I will return your usual website as quickly as I can rebuild it. My plan is to restore the overall shape of the website. Then I’ll restore all the 2016+ content (mainly #VegHist) in chronological order, which also means it’ll turn up again in the podcast feeds that the site drives. Finally I’ll go back to the beginning, including restoring season 1 to the podcast feed. I expect this to do this a bit at a time over a couple of months. In the meanwhile, all 2013+ episodes of The Vegan Option, including “Vegetarianism: The Story So Far” are available on SoundCloud and YouTube.
How does animal exploitation increase the emergence of new diseases? With the world fighting a vicious new pandemic, Ian asks a front-line physician, an epidemiologist, a public health expert and activists about how new diseases spill over from other animals, and how factory farming and the wildlife trade raise our vulnerability.… more
The UK still has 5 vegan MPs. This 23-year old activist is the newly elected MP for Nottingham East, and the UK’s first non-white vegan MP.… more
Update Feb 15: One of the new MPs, Nadia Whittome, is also vegan. Update Dec 14: The UK parliament is back down to four [known] vegan MPs – Chris Williamson was sacked by Labour, stood as an independent socialist, and lost his deposit. Two other animal advocate MPs were also lost.… more
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. [Car horn. White noise from distant traffic etc.] Ian: We’re in the middle of London within sight of the British Museum, just next to a glass, stone and concrete office block. And carved into its wall there’s a tribute to the “Women’s Freedom League”, worked for equality between men and women from its headquarters on this site.… more
How has western vegetarianism risen, within living memory, from fringe to mainstream choice? And how has veganism gone from nowhere to everywhere? Episode 15: Liberation This final episode recounts the growth of veganism, vegetarianism, and the modern animal advocacy movement. Ian treads in the footsteps of the handful of pioneers who set up the vegan movement in the 1940s, and meets a life vegan born in 1951. He investigates the sixties counterculture that combined the philosophy of ethics, activism, and new ways of living and working, visiting one of Britain’s first vegetarian wholefood co-operatives. And as vegetarian and vegan movements increasingly link up around the world, he looks at developments in China and India. In New Delhi, he meets the vegan politician who is also the most prominent animal advocate in the world’s largest democracy.… more
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. [Traffic noise. Rustling sounds. Voices.] Ian: I’m at my local health food shop in East London, surrounded by a cornucopia of modern vegan sausages and burgers, and mock-meats of every mock-animal. Not to mention supermarket staples, like peanut butter, almond butter, and breakfast cereal.… more
In the nineteenth century, in America and Germany, new forms of vegetarianism emerge – from the individualistic consumer vegetarianism of America, to the back-to-nature European “life reform” movement. Episode 14: Diet Reform As animal agriculture industrialises and meat consumption rises, the ways that food reformers respond are familiar to people today – the plant-based meat, the celebrity athletes, and the reformers who worship nature, sunshine, and fresh air. Ian goes to the shops to discover just how many vegetarian staples he owes to pioneers like John Harvey Kellogg. In Sabarmati, northwest India, he visits the Ashram of Mahatma Mohandas K Gandhi. Play or download (62MB MP3 44min) (via iTunes) or read transcript… more
This is a guide to the UK General election results of particular interest to vegans and animal advocates, conveniently in results order. [Updated with results June 9th]. The results are in italic – and as the title says, the UK now has at least 4 vegan MPs, which I suspect is a first for any legislature anywhere in the world.… more
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. US Army band in an archive recording of period song “Army Bean”: ‘Tis the bean that we mean! [fades and continues in background]… more