  The odd pheasant casserole possibly if you’re in the 1% of the country that takes part in these country pursuits but otherwise basically none of it.  So if ‘education’ is really what this is all about then you would presumably be as keen to take your kids around a slaughterhouse, a factory farm or a chicken shed? No I thought not… The reality is slightly less palatable isn’t it?

2.  Of course you should be honest with your children about where meat comes from – but not if you’re feeding them totally incorrect information.  Not if your moral compass is completely out of whack.  I was told from a very young age where meat comes from (I was raised on a small farm) but I never witnessed it.  The closest I came was when mum insisted we stay inside whilst dad strangled all the chickens that had stopped laying eggs so were now ‘surplus to requirements’.  Funnily enough, my parents weren’t shuffling us into ringside seats for this barbaric spectacle.  Alongside my education of where meat comes from I was also told that these animals were put here to feed us – that that was their purpose, their raison d’etre.   I was told that we needed meat to survive and that is was an entirely natural process.  What total nonsense!

3.  I was certainly not told the whole truth.  How most animals in the world are kept in horrific concentration camp conditions for their entire lives before being needlessly slaughtered at a dismally tender age.  I wasn’t told what happens to every single male chick born to the egg industry – minced alive at less than a day old by thousands.  I wasn’t told what happens to the dairy calves that aren’t wanted for veal – killed within the first week as ‘by-product’ of the dairy industry.  And I certainly wasn’t told that I could live a perfectly happy, healthy, compassionate life without ever having to eat, wear or use any animal products ever again.

So if the person guiding you through life’s moral maze is a member of the third reich and is telling you that it’s ok to gas someone because they are Jewish it’s probably not the kind of education I’d be wanting for my kids and its certainly not a defense to say that at least their being honest!

A child is incredibly easily influenced by what their parents say, as we all are by people in positions of authority to us, which is how otherwise decent human beings throughout history have been coerced into doing horrific things under the misguided guise of ‘doing the right thing’.

Teaching children that it’s ok to kill animals for sport or food is not okay in my book. It’s wrong, it’s confusing, it’s deeply irresponsible and it’s dangerous.  If we want to raise the next generation of children to be compassionate, free thinking, rational individuals then we need to start being honest about how inexcusable it is in this day and age to consume any animal products of any kind.

Rant over.

Vegan silver lining…

So I’ve just had my wallet stolen straight out of my bag which was hanging on the back of a cubicle door at the local swimming pool whilst I tool the girls for a quick pee before their swimming class.  Aggghhhh!  But rather than dwell on feeling furious that the chances of the next person to walk into that cubicle being the type of person who would nab a wallet and run rather than hand it into reception (I reckon about 1 in 50) I am choosing to believe that they are someone who is having a bad streak and in desperate need of some extra cash and they will spend it wisely and appreciatively.  hmmm…

But apart from the £50 cash I’d gotten out that day to pay the plumber (!) what I’m most annoyed about losing is my beautiful Matt & Nat wallet which I only bought earlier this year.  But every cloud and all that – now I get to choose another one and ask Santa for it this Christmas…

Matt & Nat are by far the most stylish vegan bag and accessories design label I’ve come across. Matt (standing for material) and Nat (for Nature) have a great motto which is ‘live beautifully’ and they design understated, beautiful pieces that are ethically made and sustainably sourced.  They’re not cheap but they’re reasonably priced for what they are.

Check them out… http://mattandnat.com/

Now.. which wallet do I go for…?

A vegan in Uganda…

We’ve just returned from 2 weeks in Uganda.

We had no idea whether we’d be able to continue being vegan or not and so were pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually pretty easy.  We were staying in an area called Masaka which is a large sprawling town 140 km from Kampala.

Cooking and eating revolves around the weekly food market that descends on the town every Friday and Saturday.  Local farmers bring their produce in large wheelbarrows to sell and the streets are literally groaning with fresh fruit, veg and spices.  Every stall looks identical and is selling identical produce at identical prices so I have no idea how people decide who to buy their week’s bounty from!  But there are plenty to choose from.

