IVU Online News
2014-02 IVU News
on 02 March 2014. Posted in IVU Online News
Table of Contents
Press Conference Promotes IVU Vegfest 2014
IVU IC Elections
From Légumisme to Véganisme
Nutrition Facts Reaches 20 Million Page Views
This Issue’s HCYKTASEM
‘The Startling Intelligence of the Common Chicken’
Go Vegan Radio
Great Visual
The Dodo
Veg Videos
Book News 1 - Rabbit
Book News 2 - The Revive Café Cookbook 3
Book News 3 - The Happy Cow Cookbook
Video News 1 - Speciesism: The Movie
New Booklet from Vegan Outreach
Upcoming Events
Welcome to Organisations That Have Recently Registered with IVU
Other Online Sources of Veg News
Press Conference Promotes IVU Vegfest 2014
On February 5 2014, the 42nd International Vegetarian Union World VegFest to be held in Ghana from the 1st of October to the 6th 2014 gathered more momentum as the Vegetarian Association of Ghana officially launched the event in a special briefing for the media in Accra, Ghana’s capital.
The event, held at the International Press Center, was well attended and received coverage worthy of an event which would be the first of its kind on the African continent. The chairman of the occasion, a distinguished gentleman, Mr Akunu Dake, a vegetarian himself, who also happens to be the Chairman of the Ghana Tourist Authority, ably steered the affairs of the press briefing.
Special Guest, Mrs Samia Nkrumah, who also happens to be the daughter of Ghana’s first president - Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, also graced the occasion and spoke passionately about the need for the media to play the important role of carrying the message of the event to all corners of the country and well beyond. She has led the campaign against the adoption of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in the country.
In his welcome address, the Secretary of the Vegetarian Association of Ghana, Mr. Emmanuel Awunyo, said, “In recognition of the work we have done over the past nine years to promote the adoption of a plant based diet in Ghana, I am delighted to inform you that the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) has selected Ghana out of Africa as the host of the 42nd World Veg Fest”
Later this year, from October 1 - 6 Ghana, which happens to be the closest country to the geographic center of the Earth, shall say “Akwaaba” or welcome, to many vegetarians from across the globe. It will also be a fantastic opportunity to awaken the minds of thousands of Ghanaians and other Africans who may not know that following a plant based diet is the best way to eat to live.
The size of the Vegetarian Association of Ghana is growing; however, there is still a need for more members, and the media is an important partner in helping to sensitize the general public on the benefits of the plant based diets. The IVU World Vegfest comes at a most important time when there is a critical need for realistic interventions to overcome some of the frightening health challenges facing communities not only in Ghana but across the continent and indeed globally. Next month, the Vegetarian Association of Ghana will host a fundraiser to engage key stakeholders on the upcoming event.
IVU IC Elections
The election process for members of IVU’s International Council (IC) has begun. Emails were sent in February to IVU member organisations inviting them to nominate people for IC. Next, in March, the names and position statements of nominated candidates will be sent to IVU member organisations. Votes will be counted and the results will be announced by mid-year 2014.
If you are with an IVU member organisation, and your organization did not receive an invitation to nominate, please let IVU know at
From Légumisme to Véganisme
“A member of the Animal Protection Society who has obtained permission to replace the ox and spare him a tiring walk.” (Le Charivari 3rd February 1856)
by Tristan Grellet
French Vegans, who are sometimes regarded like beings from outer space, may rest assured that this is nothing new: their ancestors, the eccentric "légumistes", were regarded at best as wacky Utopians, at worst as worrying rebels. The term "légumiste" originally (in the 1750s) meant not a vegetarian but a gardener who grew vegetables.
At the first ever World Fair, in 1851, in London, the French became aware of the
British Vegetarian Society. Anglophile and medical journals in France began to use the word "végétarisme" for what the popular press preferred to call "légumisme". The term "légumiste" prevailed, even reaching French criminal slang.
In 1853, the fashion for spiritualism and séances, known as table tapping, spread through France, giving rise to surprising links between, for instance, spiritualists and légumistes. Even doctors referred to what was regarded as an established relationship: “exaggerated légumisme causes nervous system anaemia: as Gaëtan Delaunay notes, most exclusive vegetarians become spiritualists”.
