Say what you think on the Vegan Option page on allOurIdeas.org.

All Our Ideas is a site for crowdsourcing ideas. I’m trying them out for The Vegan Option after hearing online science magazine Matter praise them at a data journalism meetup. I hope lots of you take part, because I’d love to find out what you’d be interested in hearing.

Last show’s investigation of whether cats can be vegan leaves us with an ethical quandary. What should vegans feed cats?

Erin and I reflect on listener’s comments. The three expert veterinarians examine the moral issues. And I ask Eric Weisman, CEO of major US vegan cat food brand Evolution, some tough questions.

Veterinarian Guests

There is more information about Lorelei Wakefield, Andrew Knight, and Jean Hofve on the episode page for the last episode, “Cats: Can They Be Vegan?”.

Since then, Lorelei Wakefield’s site, vegetariancats.com, has returned, and there’s lots of information there. She is also conducting a new study, with a focus on the urinary tract issues we discussed in the last show, and is asking cat owners to complete her survey and share medical records.

Erin “Red” Grayson

Erin can be found at Tumblr (currently), ErinRed.com (under construction), and @ErinRed on Twitter.

She mentions a discussion about the ethical dilemma of vegan cats with Prof Gary Francione in a February 2012 episode of Red Radio, and quotes Hamlet.

Lisa Freeman’s 2004 Study of Cat Foods

Lisa Freeman was the senior member of a team that tested:

• Vegecat KibbleMix, from Harbingers of a New Age
• Evolution diet vegan gourmet vegetable stew entrée, Evolution Diet

(Technically, I should be calling it the Gray study, as she is the primary author.)

In our brief conversation, Dr Freeman strongly backed the veterinary consensus, saying there was no safe way to feed a cat vegan.

The study is:

Christina M. Gray, Rance K. Sellon, Lisa M. Freeman (2004), Nutritional Adequacy of Two Vegan Diets for Cats. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 225:11, 1670-175

Eric Weisman and Evolution Diet

Eric Weisman is the Chief Executive of Evolution Diet, manufacturers of vegan foods for cats, dogs, and ferrets, in St. Paul, Minnesota USA. He also posts at WeismanNutrition.com.

Loss of Chiropractic Licence

Eric Weisman gained his licence in 1979, but in 1982, he was reprimanded and put on probation for one year; and again in 1986 and 1987. The complaints process ended in a 1997 Order in which Mr Weisman agreed that he’d committed a number of practices, including:

Advertisements in connection with Respondent’s [Mr Weisman's] pet food business which identify Respondent only as “Dr. Eric Weisman” and from which a reader could reasonably infer that Respondent is a veterinarian instead of a chiropractor.

He accepted a penalty of 300 hours of community service, a $15,000 fine, and some ethics courses. In 1999, the board found he had paid the penalty in time or money; and in 2002 the board revoked his licence for breaches of the 1997 order [PDF] , including:

Engaged in advertising that is false or misleading

The memo that the board attached to the order said that:

The advertisements admittedly issued by the Respondent also include claims that his treatment programs for animal and human disease have “good long-term results in most cases.” During his January 9, 2001, conference with the Panel, the Respondent stated that he defines a “good long-term result” as an instance in which an animal using his products and/or treatment programs survived longer than was originally predicted by a veterinarian. Because the Respondent’s definition of “long-term is contrary to its common dictionary definition,” his claims about “good long-term results” also are false and misleading.

The Respondent has disseminated advertisements in which he claims his research or the research conducted by his pet food company proves dogs and cats can  live 20-25 healthy years and thereby implies that the use of his products lengthens the life expectancies of animals. He admitted, however, that he does not have a dog that has lived 25 years, he did not conduct any actual research other than calling about 30 veterinarians, and he was not referencing animals that had used his products, the Respondent admitted  during his conference with the Complaint Panel that this claim is “just an assumption” on his part because he distributes the food throughout the United States. This claim is false or misleading because the Respondent has no actual data or information to support this representation. His claims about animals’ life expectancies, therefore, are false or misleading.

Thus, “overselling”.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the revocation the following year.

Those documents, again, are:

• Minnesota Board of Chiropractic Examiners, Stipulation and Order, 17th July 1987
• Minnesota Board of Chiropractic Examiners, Eric Weisman revocation order

Court Action

The Minnesota Board of Veterinary Medicine sued Weisman in 2002; the parties settled the case in 2003 by agreeing an injunction [PDF].

This banned him from, in part:

Engaging in any conduct that constitutes the practice of veterinary medicine …

… making any claim that Defendant’s pet food or other products for animals will treat, prevent, or otherwise affect a disease or condition … unless Defendant has first obtained written authorization from the Food and Drug Administration …

Directly or indirectly representing or implying, in connection with the sale of pet food or any other product or service, that he or any business in which he has an ownership interest has conducted “research,” including, but not limited to, “clinical trials,” “human studies,” “case studies” or “literary research,” that supports claims about the efficacy of the pet food, product or service.

Directly or indirectly representing or implying that that (sic) any animal’s life will improve through the use of Defendant’s pet food or other products …

In 2011, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office brought 58 charges of practicing medicine – on humans and other animals – against Weisman [PDF]. But in February 2012 all of these were dismissed bar three charges of contempt of court [PDF]  – to which Weisman plead guilty.

Local media covered the case:

• Jessica Lussenhop, Minneapolis CityPages, “Eric Weisman won’t stop playing doctor”, 2011 Jul 20
• Jessica Lussenhop, Minneapolis CityPages, “Eric Weisman pleads guilty to three misdemeaonor charges in bizarre veterinary medicine case”, 2012 Feb 28
• Sarah Horner, Twin Cities.com, “In Little Canada, probation for ex-chiropracter, satisfaction for city”, 2012 Feb 23

He has also been criticised by blogger SkeptVet.

Ida Fong on Animal Voices podcast and Dan Robinson who runs the Vegan Cat Institute website both offer strong anecdotal criticism; whereas the majority of Amazon reviews offer positive anecdotes.

Thanks

… go to Robb Masters for the music, to all the interviewees, and Erin Red. The illustration is a cat in Peru by Ilke Ender on Flickr, used under a CC-BY licence.

Production Note

This is not veterinary advice. It is a radio show with vets.

In January 2012, I blogged about plans, and asked what you thought.

Let’s look at how those plans have gone, mention some ideas and plans for upcoming shows, and find out what resonates.

What happened in 2012

Last January, I blogged about four ideas for shows:

• Veganism in the Information Age – which became Digital Vegans
• Making the Pledge – was dropped, because we didn’t think it would be interesting to non-activists
• So you want to run a vegan restaurant – I’d still like to make, but haven’t found the right contributors
• The Vegan Tax – I’d also still like to make, but the research will take time.

We did not manage to put out a show a month. But some really popular shows covered other really interesting topics – like Born Vegan, Olympics, and – with over 1100 downloads not including Stitcher – “Judgemental”.