What’s available is obviously entirely seasonal but there seemed to be plenty on offer in October.  Potatos of various varieties, colours and textures, avocados the size of pineapples, passion fruit, jack fruit, sweet potatos, tomatos, green beans of all kinds, pineapples galore, mangos, aubergines, chillies, bananas and plantain absolutely everywhere, oranges, lemons, limes, paw paws – absolutely plenty to keep you satisfied!

Avoiding meat was very easy as meat is such a luxury that it is actually quite difficult to come by.  The meat that was available was hanging very uninvitingly in the sun from large butchers hooks, dripping blood and still covered in fat, gristle and patches of skin.

Dairy is relatively hard to come by also.  We didn’t see any cheese for sale in Masaka.  You can get it in supermarkets in Kampala but it’s very expensive so presumably is imported in.  We got long life soya milk in Kampala so we didn’t have to drink cow’s milk.  Vegetable butter is easy to get so that’s not a problem.  When eating out there was almost always a vegan curry option but I confess we had the occasional non-vegan pizza when we were all curried out!

I was interested to know how people would react to our being vegans and was surprised to find that everyone was very accepting and understanding of it.  As soon as we explained that we don’t eat any animal products people just nodded and seemed to understand.  Which just goes to show that you should never underestimate people.

Miso-Marinated Portobello Carpaccio (Vegan)

Last night’s ridiculously delicious supper!

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons red or white miso paste
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons juice plus 2 tablespoons thinly sliced zest from 1 lemon, plus 1 extra whole lemon, cut into wedges
• 4 portobello mushroom caps, stems and dark gills removed
• 4 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 ounces arugula or other spicy greens
• 2 tablespoons toasted pistachios, roughly chopped or pressed in a mortar and pestle
• Coarse sea salt such as fleur de sel or Maldon
• Freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Combine miso paste, brown sugar, soy sauce, vegetable oil, and lemon juice in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Marinade in fridge for at least an hour or overnight preferably.
2. When ready to prepare, preheat oven to 350°F. Remove mushroom caps and wipe off excess marinade with paper towels. Place on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet gill-side-down and roast until top surface is dry and mushroom is tender throughout, about 30 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board and let rest 5 minutes to cool slightly.
3. Using a very sharp knife, cut mushrooms on a sharp bias into thin slices. Transfer slices to a serving platter or individual platters, fanning them as you go. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil. Sprinkle with lemon zest, pistachios, black pepper, and coarse sea salt. Toss arugula with remaining 1 teaspoon olive oil, squeezing one of the reserved lemon wedges over the greens. Top mushrooms with arugula and serve.  Et voila!

Thank you ‘Serious Eats’ for this recipe!

“Lobsters do feel pain? Oh. Ummm… well sorry for all the boiling alive guys…”

So it turns out that lobsters, octopus, prawns, crabs, squid etc probably do feel pain.  This article was recently published in the New Scientist and suggests that all of these animals not only feel pain but some of them feel it more acutely than humans do.

But do people care?  Will everyone who read the latest evidence in the New Scientist or all of you reading this blog post now, finish reading this and then vow to stop eating these animals?  No, most won’t according to what history shows us.  Not until the vegan movement gathers a lot more momentum and swells to much bigger numbers.  Why not?  I don’t understand why otherwise kind, caring, compassionate people don’t change their behaviour once they’ve discovered that that behaviour causes pain and suffering to innocent sentient animals. We’re not talking about political allegiance or tastes in music or something that is inconsequential in terms of pain and suffering.  We are talking about a global genocide that is causing billions of animals every year to endure immense abuse, pain and suffering.  Is that how incapable we are of thinking for ourselves, of acting upon proven facts, of swimming against the tide, of challenging the status quo?  It makes me feel so sad and angry and disappointed. But more than that it baffles me.  I’m not any more compassionate than anyone else.  I don’t love animals any more than anyone else?  I don’t enjoy seeing an animal suffer any more or less than anyone else I doubt.  We all have the same reaction when we see an animal in pain – we empathise enormously and will do everything we can to stop it’s suffering.  So why the massive blind spot when it comes to eating animals and animal products?  Is it ignorance?  It is fear?  I think we all know deep down that the process by which meat gets to our plates cannot be a wholly pleasant one.  But somehow we deem it worthwhile for the pleasure of taste and the fear of change.  So we do everything we can to remain ignorant and hide behind pathetic justifications such as ‘but we’ve always eaten meat’ (and?  we’ve also always enslaved other people and raped and pillaged our way around the world – it doesn’t mean it’s okay!) and ‘we need it for protein’ (no you do NOT).