Vegetarians were extensively ridiculed at the time, and were often the reluctant heroes of works on eccentrics. Their leader, sometimes referred to as the “chef des légumistes”, was partly responsible for this situation. Jean-Antoine Gleizes, who died in 1843 just after publishing his major work "Thalysie ou la Nouvelle Existence, tended to rewrite history to suit his own personal views. The writer Gérard de Nerval was also an eccentric and “a great supporter of légumisme, but in the manner of Pythagoras”.
Historic sniping has almost disappeared from dictionaries in France, and French now has two respectful words: "véganisme" ("veganism, denoting the complete lifestyle") and végétalisme ("denoting merely the vegan diet"), a useful distinction to be able to make. The only exception is the official French-Canadian dictionary of Québec with its attempt to substitute "végintégriste" (literaly "fundamentalist vegetarian"), "hypervégétalien" and other insulting terms, none of which has ever really come into use, rather than "végane, which is seen as an ugly Anglicism, on the pretext of protecting their vocabulary from invasion by English.
Read the full article in English translation:
(http://www.societevegane.fr/documentation/terminologie/from-legumisme-to-veganisme/)
Version originale en français:
(http://www.societevegane.fr/documentation/terminologie/du-legumisme-au-veganisme/)"
Nutrition Facts Reaches 20 Million Page Views
On January 13, 2014, NutritionFacts.org hit a major milestone--20 million page views since the site launched in 2011.
The newest volume of their Latest in Clinical Nutrition DVD series is now available (order here--all proceeds go to keeping NutritionFacts.org alive and kicking). Dr Michael Greger is rolling out a new DVD, volume 17. The DVDs give folks the opportunity to sneak-preview videos months ahead of time, watch them all straight through, and share them as gifts, but there is nothing on the DVDs that won't eventually end up free online at NutritionFacts.org. If you'd like the works--more than 30 hours of video—there is a special price on the complete DVD collection.
Here's the a preview of some of what's on volume 17 and what’s to come over the next few months on NutritionFacts.org:
1. Should We Take a Multivitamin?
2. Is Fish Oil Just Snake Oil?
3. How Much Exercise to Sustain Weight Loss?
4. Who Says Eggs Aren't Healthy or Safe?
5. Orange Aromatherapy for Anxiety
6. Food Antioxidants and Cancer
7. Food Antioxidants, Stroke, and Heart Disease
8. How to Slow Brain Aging by Two Years
9. Back to Our Roots - Curry and Cancer
10. Carcinogen Blocking Effects of Turmeric Curcumin
11. Turmeric Curcumin Reprogramming Cancer Cell Death
12. Low Carb Diets and Coronary Blood Flow
Order the new DVD at DrGreger.org/dvds or as a video download at DrGreger.org/downloads.
More info: http://nutritionfacts.org/2014/01/30/volume17/
Volume 17 is available free to IVU member organisations. Just have email Michael at and specify if you would like the new DVD as a video download or physical DVD (or both).
This Month’s HCYKTASEM
This month’s How Can You Know This And Still Eat Meat (HCYKTASEM) asks about justice. It is excerpted from Ginny Messina’s blog, The Vegan RD: http://www.theveganrd.com/2014/01/a-vegan-lifestyle-honors-martin-luther-king-jr-2.html
We can’t help but wonder: Would the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., [the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner (pictured here)] have become a vegan at some point in his life? It’s certainly conceivable that he would have. His son Dexter Scott King, who is president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-violent Social Change, has been vegan for more than 20 years. He once said that vegetarianism is the logical extension of his father’s philosophy regarding non-violence. Coretta Scott King [pictured here], a tireless activist for social justice, was also a vegan for more than ten years before her death in 2006.
If his wife and son saw the link between animal foods and violence, it’s not hard to imagine that Dr. King would have perceived this connection as well. Writing from the Birmingham jail in 1963, he said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
A commitment to veganism honors the principles that were at the core of Dr. King’s work.