Life outside the show got particularly busy towards the end of the year. The last quarter of 2012 saw only one episode, and even that was a recut of my previous Verdant Reports.

I think it would have been better to admit we were too busy and take a break. Which brings me to …

Monthly shows are a goal, but not a priority

To quote the show’s first value:

Your time is precious, and I’d rather miss a month than put out something that has you say “well, that’s twenty minutes I won’t get back”.

This goes beyond simply saving time. Interesting topics – like The Vegan Tax – get pushed back in favour of ones that aren’t as time-consuming (or as motivating). And having chalked up a bit of broadcast radio experience (e.g. this radio talk), I’m keen to produce things that could be good enough to show to potential employers.

The received wisdom is that listeners prefer regular shows. But there are some exceptions to the rule – such as the Tiny Spark reports on the non-profit sector.

So monthly will still be a goal, but it won’t be a priority.

Ideas for 2013

So these are the topics I’d be interested to cover:

• Subsidy – how your taxes end up paying for animal agriculture
• Tigers and other animals - Changing attitudes to animals in developing Asia
• Animal Minds (2-4 episodes)
• History of Vegetarianism (3+ episodes)
• What’s it like to be a right-wing vegan?
• How has science fiction considered animal issues?

I’ve also been considering meeting different vegan subcultures – from anarchism to Seventh Day Adventists.

I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Particular thanks to Daisy on UK iTunes for the review and the suggestion – of  interviews with vegan activists in the UK. Have you heard Our Hen House and Animal Voices, who focus on activist interviews as their core topics? They’re based in the USA and Canada, but do also interview UK activists. I’d like to complement shows like that by doing something different.

Please spread the word

I know I’m a bit of a stuck record on this but …

Please do let folk know about The Vegan Option. This is a high quality show that I’d like to think anyone who listens to vegan podcasts (and quite a few who don’t) would enjoy. It also asks for less of listeners time, so it’s not as if you need to drop another show to make room for tVO.

Positive reviews on iTunes and other providers really do keep me motivated and help more people to find the show and – I’d like to think – associate veganism with interesting speech radio.

Alas, I’ll only see the reviews on the UK & US iTunes; if it’s a different country, or a different podcast provider, it would be nice to know. (Many folk listen to this show in Canada and Australia, but there are no reviews on those iTunes stores: if you listen there, why not be the first?).

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear back in the comments below .

Three experienced veterinarians with experience of vegan cats say whether and why they think cats can thrive on a vegan diet.

Jean Hofve argues – out of bitter experience – that cats need meat.

Andrew Knight advocates a vegan diet for cats – if you do it right.

Only Lorelei Wakefield has published a peer-reviewed study to try to discover who is right.

Veterinarian Guests

Lorelei Wakefield

Lorelei Wakefield’s study site – vegetariancats.com – is currently down, but you can access vegetariancats.com via web.archive.org. That peer-reviewed paper is:

• Wakefield, LA; Shofer, FS & Michel, KE (2006). “Evaluation of cats fed vegetarian diets and attitudes of their caregivers” .Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 229 (1): 70–3.

She does housecalls in NYC, and her site is ComfortsOfHomeVet.com.

Lorelei is vegan. Her own cat, Noel, used to be vegan but is now on a meat-based prescription food.

Andrew Knight

In between extreme ironing , vegan campaigning, and writing a cost/benefit analysis of Animal Experiments, Andrew Knight also runs VegePets.info, which offers advice for people considering vegetarian diets for dogs and cats.

Jean Hofve

Jean Hofve is a retired veterinarian with an interest in nutrition and alternative veterinary medicine.

She writes at Little Big Cat .com, including about vegetarian cats.

Other Guests

Erin “Red” Grayson

Erin offers listeners to Red Radio ”vegan banter with a bite” – strong vegan opinions and supportive commentary, as well as guests, compassionate clips, and rants.

She’s Canadian transplanted to Brooklyn, where she co-founded “The Seed: a vegan experience”, and practices muay Thai.

Erin can be found at Tumblr (currently), ErinRed.com (under construction), and@ErinRed on Twitter.

She discussed the ethical dilemma of vegan cats with Prof Gary Francione in a February 2012 episode of Red Radio.

Mazzy

Mazzy is a female tortoiseshell rescue cat, and she’s on my lap as I’m typing this.

She’s also had struvite crystals (when on a meat-based diet) so she’s also on a meat-based prescription diet.

Mainstream veterinary opinion

David Dzanis wrote in the Veterinarian Newsletter in 1999, concluding of both dogs and cats:

… while both species can eat and utilize some plant-source ingredients (dogs more than cats), they simply are not intended to eat only plants as are other animals such as cattle and sheep.

• Vegetarian Diets for Pets?, FDA Veterinarian Newsletter May/June 1999 Volume XIV, No III

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say:

When it comes to felines, it really is best to provide a diet that includes meat.

I’m going to pass this on to other websites, but we mentioned that the challenges for vegan cats are:

That US National Research Council released dietary guidelines for Cats and Dogs in 2003 (before Lorelei Wakefield’s study) saying that cats:

should not be fed a vegetarian diet because it could result in harmful deficiencies of certain amino acids, fatty acids, and vitamins

The show specifically discussed how cats need Taurine and B12; and the dangers of urinary struvite crystals.

Other vegan experiences

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau addressed the issue in her 2007 podcast episode, What do Vegetarians Feed their Dogs and Cats? - and, as I mentioned, feeds her cats meat.

US writer and activist Jo Stepaniak blogged about how she feeds her cats meat after they did not thrive on a vegan diet.

Vegan vet Armaiti May advises having a vet monitor your cat’s urine pH, rather than doing it yourself.

Animal Voices (Toronto) covered this topic in 2006 with a round table discussion, involving two local activists whose cats fell seriously ill on a vegan diet, as well as Eric Wiseman of Evolution pet food.

Thanks

… go to Robb Masters for the music, the three veterinarians for our interviewees, and of course Erin Red.

Production Note

The interview with Andrew Knight is from back in 2010, hence some rookie mic handling noise.

This is not veterinary advice. It is a radio show with vets.

Next show: Cats, the ethical quandary, and the criminal vegan pet food CEO

It’s obvious to listeners that we were a couple. I’m sad to say that Diana leaving the show is part of us amicably going our separate ways.

The show was (mostly) my hobby, which Diana kindly graced with her wit, ideas, and expertise. She’s a natural radio presenter, and I hope her voice continues to be heard on waves and web.

My hobby remains creating interesting radio that just happens to be vegan. There are some great shows coming up, and I’ll blog about plans soon. One thing there isn’t going to be is another permanent co-host: pundits and expert guests will, I’m sure, keep me on my toes.

The next show – about what to feed cats – is almost ready. I hope you’ll like it.

The shows usually focus on topics rather than individual interviewees – talking to a range of people to get a full picture. This can mean that only a few minutes out of an hour-long interview gets into the show. (This isn’t unusual for public radio documentaries.)