The second I discovered what happens to the billions of male chicks born each year I vowed to never eat eggs again.  As soon as I discovered that I didn’t need to eat meat of any kind in order to eat a healthy, full and balanced diet I vowed to never be responsible for the slaughter of another pig, cow, duck, chicken, sheep, lamb or chicken.  I just the same way as when I discovered how foie gras was made I vowed never to eat it again. As soon as I discovered what veal was I vowed never again to eat it.  As soon as i discovered the life cycle of a dairy cow I vowed to never eat dairy again.  As soon as I discovered the human rights abuses committed by Primark I vowed never to shop there again.  As soon as I discovered the environmental ruin that Nestle is causing around the world I vowed never to buy their products again.  Why doesn’t everyone else.  Ignorance is a good enough answer if you really didn’t know.  But once you do know – what excuse do you have to continue to perpetuate the problem?

I’m bored of being polite and saying oh well some people don’t want to offend others or stand out from the crowd or be the objects of ridicule.  It’s not good enough.  Do better.  We all need to be better.  How can we pretend to preach the values of right and wrong to our children if we ourselves are knowingly perpetrating these cruel acts of needless violence and suffering day in and day out.  Enough.

Please stop eating and exploiting animals.  No more excuses.

Thanks for your concern…

I had one of those amusing slash infuriating moments recently that all vegans and veggies have to put up with often.  I was sat eating my lunch (steamed kale, spinach, chickpeas and broccoli with a tahini and lemon dressing) whilst a colleague ate hers (mozzarella and bacon Panini with a packet of crisps).  Over the course of our lunch she tried to explain to me why she thinks veganism is a bad idea.  Her reasoning:

1. It’s too expensive

2. It’s dangerous to cut out entire food groups from your diet

3.  It’s an unnatural diet and not one that we are designed to eat

Hmmm…. I sat there looking from my plate to her plate and back again and wondered how she could not see the irony and complete nonsense of what she was saying.  There was I, a committed vegan for nearly 2 years, eating a plateful of the most nutritious, tasty, cheap, locally grown, organic whole food whilst she sat across from me eating a plateful of high cholesterol, high fat, unhealthy, expensive, factory farmed, deep fried, highly processed rubbish!

Now I’m not saying you can’t eat a really healthy non-vegan diet because of course you can.  But I’m saying it’s astounding how often people will completely ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to discussing the health benefits of veganism.  They’ll start muttering on about vitamin B12, iron levels and zinc and dive straight into the nitty gritty of the possible nutritional shortfalls of a vegan diet if you don’t do it sensibly, whilst ignoring the fact that I’m there snacking on an apple and they’re on their fifth chocolate digestive…

Confused.com

There were 2 big stories in the news last week which demonstrate how utterly arbitrary, hypocritical and deluded our morality is when it comes to animal ethics in this country.

Firstly there was the appallingly cruel arson attack on a Manchester dogs home in which 53 dogs died.  This story became bigger news for the fact that people were so moved by this deeply upsetting story that a JustGiving page was set up and donations flooded in from all over the world, exceeding £1.3 million in less than 3 days.  Staggering.  Heart warming.  Amazing.  It goes to show how deeply people care about dogs – even dogs that have been left unclaimed in a dogs home – dogs that would largely have been pit bull terriers and Rottweilers and other such breeds.  Breeds which are at the less ‘cute and cuddly’ end of the doggy scale.  And still people are enormously upset by the idea of these dogs suffering such a painful and frightening death.

In contrast, on the same day, there is a story about a cull that had been carried on miniature pigs and piglets in the Swansea area.

Over 100 micro-pigs were culled by a licensed professional.  “These animals presented a serious risk to other livestock in the region in the event of a disease outbreak, and because of this we were left with no option but to carry out a cull,” said a spokesperson. What a load of horseshit!  The only threat these animals could possibly offer is if they come into contact with farm bred infected pigs as they could then spread the disease.  Why on earth should these wild pigs pay the heaviest price for the farmers carelessness.  If the commercially bred pigs weren’t harbouring disease in the first place then there wouldn’t be a problem.  It’s exactly the same story with the badger cull and TB.  The farmers should ensure that their cattle don’t get TB and if they do then they should pay the price.  They shouldn’t be farming cattle in the first place as far as I’m concerned so I’m afraid I have little sympathy.   If culling innocent badgers is their solution then they clearly it’s a non-starter of a business model!