Read similar thoughts from another Nobel Peace Prize laureate: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/27/desmond-tutu-animal-rights_n_4509188.html
'The Startling Intelligence of the Common Chicken’
This is the title of an article by Carolynn L. Smith and Sarah L. Zielinski in the 1 Feb, 2014 issue of Scientific American. Here are some quotes:
Mounting evidence indicates that the common chicken is much smarter than it has been given credit for.
The birds are cunning, devious and capable of empathy. And they have
sophisticated communication skills.
That chickens are so brainy hints that such intelligence is more common in the animal kingdom than once thought.
This emerging picture of the chicken mind also has ethical implications for how society treats farmed birds.
To read the entire article you must subscribe to Scientific American or purchase this particular issue; but even if you don't sign up, you can post an
appreciative and informative comment.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-startling-intelligence-of-the-common-chicken/?&;WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20140129
The coauthor of this article, Carolynn L Smith, published a paper in Between the Species, August 2012, titled "The Chicken Challenge," which is available for free download at: http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol15/iss1/6/
Here is a short summary:
The science outlined in this paper challenges common thinking about chickens. Chickens are not mere automata; instead they have been shown to possess sophisticated cognitive abilities. Their communication is not simply reflexive, but is responsive to relevant social and environmental factors. Chickens demonstrate an awareness of themselves as separate from others; can recognize particular individuals and appreciate their standing with respect to those individuals; and show an awareness of the attentional states of their fellow fowl. Further, chickens have been shown to engage in reasoning through performing abstract and social transitive inferences. This growing body of scientific data could inform a rethinking about the treatment of these animals.
(pp. 89-90)
Go Vegan Radio
An article in the previous IVU Online News highlighted two vegan radio shows: (1) The Vegan Option - http://theveganoption.org; and (2) Main Street Vegan - http://mainstreetvegan.net.
Afterwards, a reader suggested another source of vegan radio called Go Vegan Radio: http://www.goveganradio.com/
Here is from the program’s website:
Listener-supported and advertiser-sponsored GO VEGAN RADIO WITH BOB LINDEN is the radio show about everything - food, health, environment, peace, politics, social justice - and broadcasts the solutions to all the problems about which other talk shows merely complain - war, violence, disease, world hunger, poverty, climate change, deforestation, resource depletion, water shortage, energy crises, habitat destruction, animal suffering.
Bob Linden, vegan for 29 years, animal lover and dog-spoiler, is the host and executive producer of the listener-supported non-profit production GO VEGAN RADIO WITH BOB LINDEN (www.GoVeganRadio.com) - the first-ever mainstream-media vegan animal liberation, health, and environmental program.
Also, here is an update on the Vegan Option radio show, highlighted in IVU Online News, 2014 Issue 1:
The Kickstarter campaign to fund the first ever radio history of vegetarianism is live at:
It was over a third funded after just the first few days. It will be a popular history that people can enjoy whilst they're doing the washing up. Have a look, watch the video, donate if you feel motivated, and tweet / share / reblog!
Great Visual
The Dodo
The Dodo is a new online publication about animals: companion animals, wild animals and farmed animals: https://www.thedodo.com/
Veg Videos
Nowadays, many people would rather watch than read. Fortunately, veg organisations are responding by producing videos and putting them online. For instance, IVU member organisation, Vegetarian Society of Hawaii (USA), offers video of well known veg speakers: http://www.vsh.org/videos.htm
Book News 1
Rabbit, Review of Rabbit by Victoria Dickenson, Reaktion Books, 216pp, pbk, 97 illustrations, 59 in colour; ISBN 978-1-78023-181-5, £9-99
Humans have a decidedly ambivalent attitude towards rabbits. Reared and slaughtered in their millions for the meat and fur trades, experimented upon in their tens of thousands, reviled and eradicated as a pest in many countries, rabbits are also celebrated in children’s literature from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Tale of Peter Rabbit to Watership Down, anthropomorphised as the Easter bunny and cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, and cherished as companion animals by many people. As Victoria Dickenson, Director and Chief Executive Officer of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Toronto, writes in this recent addition to Reaktion Books’ Animal series, “we may pet them, draw them and treat them as members of the family, but at the same time their evident distance from the human species allows us to mutilate and murder them with scant regard for our shared ‘humanity’”.