Some full interviews are posted on the website – such as our conversations with Peter Singer and Gary Francione for the episode “Peace on Earth”. But should they go in the podcast feed as well? Diana asked on the Facebook page and “yes” not only won the vote, but for some people it was the only way to get the extended interviews.

So from now on, rough edits of extended interviews will go in the podcast feed as well as the website. This starts with Diana’s full conversation with Dr Julia Minson, part of the “Judgemental!” show:

(24 mins) (download or play MP3 file 16MB)

If you want to only hear the edited shows – particularly if you are catching up with the archive – it’s easy to skip the extended interviews. They’ll still be there if you want to come back to them.

More changes are coming, once the next show (about the dilemmas that vegans with cats face) is ready.

In 2009, I travelled through South East Asia from equatorial island to the far north of Thailand, discovering the vegetarian threads running through the region. Hear Diana and I banter about my trials and triumphs on everything from missing passports to cheeky elephants.

The Restaurants

I talked with:

• Jack from Whole Earth restaurant in Singapore
• Chong Keng Hoon from Luk Yea Yan in Penang, Malaysia
• Nan from Taste from Heaven in Chaing Mai, Thailand
• Nicolas from Chamkar in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

These links are mostly to reviews on Happy Cow – whose founder Eric Brent was on our episode about Digital Vegans.

Elephant Nature Park

Taste from Heaven raises money for the Elephant Nature Park, where I volunteered. I talked about washing Elephants in the show: here are some of my holiday snaps. Click on the thumbnails for the full picture.

Verdant Reports

Before The Vegan Option, I produced some five minute podcasts under a pseudonym, and released them at Verdant Reports .org. They include three five minute clips about my journey through SE Asia.

(Verdant Reports didn’t really catch on. Perhaps because they didn’t have Diana to keep me in check, and perhaps because the name is both obscure and difficult to spell out in your web browser.)

Those reports use the same interviews but are more focussed on travel advice, so you might find them useful if you’re planning to go to the region.

Also

20% of chefs surveyed by the Time Out New York Kitchen Report admitted to putting animals in the ostensibly vegetarian option (in a graphic that’s since been removed from the page).

Diana mentioned the Supreme Master restaurants (which we in London know as ”Loving Hut”).

Other Vegan Travelogues

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau was part of our last episode, Judgemental!, advising us on how not to be, well, judgemental. She podcast her visit to the UK (although, sadly, she did not visit us in London):

• A Journey Through England and Scotland Through the Eyes of an Animal-Centric, Anglophilic, Literary Geek

Jasmin Singer and Dr Mariann Sullivan of Our Hen House drove across the United States to get to Marianne’s new job in Portland. During their “Great American Road Trip”, they continued to podcast every week:

• Episode 130, with Honey LaBronx
• Episode 131, with  Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Katie Olson, and Brian Endl
• Episode 132, with Bonnie Goodman from Mordamart, Sue Eakins from New Dawn Sanctuary, Kit and Pete Jagoda of Rivers Wish Sanctuary, and Tracy Martin of Rabbitron
• Episode 133, with Rich Roll

Thanks

Our thanks go to Robb Masters and the Elephant Nature Park mahouts for the music, and our interviewees including Lisa Green, Izzy, and Dr Peter Flügel of SOAS, University of London.

Thanks also to Kip Dorrell of Messy Vegetarian Cook, who took the picture of Taste from Heaven’s Choo Chee Curry at the top of the page during her own trip to Thailand’s Kin Jay national vegetarian festival.

Listen to my full extended interview with her (she laughs endearingly like Marge Simpson doesn’t she?):

(23min) (download or play MP3 24MB) (other formats)

Some of you might be questioning the whole premise saying to yourself “hey, do people really think that vegetarians are doing good?”. But that is what Julia found.

Even though people tend to rate themselves as better than others, and (Dr Minson found) more moral than others, even meat-eaters rated vegetarians as more moral than average (i.e. other) meat-eaters.

Some other tidbits from the study:

• People rated vegetarians more negatively when they thought vegetarians were more judgemental
• In an experiment where people were randomly assigned to a condition in which they had to consider how much vegetarians would judge them morally, they later rated vegetarians more negatively
• Meat eaters expected vegetarians to judge them three times more negatively than vegetarians actually judged them (-1.11 vs -0.33)
• When participants were given the opportunity to negatively rate vegetarians they expressed more pro-vegetarian attitudes

The conversation led me to thinking about “anti social punishment”, where individuals punish those who are more prosocial/generous than the norm (which  I mentioned to Julia).

The conversation also made me think about how people manage status and moral inconsistency.

Recently I read “Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite“,  in which Robert Kurzban argues that moral inconsistency is the result of our minds having different components with different goals.

Say: One part of your mind wants to get up early and go for a jog and another wants to sleep in. Kurzban explains that we enforce moral rules because we want other people to follow them, but there’s another part of our minds that wants us to disregard the moral or social norms and take advantage of whatever benefits we can get. This makes us all hypocrites. (See Kurzban giving the gist of his argument)

To me the Minson and Monin paper  is a good example of how people are competitive about their moral status.

From an evolutionary perspective advertising that you are a consistently moral person – who for example keeps promises and avoids inflicting suffering on others – makes you a more attractive partner for social exchanges.

If you think someone is making you look bad by being more moral than you or simply judging you as being less moral, then they can do damage to your social reputation.

In turn you must derogate them, that is, advertise that they are not such great social exchange partners either. For example, participants in the Minson & Monin study described vegetarians as “weird”, “preachy” and “sadistic”.

That’s why people were more accepting of vegetarian attitudes when they had a chance to first derogate vegetarians; the attitudes were less threatening when individuals felt that they had done something to climb back up in the moral hierarchy.

This leads to some conclusions

• People are always going to look hard for perceived hypocrisy on the part of organizations that make them feel like they are not behaving morally. After all, I’ve been told that “vegetarians are hypocrites because Peta kills animals”, but they didn’t stop to level the same criticism at the food industry lobbying group that runs the “Peta Kills” website. (Peta runs shelters which have very high kill rates; Peta blames this on taking in desperate cases). Unless someone challenges your moral reputation, there’s no need to search for moral inconsistencies.
• Those who consider moral goodness and consistency to be an important part of their self identity are going to be even more likely to derogate those who they perceive are trying to “one up” them morally especially in the animal domain. I have found that people who really value their relationships companion animals like cats and dogs to be very reactive to discussions about meat eating.
• Above and beyond judgement the perceived moral goodness of vegetarianism/veganism is what causes the negative backlash. If people really believe “I make my food choices and you make yours and they’re all morally equivalent” there would be no reason to derogate vegetarians, certainly if they are minding their own business in the way Julia describes in our interview.

Those judgemental vegans. A charge you’ve probably heard (or perhaps even uttered).

But what is “judgement”? How does it really affect the relationships between vegans and others? What can scientists say about it? And how do vegan activists react to the charge?