These same farmers who claim to be animal lovers were the ones who put pressure on Swansea Council in the first place to carry out this appalling cull.  Yes, some farmers may care about their livestock, but as soon as something might get in the way of their profit margins, you see where they really stand on animal welfare issues.

The slaughter of these innocent, healthy and harmless pet pigs amounts to an atrocity that should be totally unacceptable to an educated and caring society.

Slice of Cruelty

Another week, another horrific undercover video revealing the horrific abuse and cruelty that goes on in many dairy farms around the world.  This was taken by a mercy for Animals undercover reporter who got a job at a dairy in New Mexico for several weeks.   It shows workers punching, kicking and whipping cows and shocking their genitals with electric prods, tossing calves into truck beds, using heaving equipment to force sick animals into confined spots and committing other types of abuse.

Watch here!

It’s not easy to watch but I think it’s really important that people are made aware of what goes on behind closed doors.  People cannot be held accountable for financing these industries if they are not made aware of what it is they are directly supporting.  Most people have no idea of the cruel practices that go on in the agricultural sector.  I certainly didn’t until I undertook my own research and I am convinced that as soon as people are made aware of the horrific acts of animal abuse that are so endemic on factory farms around the world, they will stop consuming their products and lining their pockets.  Unfortunately the industry is obviously going to do everything in their powers to keep this out of public view and, such are their lobbying powers, so too are governments.  So it is left up to animal rights activists, animal welfare groups and charities to do whatever they can to raise awareness and educate people as to what kind of practices they are unwittingly supporting and therefore responsible for.  It is unfortunate that people have to deceitfully pose as employees whilst secretly filming goings on, but there is no other way of showing people the truth.  If these kinds of videos don’t make people immediately stop eating these dairy products, at least at the restaurant chains that they know these dairy farms supply, then I honestly don’t know what will.

Even if you choose to believe what Tim McIntyre, vice president of communications for Domino’s, (Leprino Foods biggest client, supplied by this dairy amongst many others), says and believe that this is an ‘isolated case of sadistic acts by employees at a single dairy farm in southern New Mexico…’ (which endless undercover footage has sadly proven to be untrue – in 2010 another Mercy for Animals undercover investigation gathered similar footage at Willet dairy in New York, also supplying Leprino Foods.  They were closed down for a few months and reopened a year later when the bad press died down.  Another video was released showing appalling abuse at a beef farm, Bettencourt Farm, in 2012, one of Burger King’s biggest suppliers – yet no arrests were made and people still eat at Burger King…) then just the faintest possibility that this might not be the case would surely get anyone questioning whether or not subscribing to this industry is at all ethical or necessary.  At the very least this should stop you eating at any of the chains that are supplied by this dairy – Domino’s Pizza, Papa John’s and Pizza Hut for starters.

Or if you want to tell yourself that these are just a bunch of evil people getting sadistic kicks out of abusing innocent vulnerable animals and this is absolutely not your typical dairy industry employee, then read the book ‘Slaughterhouse’ by Gail A Eisnitz.  Gail interviews dozens and dozens of employees working in dairy farms and slaughterhouses across the US and these personal accounts of what really goes inside those walls will leave you feeling sick to your stomach that you have ever bought and eaten meat that has been processed in factory farms.

or if you tell yourself that you don’t buy meat that comes from factory farms then ask yourself where the lamb in your Cornish pasty has come from or where your service station chicken salad sandwich came from, or where your beef stock came from, or the milk in your hot chocolate powder or cadburys flake… There are animal products in so much of what you eat.  Way beyond the joint of expensive beef you might buy for your Sunday Roast.