A recognizable lagomorph (the scientific name for rabbits, hares and pikas) first appeared some 55 million years ago, and they can now be found on all continents except Antarctica. There are ten genera of rabbits, the most widespread and most exploited of which is the European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus. Famous for their fecundity, a single pair of European rabbits can produce 30 to 40 young each year. In the absence of natural predators, it is easy to see how even a country as large as Australia rapidly became overrun with rabbits after Thomas Austin foolishly released thirteen animals for ‘sport’ on his estate at Geelong in 1859. Eager to rectify their mistake, humans have resorted to biological warfare in their attempt to control rabbit populations with the introduction of the devastating myxomatosis virus in the 1950s and Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease in the 1980s.
However, rabbit populations are at their greatest where humans breed them for profit. According to Compassion in World Farming, nearly 1.2 billion rabbits are slaughtered for meat worldwide each year, over 40% of these in China. A photo in Rabbit shows the inside of a shed at the largest rabbit farm in China: rows of cages stacked four-high, each with a drinking trough and feeder and seemingly little else other than a single white rabbit. Conditions are no better in Europe (rabbits are the second most farmed species in the EU with over 326 million killed for meat each year) where a typical cage for an adult doe measures 60-65 cm long, 40-48 cm wide and 30-35 cm high, far too small for most normal behaviour (rabbits like to dig burrows and are highly social animals that can hop 70 cm, run at up to 30 km/h, and jump higher than a metre). For the fur trade, French scientists have bred the Orylag rabbit, “now the darling of the fashion industry”, to add to the tens to hundreds of millions of rabbit pelts traded annually. Meanwhile, more than 210,000 rabbits were used for scientific research in the United States in 2010, and rabbits are the third most widely used small mammals in British laboratories.
Grim reading though some of the book makes, Rabbit is also a celebration of an animal that is “so other, so contained in a world not human, that (it) requires us to settle deeply into that place where we are ourselves but a species among species, sharing an ancient inheritance and a longing for Eden”. Richly illustrated, elegant and concise, Rabbit is a book that everyone, not just ‘bunny-huggers’, can readily embrace.
Paul Appleby
January 2014
Book News 2 - The Revive Café Cookbook 3
The Revive Cafe Cookbook 3 by Jeremy Dixon features 75+ recipes over 192 pages - all full colour photographs, plus step-by-step cooking guides for all vegan recipes including healthy stuffed veges, dressings, wraps, noodles and pizzas. This is the third in a series of compilations of recipes for customer endorsed dishes from the Revive Café, with two locations in Auckland, New Zealand: http://www.revive.co.nz. The cookbook is available on Amazon outside New Zealand and Australia.
Here is an excerpt from Jeremy’s story of how the restaurant, and later the cookbooks, came to be (http://www.revive.co.nz/info/the-revive-story)
In 2003 my wife, Verity, and I treated ourselves to a 10 day cleanse at a health retreat. We had steam baths, massages, days of juice fasting, long walks, nutritional education, cooking classes, naturopathic consultations and most importantly 10 days of rest.
While we were at the health retreat we learned some great tips on how to live a healthier lifestyle including how to cook healthy food. By feeding our bodies quality nutrients our body works as it should and life is so great!
I had a great career working for Sanitarium Health Food Company in Auckland for 10 years as a marketer of healthy breakfast cereals like Weet-Bix. I had always had the dream of becoming a chef or owning a cafe, so in late 2004 I took a bold and risky move and decided to leave my great job to open a healthy cafe.
I quickly faced some hard realisations in researching successful food outlets. In order to be successful in hospitality it appeared that you needed to serve coffee, alcohol, soft drinks, sugary cakes, food full of white flour and be open long hours in the weekends. Against the advice of several people, I decided that I could not sleep at night serving people these kinds of food and beverages, so I continued on in search of a suitable location.