Dr Julia Minson explains the science.

Marla Rose explains exactly how Bacon Loving Hipsters Can Kiss Her Vegan Ass.

And Colleen Patrick-Goudreau discusses the psychology and experience of “judgemental vegans”.

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

The compassionate cook is a leading vegan advocate across several media, including podcasts (VegNews favourite podcast 2011). Another podcast host - Erin Grayson of Red Radio - has a tattoo that asks what Colleen would do.

Just in case you haven’t heard of her, she’s the author of several vegan cookbooks, the producer of the 30 Day Vegan Challenge online course, and a speaker who is famous for espousing veganism in a spiritual and non-judgemental way.

She relates Julia Minson’s research to her experience as an advocate, and discusses how she tries not to be judgemental – even at barbecues.

Marla Rose

Marla Rose practices a range of advocacy.

Her Vegan Feminist Agitator blog and Bacon Loving Hipsters Can Kiss My Vegan Ass Facebook group offer vegans laughs; she’s written a book about a 15 year old vegan superhero with empathy superpowers; and when we called her home was in the midst of preparations for the outreach event Chicago Veganmania.

Diana asks her if her humour is, perhaps, judgemental: and Marla describes how she resented the smug vegan who convinced her to drop animal products.

Dr Julia Minson

Our thanks go to Robb Masters for the music; and a hat tip to Our Hen House for originally mentioning Julia’s study in their own podcast.

Production Note

During our chat with Colleen, we played her Dr Minson’s interview and summarised Marla’s; and then I edited it together. The guests don’t sound like they’re on VoIP because this month all our guests sent us recordings of their side of the conversation. Thanks!

So what shall we do on WVD 2012?

Let’s give you the chance to ask us some questions. We’re considering doing a call-in show.

Perhaps you have a question about one of the dozen shows we’ve done. or you’d like to hear us argue about some stories and science we haven not covered.

It would also give us the chance to find out how you’re marking World Vegan Day where you are.

Because not everyone is free (or even awake) at the same time, we’d call on phone or VoIP (eg Skype) at a time convenient for you.

I’d be really excited to try this. Of course, it will only work if some of you actually want to “call in”. So I’m mentioning this early, to give us the chance to make a different show in November if that would work better for you the listeners. I shall give it a couple of weeks and see if there’s any interest.

If you’d like to ask us something, or be part of our World Vegan Day show, please comment below or email me (ian @ domain name).

I promised to blog about the responses I’ve had from both LOCOG (the London Games organisers) and the RSPCA (a venerable animal welfare group whose consultancy advised LOCOG on the use of animals).

Rather than lead you through an interpretation, which would simply be an exercise in showing you how pedantic I can get,  I’m going to simply post the communications dealing with when the decision was taken and the RSPCA were first involved.

Bill Morris, LOCOG Director of Ceremonies, emailed Peta’s Ingrid Newkirk on Jun 26 (says Peta, who supplied us with copies of what they say is their correspondence with LOCOG), saying in part:

The welfare of these animals is of the utmost importance to our team, which is why we took the decision early in the process, before confirming that animals would be involved, to work with the RSPCA. Having engaged the RSPCA’s new Performing Animals Consultancy, all our arrangements to look after these animals have been prepared with, and will be overseen by, the RSPCA.

The RSPCA statement (given to me on Jul 16) includes:

London 2012 has taken a decision to use animals in its opening ceremony. Subsequent to this decision, the RSPCA was approached to give advice on the use of animals and whether their use complies with animal welfare legislation as well as advice on meeting the welfare needs of the animals involved.

While the RSPCA does not endorse or ‘approve’ the use of animals in any form of entertainment, when approached the RSPCA will offer advice to ensure the animals used are free from pain injury and suffering, whether physical or mental and that any impact on the welfare needs of the animals used is minimised to an acceptable level. This advice will always include seeking alternative methods to animal use.

A LOCOG spokeswoman emailed me on Aug 6 to say:

The RSPCA were involved right from the beginning of the creative process.

And on Aug 9, after I asked for clarification, she said:

Hi Ian,

The concept for the Ceremony was finalised in 2011 and the RSPCA became involved at that point to advise on the use of animals. This was before any development of the creative or casting of any part of the show had started to take place.

We announced the use of animals in June 2012 – details here: http://www.london2012.com/news/articles/olympic-opening-ceremony-details-released-boyle-pays-tribute-volunteers.html

Thanks,

[redacted]

Being pedantic, I asked if the decision to use animals was part of the concept, and the spokeswoman replied:

Yes

I double-checked with her that the concept was finalised before the RSPCA became involved.

Yes that’s right.

And whether the decision had any further confirmation or signoff during the ‘creative process’ thereafter.

No it didn’t.

I then asked her about ceremonies director Bill Morris allegedly telling Peta that LOCOG had involved the RSPCA before the use of animals in the Olympics opening ceremony was confirmed. (You see why this didn’t make good radio?)

She said (ellipsis hers):

As I said in my email on the 9 August… The concept was finalised, the RSPCA were involved & advised and it was confirmed – and then the creative process began.

Hope this makes it clearer.

I’m afraid we are not going to go into any more detail about this.

So there we are.

Some footnotes:

• These are excerpts – for example, I’ve not included other correspondence about the welfare of the animals
• When I brought up Bill Morris’ email, I did ask the LOCOG spokeswoman for a copy of the exchange to check it’s the same as was received from Peta. She didn’t respond specifically to that. Thus, LOCOG haven’t confirmed or denied the Bill Morris email.
• Once again, I offer the exchange and draw no conclusions

Aussie listener Lisa Green commented on the Vegan Option Facebook page that she was watching Sarah’s team with a roomful of cheering vegans. The Gliders soundly defeated TeamGM, and the next game is this evening, at 18:30 UK time, 17:30 GMT. Whereever you are in the world, you can watch the games at Paralympic.org. Sarah is number 13.

Vegan spectators have shared their successes and failures at finding vegan food with the world on social media – and with us directly.

So here is the story of vegan food at the Olympics, as heard in our third and final Olympics show, told via Twitter.

As the athletes celebrate their victories and defeats, and the Spice Girls rock the closing ceremony, we look back over the Olympics and update you on the vegan stories behind the games.

This show:

• We catch up with the vegan stories behind the Olympics, like Sandra Hood, Pogocafe, and Frys
• Ian updates you on the use of animals in the Opening Ceremony
• Rudy tells us who’s been coming to Vx, the little vegan shop that was braced for a difficult Olympics
• We sum up the experience of vegans looking for food at the Olympic Venues

Athletes

Vegan-Sponsored Olympians

In the first Olympic show, Diana suggested athletes you might want to cheer on the basis of their vegan sponsors rather than their flag:

• US Rowing, sponsored by “Perfect Snaque”, won 1 Gold and 2 Bronze medals
• The Women of US Water Polo, sponsored by vegan hair care products Malibu C, won Gold
• Unfortunately, Simon Whitfield broke his collarbone in a Triathalon cycling crash.