And even if you do tell yourself that this kind of cruelty is limited to factory farms far far away from your table, then look at the zillion other reasons you shouldn’t be eating animals.  Start with the environment, then look at the ethics of eating an innocent vulnerable animal that you have absolutely no nutritional need for and then look at the enormous health benefits of an animal free diet.  The arguments are so obvious, the evidence is so resounding – the only way you can continue to consume and wear animal products is if you choose to deceive yourself.  And at the back of your mind, you know you are lying to yourself and you have to live with this niggling nugget of knowledge that you are part of this horrifically cruel, unnecessary and evil practice and you really should have had the balls to do something about it.  One day your grandchild will ask you – what did you do when you found out about the abuse and cruelty?  You stopped eating animals right and tried to get others to stop too?  Yes?  Right?

People cannot continue to turn a blind eye any longer.  People can no longer ignore the elephant in the room.  Even if you believe that there is such a thing as ‘humane slaughter’, producing meat on the scale that we are today cannot be done ethically or humanely.  Commodifying animal products in this way inevitably leads to enormous numbers and tiny profit margins.  Every penny is squeezed out of every animal and profits are driven through unethical means – mass scale production with more animals squeezed into smaller spaces, more gallons of milk squeezed out of mastitis engorged udders, animals being stuffed full of unnatural animal feed and dosed up on antibiotics, fattened obscenely quickly, slaughtered at a desperately young age and sold at a cheaper and cheaper price etc etc.

The greater the demand for food the more corners are cut and not only do the animals suffer appallingly but so we do as the cholesterol pours through our veins and blocks our arteries, raises our blood pressure, brings on heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, the list is endless!

If you don’t believe me go and do some research.  It’s like opening Pandora’s box.  Before you know it you’ll be glued to your computer with your jaw on the floor amazed at how something as ‘normal’ as eating meat, dairy and eggs can make you partly responsible for such horrific acts of violence and cruelty.

Trust me.  Do some research and see what you discover.

Easy, tasty, super healthy light lunch…

I baked some tofu for the first time this week and can’t believe I’ve waited this long to try it.  It’s entirely different to stir-fried tofu and the perfect thing for when you fancy a ‘meatier’ texture but don’t fancy mushrooms…  For this recipe I used firm tofu and then pressed it for 15 mins to get as much moisture out as I could.  Then I cut it into 1 inch cubes and marinated it for 2 hours in soy sauce, rice vinegar, grated fresh ginger, chilli paste, agave and minced garlic.  I then baked it in a hot oven (200 degrees c) for 40 mins so it was really chewy and added it to some lightly steamed baby spinach and squeezed some fresh lemon over it.

Along side this I made a really vibrant tasty salad –

1 cup quinoa, black olives, red and yellow tomatoes, cucumber, pine nuts, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds and torn basil.

Light but filling lunch.  Super easy to make and extraordinarily nutritious!

Breastfeeding booster!

Our 9lb chubster has an impressive appetite at the moment and therefore so do I!  Am breastfeeding exclusively so am ravenously hungry most of the time!  I made this juice on Saturday morning to make sure I’m getting all the nutrition I need and it was delicious so I thought it was worth sharing the recipe…

1 banana

1 apple

I large handful of spinach

1 stick celery

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 cup water

25ml elderflower cordial

1 tbsp Udo’s Oil

1 tsp acidophilus

1 tsp chia seeds

1 tsp flaxseed

1 tsp chlorella

1 tsp lucuma

Blend it all together and drink!

We had a baby!!!

Barley Rose MacLaren zoomed into the world on Tuesday at 3pm, weighing a hefty 9lb, deliciously pink and chubby.  Hoorah!

This was the first pregnancy I have experienced as a vegan and I have to say the stats are pretty compelling…

I only put on a stone and a half in the whole pregnancy (2 and a quarter with Arcadia and 2 with Indigo) and Barley was not only the biggest (Arcadia 8lb 2, Indigo 8lb 10) but by far the chubbiest and pinkest baby of all three.  I’m also 4/5 years older than I was with the last 2 pregnancies and yet had much more energy throughout.

 2 very proud big sisters!

Being pregnant is great as it means you have your bloods, urine, heart rate, blood pressure etc tested regularly.  Mine all tested great throughout.  So to all those out there who still believe you need meat, dairy and eggs to get enough calcium, iron, potassium etc into your diet – it is absolutely NOT true.  So long as you eat sensibly and take a vitamin B12 supplement then a well balanced vegan diet will give you all the nutrition you need!  Add to that the massive increase in energy, the sharpened clarity of thought, the ‘feel good factor’ of knowing that you are eating much more compassionately and I just can’t recommend it enough!