Book News 3 - The Happy Cow Cookbook
The Happy Cow Cookbook: Recipes from Top-Rated Vegan Restaurants around the World, edited by Eric Brent, creator of Happy Cow, and Glen Merzer, coauthor of Food Over Medicine: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1939529662/ref=nosim/?tag=happycowsglobalg
Happy Cow, http://www.happycow.net, provides a worldwide directory of veg eateries. Their cookbook shows you how to make top dishes in the comfort of your own home.
Book News 4 - The Meat Racket
By Christopher Leonard, published by Simon & Schuster: ISBN13: 9781451645811
From a book seller’s website:
An investigative journalist takes you inside the corporate meat industry—a shocking, in-depth report everyone should read.
How much do you know about the meat on your dinner plate? Journalist Christopher
Leonard spent more than a decade covering the country’s biggest meat companies, including four years as the national agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press. Now he delivers the first comprehensive look inside the industrial meat system, exposing how a handful of companies executed an audacious corporate takeover of the nation’s meat supply.
Leonard’s revealing account shines a light on the inner workings of Tyson Foods, a pioneer of the industrial system that dominates the market. You’ll learn how the food industry got to where it is today, and how companies like Tyson have escaped the scrutiny they deserve. You’ll discover how these companies are able to raise meat prices for consumers while pushing down the price they pay to farmers. And you’ll even see how big business and politics have derailed efforts to change the system, from a years-long legal fight in Iowa to the Obama administration’s recent failed attempt to pass reforms.
Hear the author speak at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izOv6TK-bzA
Video News 1 – Speciesism: The Movie
The use of non-human animals for food and its consequence for those animals as well as for homo sapiens has become the subject of many a skillfully made film. Speciesism: The Movie - http://speciesismthemovie.com joins that arsenal of powerful visuals tools.
You can watch a trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJYzia6KUbs.
You can read a Scientific American column inspired by the movie at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-do-nonhuman-mammals-fit-in-our-moral-hierarchy
New Booklet from Vegan Outreach
A few points might be worthy of note about Your Choice, the new booklet being distributed by Vegan Outreach, an IVU member organization that focuses on students at tertiary institutions, such as universities. First, the title emphasizes choice.
A second point to note about Your Choice is that the text is much less wordy, with more photos, and no footnotes (although sources are provided for further info. Third, it is assumed that most of the booklet’s readers are already fairly familiar with conditions on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. Fourth, many animals are mentioned by name, such as a cow name Fiona, and information is provided on the intelligence and emotions of farmed animals.
You can read and download Your Choice at
http://www.veganoutreach.org/YourChoice2014.pdf
The Science of Animal Thinking and Emotion – 17-18 March, 2014 - Washington, DC, USA - www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=1213795
Why Do Animal Studies? - 3-4 April, 2014 - Chicago, USA - animalstudiesgroup.wordpress.com
The Conscious Eating Conference - 6 April, 2014 - Berkeley, California, USA - http://www.upc-online.org/forums/2014
VegFest hosted by VegMichigan – 13 April, 2014 - Novi, Michigan, USA - http://vegmichigan.org/activities/vegfest
Viva’s 20th Anniversary Celebrations, as part of Vegfest UK - 23-25 May, 2014 - Bristol, England - www.viva.org.uk
Reading Animals: An International English Studies Conference - 17-20 July, 2014, School of English, University of Sheffield, UK.
The Oxford Summer School on Animal Ethics - 121-23 July, 2014 - Oxford, England - www.oxfordanimalethics.com/what-we-do/summer-school-2014/
IVU World Vegfest 2014 - 1-6 October, 2014 - Accra, Ghana - http://worldvegfest.org
Other Online Sources of Veg News
In addition to IVU Online News, there are many other places to go online for general veg-related news, rather than news mostly about one country or one organisation. Here are some.
- Meatout Mondays www.meatoutmondays.org
- Vegan Outreach www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter
- VegE-News www.vege-news.com
- VegNews www.vegnews.com
- VegSource www.vegsource.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi
- AnimalConcerns.org doesn't have a newsletter, but they post stories daily at www.animalconcerns.org/categories.html?do=shownews
- Vegan.com www.vegan.com
- IVU-Veg-News E-Mail List www.ivu.org/news/veg-news
- Vegetarianism in the News www.vegsoc.org/page.aspx?pid=928