Vegan Cross and other businesses

Rudy owns and runs Vx (pronounced “V Cross”).

My local vegan anarchist cafe is Pogocafe; and we mentioned Ms Cupcake.

Animals at the Opening Ceremony

I shall blog about this soon. First Choice Animals went public in an article “Meet the Real Stars of the Olympic Opening Ceremony” in the UK Independent.

Vegan Food at the Olympic Venues

Update 19/8/12: I have blogged about the experiences of vegan spectators, as they reported on social media and to us.

The short version is to take your own food, but check the rules first.

Thanks

Our thanks go to Robb Masters for the music, to Rudi for his time, and to everyone else I chased for answers and information.

So if professional journalists don’t always check their facts, it’s no surprise that bloggers can relax their criteria, especially when motivated to show that athletic feats can be powered by a plant based diet.

Before and during the London Olympic Games sites including EcoRazzi, VegNews, FourGreenSteps, and BigCityVegan posted lists of vegetarian and vegan athletes and Olympians. In our Olympics show we talked about some vegan Olympians I could verify (talking with the athletes or their representatives when possible) but you let us know about some others.

As a caveat, sometimes you don’t hear about athletes being vegan until things have quieted down. For example, Amy Walsh and Kara Lang (hear Kara Lang interview), ethical vegans, used to play football for Canada and are now planning to release a book together.

So, here is a list of Olympians who featured on one of those four lists as vegan, with what my research turned up.  Thanks to listener Marcus Dredge who joined in the fact-checking.

Carl Lewis (Athletics, 1992) – True

He definitely turned vegan in 1991 and won gold on a vegan diet – he talks about it in books and on video.

Ronda Rousey (Judo, 2008) – Mostly False

Although she committed to being vegan after winning a Bronze medal in 2008, she now talks about her veganism in the past tense. So I think it could be misleading to include her.

Murray Rose (Swimmer, 1956/60) – Probably Partially False

This great Australian swimmer of the 1950s and ’60s was brought up on a wholefood vegetarian diet. EcoRazzi says:

In 1958 he told Groucho Marx on the radio program “You Bet Your Life”  that his gold medals in 1956 could be attributed to his veganism.

Their citation goes to a 2012 obituary that says Murray Rose was vegan - but not to one that says where its source comes from.

One of our intrepid listeners, Marcus Dredge, found a 1961 interview with Sports Illustrated where he talks about eating yoghurt and goat’s milk. So mixed evidence – perhaps he was vegan in 1956 and 2012 but not 1961. It would be nice to get a direct reference to You Bet Your Life.

Charlene Wong (Figure Skater, 1988 1998) – Probably True, Need Reference

Although EcoRazzi only quote her saying in 2008 that she wasn’t vegetarian any more, she did tell a Skating podcast she was vegan for many years. It would be nice to get a reference for this being the case when she competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics, which is I assume why EcoRazzi included her.

Update 18:19 GMT: Charlene Wong herself (verified) has commented to describe herself as vegan bar leather skates and occasional dairy milk in coffee/tea. Thanks, Charlene.

Venus and Serena Williams (Tennis, 2012) – Half True

We mentioned in our first Olympic show that Venus Williams said she was a “vegan who cheated” (press conferences), and Serena was “more raw than vegan, but close” (we asked her people).

I only researched vegan athletes and not the longer list of vegetarian athletes mentioned in the blogosphere.

There is a stereotype of vegans being obsessed with whether or not people are “really” vegan, like Diana mentioned before and will no doubt discuss in our next show, about judgement. But we both believe in having accurate information.

Finally, I know our listeners can find out a lot more than I can alone and some of you may even know vegan athletes and Olympians personally. We are grateful for your comments, tweets and fact finding.

Kara Lang  holds the record as the youngest woman ever to score a goal in international soccer – but her passions also include vegan cupcakes.

Now retired from football, she took time out from her busy schedule as part of Canadian station CTV’s Olympic team to talk to me about her story, touring, and the vegan mentor she improbably found in her own national squad.

Kara Lang

You can find Kara Lang at:

• @Kara_Lang on Twitter
• Kara Lang on Tumblr
• Kara Lang on CanadaSoccer.com
• Her journalism at CTVOlympics.ca

Sportsnet.ca interviewed her about her retirement from football.

London Places

Lara mentioned fellow Canadian Ms Cupcake and vegan shop Vx.

Amy Walsh

Amy was that vegan mentor. You can find her at:

• @amyhwalsh on Twitter
• Amy Walsh on CanadaSoccer.com

Thanks

Our thanks go to Robb Masters for the music, and to Kara Lang for her time. Where we recorded turned out to be under a busy flight path, so there’s a bit of non-Olympic background noise.

Cow’s milk—or the milk of any other species, for that matter—contains a protein called casein that breaks apart during digestion to release a whole host of opiates called casomorphins. A cup of cow’s milk contains about six grams of casein. Skim milk contains a bit more, and casein is concentrated in the production of cheese.

I looked into the references from Dr. Barnard’s book that PCRM was kind enough to send. But the analysis I offered in the show was that the idea that cheese is addictive is at best overstated and at worst wrong.

This is why.

First off, a quick biology lesson. We have receptors throughout the cells of our body including our brains. Receptors are like locks that only specific keys can open and cause effects in the cell. We have natural opiates produced by our bodies (e.g. endorphin) . An opiate agonist is a chemical that binds with the opiate receptor and causes effects like analgesia ( decrease in pain sensitivity), feelings of euphoria and can create tolerance and addiction.  It is triggered when an opiate molecule, of a specific size and shape, fits like a key into that receptor’s lock. However, there are some molecules that fit into the receptor but don’t activate it. Opioid antagonists block opioid receptors from activation. As Dr. Barnard’s essay suggests, opioids might regulate preferences for foods high in fat and sugar not because these foods contain opioids but because eating them releases natural opioids (Drewnowski et al 1992).

So Dr. Barard states  proteins in dairy are broken down into opoid molecules called casomorphins. This is definitely true. However, in the breakdown of dairy, opioid antagonistsare also produced which would have the opposite effect and lead cheese to not be addictive. This differs from cheese to cheese (Sienkiewicz-Szłapka et al. 2009):

I would conclude that if these agonistic casomorphins are really important for causing an addiction to cheese we would see a big difference in the popularity of cheeses depending on the ratio of agonistic to antagonistic casomorphins. Unfortunately the authors of this study did not test cheddar – one of the most popular cheeses in the world – but if  it’s anything like the other semi-hard cheeses in the study we would expect it to have a greater percentage of opioid antagonists.

The next problem with the idea of cheese addiction is the question of whether or not the opioid peptides (protein fragments) could pass through the gut into the bloodstream and the brain.