Right –  I’m off to feed Barley.

Next post should undoubtedly be about the dairy industry as there is nothing like breastfeeding your baby to remind you how appallingly cruel the dairy industry is…

 Just had first contraction!

A decent life..? A tragic waste more like

Whilst doing my research into the British meat industry, this is something that really hit me and made me question how justifiable eating meat could possibly be.  Like most people, I always thought to myself that farm animals had long, happy, healthy lives before being sent to a humane slaughter.  I think this is something that we all tell ourselves, although deep down we know that all these animals are killed at a horribly tender age and that there’s no such thing as a humane slaughter.  It’s murder, whether we think it’s justified or not.

But a good life?  Can such a short lifespan really ever be considered ‘a good life’?  Even if they were living on a 5* luxury farm complete with piggy pedicures and farmyard facials, I still don’t think being slaughtered so young can even qualify as ‘a good life’.

Look at the poster below.  Take a good look.  It’s pretty shocking when you think about it.  I know that when I first looked into this I realised that it wasn’t something I’d ever really considered.  Even ‘lamb’ – the clue’s in the name right? But even though I knew it was lamb I never really pictured a lamb when eating lamb.  It’s amazing what associations we let our minds make and what we managed to ignore or suppress. 

If a person dies at these equivalent ages (so with a life expectancy here in the UK of nearly 81 years – that would be the equivalent of being killed between the ages of 1 hour old and 9 years old.  Hardly what we’d ever term ‘a good innings’ is it?  however a happy life a child might have, if that child dies before it’s tenth birthday it’s considered an absolute tragedy to die so young; before his/her life had really even begun; what a waste; how incredibly sad.

So how on earth do we justify taking the lives of these animals at such a tender age? We can’t really can we if we really stop to think about it.  but somehow we all turn a blind eye and billions of animals are slaughtered every year way way before their time.  That’s the real tragedy. 

Supper…

Orange, chicory, black olives, capers, olive oil, red wine vinegar, sprinkling of brown sugar – really tasty, healthy, seasonal, cheap, quick and delicious!

Very clever and powerful video…

http://www.upworthy.com/no-one-applauds-this-woman-because-theyre-too-creeped-out-at-themselves-to-put-their-hands-together?g=3

Video by Catsnake Film

The speaker in this video is actually an actress named Kate Miles, but the facts about produce and its marketing are 100% real. The audience is also real, and thus the looks of disgust are totally real too.

It’s great to see animal rights being promoted in an intelligent and sophisticated way – without the usual gruesome undercover filming of abuse, torture and cruelty that no one can bear to watch and which therefore rarely has the desired effect and just strengthens people resolve to look the other way…

Study: Global Veganism Would Reduce Carbon Emissions More Than Energy Intervention

Yet another study proving what a devastating effect the meat industry is having on climate change.

Producing nearly 15% of the Earth’s greenhouse gas emissions, the meat industry is one of the top contributors to climate change. Slowly, very slowly, movements like Meatless Mondays and Vegan Before 6 have demonstrated the value, and deliciousness, of adopting a vegan diet, but a carnivorous diet is still seen as evidence of prosperity.

In 2009, researchers at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency calculated that global veganism would reduce agriculture-related carbon emissions by nearly 17%, methane emissions by 24%, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21% by 2050.

The researchers discovered that worldwide veganism, or even just worldwide vegetarianism, would achieve gains at a much lower cost that an energy intervention, like carbon taxes, for instance.

The study demonstrated tremendous value of a vegan or vegetarian diet in staving off climate change, but there are so many other benefits as well. Antibiotic resistance stemming from the meat consumed that has been pumped full of antibiotics would plummet. Pollution rates would drop significantly as factory farms, the biggest polluters in the meat industry, became a thing of the past. General human health and well-being would rise from a plant-based diet free from cholesterol and pharmaceuticals.

By 2050, the global population is predicted to reach a staggering 9 BILLION people. What are we going to do with all the cows currently taking up 25% of the Earth’s land area?