There is evidence that these peptides pass through the guts of infants (casomorphins are also found in human breastmilk) and through their immature blood-brain barrier (which keeps lots of stuff out of the brain that circulates through the blood) but has there been any evidence that they cause morphinelike effects?

There has been a case study linking cow’s milk consumption and sleep apnea but in a larger study of infants who were breast or formula fed they found no difference in average psychomotor development between the two groups.

Another study found markers of human beta casomorphin 8 in the brainstems of human infants. (To correct something I said in the show, these casomorphins are from human breast milk and not dairy).

Given that:

1. formula fed infants are much more sensitive to peptides
2. formula fed infants eat a larger proportion of dairy in their diet than most adults (unless someone subsists entirely on dairy)
3. these peptides would be working on a much smaller body mass than adults
4. there still isn’t definitive evidence that they are having morphinelike effects

This leads me to think that it is improbable that dairy has addictive properties in adult humans.

There is evidence that casomorphins pass through the gut of adults but, as far as I could find, no evidence that dairy has opiatelike  effects on adult humans. The only thing that came close was this study showing a lowering of blood pressure in those who consumed “sour” milk as opposed to regular milk – however the difference between those milks was not attributed to casomorphins but to other peptides.

One main effect that opiates like morphine have is analgesia (decreased sensitivity to pain). If dairy has enough opiate peptides to create addiction one would expect that dairy would also decrease pain sensitivity. However, I was unable to find any studies relating dairy consumption and pain sensitivity and during my postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina working with pain data I never saw any questions about dairy in the protocol.

This blog has been pretty far afield from my scientific speciality and I’m grateful for any criticism of my methods or conclusions. But three main pieces of evidence suggest to me that Dr Barnard is in error about the possible addictive properties of dairy.

1. Dairy has both agonistic and antagonistic opiate peptides and there is no evidence that products with more agonistic peptides are more popular
2. The effects of bovine casomorphins in infants, those who should be most sensitive to them, are small 
3. Dairy hasn’t been shown to have opiatelike effects in adult humans

So, why do people have such a hard time giving up cheese? Because fat is high in calories and throughout our evolutionary history, when calories were much scarcer than they are today, fat was the most efficient way to get your calories for the day. Because of this, these foods, and some others (e.g. sweet foods, salty foods), may have a reward system that makes us feel good when we eat them promoting seeking out and eating these foods which throughout our ancestral past led to reproductive success. Nowadays sugar and fat are no longer as rare as they once were but our reward system still amps up when we eat them (see mismatch hypothesis)

I think this is a simpler explanation in addition to explaining my “addiction” to almond butter, dark chocolate and avocadoes. mmm

Athletes from across the world are coming to East London – where we produce the show – but what are the vegan perspectives on the Olympic games?

This show:

• Diana talks to Sandra Hood, who wrote the book on raising vegan children, about carrying the Olympic torch
• Amazingly, keeping the Olympics supplied with a vegan mince that caters can use as a drop in substitute for ground meat is down to one small company – I visit the father and daughter who are supplying the Olympic games with the vegan option
• What do the locals think? The staff of the nearest vegan cafe to the games have their say.
• We fill you in on the stories you might have heard in the media – Venus Williams‘s diet, the Chinese volleyball team, and the use of animals in the opening ceremony

Athletes

Venus and Serena Williams

Venus Williams and Serena Williams represent the US at Tennis.

Venus has Sjögrens syndrome. You can see her discuss her raw vegan diet on CBS (Jul 10);  she called herself a chegan (“cheating vegan”) in a press conferences, reports Tennis Panorama.

Some vegans say that her sister, Serena, with whom she won the Wimbledon Ladies Doubles title, is also vegan; Celeb Buzz quotes her as saying that she won’t eat chicken at home with Venus.

The publicist told me that:

Serena’s diet is more “Raw” then “Vegan” although it is quite close.

Barcelona, 1992

We mentioned:

• Carl Lewis, who competed in Barcelona on a vegan diet.
• Fiona Oakes, who cycled for Britain in Barcelona, and now runs Tower Stables animal sanctuary.

Nearly Olympian Vegans

Pam Boteler, American canoeist, is raw vegan – but only men’s sprint canoe is an Olympic sport

James Southwood is one of the world’s leading Savateurs – French kickboxers – as well as being a former marketing officer for the UK Vegan Society. Paris was a close second for hosting the 2012 games, and would likely have added Savate as at least a demonstration event, as it did in 1924.

An already-Olympian we didn’t mention is Kara Lang, Canada, Football/Soccer – who competed in Beijing (2008) but was prevented from competing this year by an injury.  She’s in London as a journalist.

Vegan-Sponsored Olympians

Diana suggested athletes you might want to cheer on the basis of their vegan sponsors rather than their flag:

• US Rowing, sponsored by “Perfect Snaque”
• US Water Polo, sponsored by vegan hair care products Malibu C
• Canadian Triathlete Simon Whitfield, who uses and endorses the approach and supplements of vegan ultramarathon runner Brendan Brazier.

Sandra Hood, Registered Dietitian

Sandra Hood has spoken for the UK Vegan Society on diet issues, and wrote Feeding Your Vegan Infant with Confidence. The Olympic Torch Relay page on Sandra Hood has more information about her work on diabetes.

We discussed the Chinese volleyball team, whose complaints have been mentioned by NPR’s The Salt (who mentioned they were on the road without access to untainted meat) and The Guardian (who reported that they were only avoiding pork, whilst eating fish and “protein powder”).

I did not mention that the additive Clenbuterol is also unlawful. In 2009, over 70 people in China fell ill after eating Pork contaminated with Clenbuterol.

My local vegan anarchist cafe is Pogocafe; Diana cited the Olympian Economics episode of Freakanomics Radio.

Animals at the Opening Ceremony

You can read more about that story at:

• LOCOG announcement about the opening ceremony, including that it will involve farm animals
• UK group Viva’s page about the campaign against the use of animals in the opening ceremony
• Guardian coverage of the controversy

The calculation of 20,000 chickens being eaten was based on the quantity of poultry mentioned in the LOCOG Factpack, assumptions that this was from birds of the same weights and proportions as 2010 UK production of carcasses and that 85% of a carcass is, ethics notwithstanding, edible.

We recorded the show on Friday afternoon and uploaded it (without show notes) as the opening ceremony was beginning.

Frys’ Veggiemince at the Olympics

I visted Frys Distribution, who import from family business Frys Vegetarian in South Africa. Because some will want to know, of the voices you heard, Lisa is vegan, Pat is almost, and Kevin is omnie.

Local radio in Durban, South Africa also interviewed manufacturer Tammy Fry.

Thanks

Our thanks go to Robb Masters for the music, to Sandra Hood and to Fry’s and Pogocafe for their time.

What is the secret of making cheese without dairy that stretches and melts?

Is there a cheese addiction?

What’s the past, present, and future of vegan cheese?

And if you brought together the leading vegan cheeses from Europe and the Americas – like Redwoods Cheezly, Vegusto, and Daiya – that aren’t meant to be available in the same country, let alone the same pizza – who would win?

Spoiler warning: the results of the taste test are below the fold.

Casein and Casomorphins

Neal Barnard summarises the case for regarding cheese as a narcotic 2003 article in PCRM Good Medicine Magazine, Breaking the Food Seduction:

At first, the researchers theorized that it must have come from the cows’ diets. After all, morphine used in hospitals comes from poppies and is also produced naturally by a few other plants that the cows might have been eating. But it turns out that cows actually produce it within their bodies, just as poppies do. Traces of morphine, along with codeine and other opiates, are apparently produced in cows’ livers and can end up in their milk.

But that was only the beginning, as other researchers soon found. Cow’s milk—or the milk of any other species, for that matter—contains a protein called casein that breaks apart during digestion to release a whole host of opiates called casomorphins. A cup of cow’s milk contains about six grams of casein. Skim milk contains a bit more, and casein is concentrated in the production of cheese.

Traces seem unlikely to have a psychoactive affect, so we did not mention morphine or codeine in the show.

Casomorphins, on the other hand, are real and unambiguous; Diana examined the literature, discussed them in the show, and will also blog about them shortly.

Eva Batt’s Vegan Cheese Recipe

I followed a recipe for vegan cheese taken from a 1985 update of “What’s Cooking” by Eva Batt (1973), and you can see Diana posing with the 1980s vegan cheese. The recipe – soy flour, soy margarine, and yeast extract – represents the era more than it does Eva.

Eva Batt played a leading role in British veganism in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, including the “Open Door” film mentioned in our Born Vegan show and, of course, cookbooks.

How to Make Vegan Cheese Stretch

I sent interview requests to half a dozen companies, including Daiya and Redwoods, and was glad to speak with Mark, the Director of Vegusto UK, to hear his views on where the analogue food movement is going. Though it didn’t get a mention in the show, he’s vegan.

Dr Jonathan Gordon consults at Glasgow Consulting in Rhode Island, USA.

You might also enjoy “Cracking the Code: Making Vegan Cheese taste Cheesier” on NPR’s Food Blog, The Salt.

The Vegan Cheese Taste Test

We chose Redwoods Super Melting Cheezly (from the English Midlands, owned by Heather Mills) as the best UK melting vegan cheese, and Daiya Mozzarella style shreds as Diana’s favourite in the US.

London Vegan boutique Vx had recently recommended the new Vegusto No-Moo Melty, so we added that too.

This took place in May 2011; so this show was over a year in the making.

Method

Diana made two pizzas on storebought crust- tomato mushroom and spinach pesto, and I added the cheese in three concentric circles. From inside to outside, I put Redwoods Cheezly, Vegusto, and Daiya on one pizza and reversing the order on the other pizza. It’s important to be fair. All ten guests scored the pizzas out of 10. Let no-one tell me I don’t know how to party.

Results

The average scores for the whole group were: Daiya 3.2, Redwoods 3.9, and Vegusto 4.1. The four vegans ranked them the same, but with higher scores (5.3; 6.0; and 6.3).

Conclusions:

Use vegan cheese as a seasoning rather than a bulk ingredient, particularly with those who eat dairy cheese. Don’t forget flavour. It’s steadily getting better – this unknown cheese from Switzerland is actually reasonably good, and the Daiya Jack Style Wedge went down well with Diana’s mother and her husband.

Diana mentioned Gwendolyn Mather’s third prize with a vegan Daiya/Tofutti sandwich in the Grilled Cheese Invitational; Gwendolyn blogged about this for Compassion over Killing.

Thanks

Our thanks go to Robb Masters (who coincidentally reviewed vegan cheese for the London Vegan Campaigns vegan pledge) for the music, to our friends at the garden party for tolerating the taste test, and to Mark Galvin and Jonathan Gordon for talking with me.

And to the people who make vegan cheese. I still like it.

Before Redwoods, or Daiya, or the Uncheese Cookbook, vegan cheese meant cooking a paste with yeast extract. This show, Diana tries it.

We took the show on the road to VegfestUK to find out how parents met the challenges of raising children vegan in a non-vegan world. What do they tell their children about how the rest of the world treats animals?

Ian tracked down Mair Perkins from her entry in an old pamphlet of vegan case histories, and talked to Ruby Roth, who has defended her children’s book “Vegan is Love” on US Networks from Fox to NBC.

Diana talked with Lauren and her parents when they came to our recording of the show at VegfestUK Bristol.

Ruby Roth

Ruby Roth is the author of This is Why We Don’t Eat Animals and Vegan is Love, as well as an illustrator (NSFW) of liberated womanhood and hip-hop.

She has made her case and defended her book across TV and newspapers internationally. She’s also been on many animal issues shows: Animal Voices Vancouver; All Things Vegan Radio (Oregon, USA); AR Zone (discussing feminism, and socialisation), and Sentients (KZFR, California, USA).

VegFestUK

The organisers of VegfestUK in Bristol say it’s the world’s largest vegan event with 25,000 visitors. It’s a showcase of vegan wares, with live music drawing the omnivorous punters in.

They also run the VegfestUK awards. We were very grateful to be nominated in the “best vegan media publication or website” category.

We didn’t win, but if thousands of votes have been cast then to get 7% of them, despite being such a new show, is extremely humbling.

Benjamin Zephaniah, who took part in our show about Syria’s national poet, the medieval vegan rationalist Al-Ma’arri, won “best vegan musician/performer”.

Plamil

Plamil was set up in 1960′s Britain to produce a “plant milk” alternative to dairy. Being a vegan company, they also published some vegan pamphlets and tried to help support vegan parents.

They published Vegan Infants Case Histories, which combined the experience of parents with pages by a GP and a dietician.

The company is now run by the late founder’s son, Adrian Ling, and produces a range of vegan confections and dairy alternatives.

Mair Perkins, who featured in the case histories, is also an artist; an animator and illustrator, her video won first prize in the 2008 Design against Fur competition.

Thanks

Our thanks go to Robb Masters for the music, and to Mair Perkins, Ruby Roth, and Lauren and her parents for their time.

Because we took over a talks session at the festival to run our show in a tent, we relied on much more help than usual. Our thanks to Tim of VegfestUK and the staff of BES for help and information about the sound system so that I could prepare our setup; and Petrina Butler (formerly of WZBC) and Kevin Butler for helping so much with setup and organisation of our recording. As you can probably hear, I was struck down with a cold that weekend, so all help was very much appreciated.

Our thanks particularly go to the audience for turning up and helping us make the show. I’m more grateful to Diana than usual for going through with the ambitious plan to record at VegfestUK.

(Production footnote: I added the music in post-production, but I think that’s obvious.)

The Survey

You can see all the questions and responses here on Surveymonkey. To summarize, we asked people about their food choices (whether they were meat eaters, vegetarians, vegans etc.) and then we asked if they would eat lab meat, why or why not, and if they would eat lab meat if it caused no more animal death than eating plant food and why or why not.

Who Participated?

Disclaimer here: we only had a convenience sample (people we could recruit via Facebook and Twitter and through our friends and fans) of 63 participants in our survey so it’s not representative.  Here is the breakdown. If you want to know how we defined the groups check out the survey.

Would vegans eat lab meat?

Well, for the most part, no. Here is the breakdown:

Looking through the data I also found that 

• 32% of respondents mentioned disgust as a factor
• 21% mentioned health as a factor
• 5, or 17%, of the “no” “maybe” and “not sure” respondents mentioned being supportive of the idea for others

Here are some examples of things people said about why they gave their answer.

People who said yes:

If it doesn’t harm animals it’s vegan to me. I never had a problem with meat apart from the harm it causes.

It is an intelligent, compassionate choice! Someday we will look back and wonder why we were so cruel and wasteful using animals!

People who said no:

The ends don’t justify the means – animals are being used as raw materials for this big experiment, since their cells are being taken….That means confining and experimenting on animals in order to come up with something that’s supposedly ‘ethical’.

I find eating meat disgusting now and even if there were no cruelty involved (and that’s a big if!) there are still the health consequences to consider.

Animal use is required to develop “lab-grown meat”….consuming animal products, even from nonsentient sources, reinforces the paradigm of animals as our resources.

Most surprising of all (to me anyway) is that vegans did not change their minds about eating lab meat if there was no more animal death involved than plant food. Only one participant changed from “no” to “I don’t know” in that condition and there were no moves to “yes”, in fact one participant moved from “yes” to “I don’t know”!

In  the second question many vegans expressed doubt about the possibility of making lab meat without animal deaths, others expressed health concerns, others stated that the environmental impact would still be  too great to warrant it.

Some examples of “no” answers to question two:

I doubt it could achieve that, but if it could, I am sure that labs could grow edible plants with an even lower death rate.  I don’t see why I would want to promote the myth that humans need meat

…accidental death of insects etc while cultivating crops does not equate to deliberate deaths from growing something unnatural and unnecessary.

No…it’s fake food!

…I would still say no, but …I’m overall most in support of whatever reduces the culture of factory farming conscious animals. I think lab-grown meat could have incredible implications for animal treatment world-wide.

Would nonvegetarians eat lab meat?

Meat eaters seemed to be divided more evenly between the possible options:

Most meat eaters cited cost and taste as barriers to trying it. Some interesting responses from this subset:

it sounds a lot less disgusting than the ingredients of a mcdonald’s double cheeseburger, which i eat about once a week. of course, the lack of death and suffering involved in real meat, is also very appealing.

Again, it depends on how it tastes. If it was as savory as, or more savory than the animals I like to eat now, then I would consider switching entirely to lab grown meat…. If it’s just another form of tofu, then no thanks

If it looks like meat, smells like meat, and tastes like meat, it’s meat, and I’ll eat it!

A couple of pescetarians who don’t consider fish to be “meat” seemed as disgusted as vegans about eating lab grown meat:

I do not eat animals that live on land because it feels like cannibalism.

What happens when we stipulate that the lab meat has no more animal death than plant foods? Interestingly we see the same pattern in meat eaters that we did in the vegans except likely for a different reason. Only one person moves to “yes”.

Here is a typical (and blunt!) response to that question:

I don’t give a sh*t about the animal death rate.

You may have noticed that we chucked out the vegetarians. Well, we didn’t really have much of a sample considering there were only four of them but, for the curious, two said no, one said yes, one said maybe, and nobody changed their minds in the “low animal death” condition.

So, considering that this is a small sample I still have some confidence that the majority of vegans would not eat lab grown meat although a minority might endorse others eating it. Among meat eaters we do not have a representative sample but another survey has been done in the UK that found 62% of nonvegetarians said they would not eat lab meat.

What do these results mean for lab meat and its development? In my next blog I’ll speculate  about whether or not our attitudes towards this technology will reduce its potential impact and how it might help animals.

What do you tell children about where other people’s food comes from? What happens when they stay over in a friends’ home?

We’re going to discuss these and other challenges with vegan parents at VegfestUK in Bristol England on Sunday May 27th – but we’d really like to hear from people bringing kids up vegan from the rest of the world first.

Please leave us a Skype voicemail (user “vegan.option”), comment on this blog posts, or – particularly if you’d prefer a swift Skype chat to leaving a message, email me (ian@theveganoption.org).

What is it like to grow up vegan in a non-vegan world? We hear three stories of vegan childhood:

• Rosemary- appeared as a baby on a BBC programme about veganism in 1976
• Elishama  - grew up in the Hebrew Israelites, a religious community trying to rebuild the lifestyle of Eden
• Andrew – the son of veteran animal activists

Open Door

In the 1970s, the BBC’s Community Programmes Unit helped different groups produce episodes of Open Door to present their perspective. In 1976,  The Vegan Society presented”To a Brighter Future for All Life” (BFI listing) featuring stalwarts like Kathleen Jannaway and Eva Batt who were involved in the first years of the organised vegan movement.

This 1976  issue of The Vegan describes the Open Door show and the large response to it. Also featured is an article by Rosemary’s parents titled “Veganism can be cheaper too”. In an age without video recorders or YouTube uploads, it offered a blow-by-blow account of the show. Here is Rosemary’s appearance:

The Bland Family – Jenny, Harold, and baby Rosemary – were shown under the hazels in the garden. They told of the healthy diet they had been following for ten years and which they found helped them to enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities – cycling, camping, canoeing, walking, as well as carrying on their working live.

Harold explained with the help of charts that the vegan diet is very economical in terms of land usage; wheat yielding  ten times as much protein per acre as beef and three times as much milk (allowing for the biological factor). He maintained that Britain could become self sufficient in food and that, over 40% of the world’s grain harvest was being wasted by being fed to animals. Jenny maintained that they found the diet very interesting as well as cheaper and easier to prepare.

Activist Kim Stallwood credits Open Door with convincing him to go vegan. Portland blogger @lovemotionstory says she’s “kind of in love with this vintage, BBC series”. These reactions follow someone posting Open Door: To a Brighter Future for All Life in full on YouTube. Rosemary is at the start of part 2.

Hebrew Israelites

Elishama was born in the African Hebrew Israelite community in Dimona, Israel. Their plant based diet is part of a wider belief system about recovering the lifestyle (and lifespans) of Eden; it includes wool, silk, and honey.  Founder Ben Ammi cites Genesis and says that because man was created from dirt, dirt can bring forth all we need to be healthy [Video].

• African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem on Wikipedia
• AfricanHebrewIsraelitesOfJerelusalem.com, their own site
• Kingdom of Yah [God] on YouTube
• Archived CBS story on the first Hebrew Israelite to represent Israel at Eurovision

They run the chain of Soul Vegetarian restaurants; the AV Club interviewed Yohanna Brown, co-founder of one of the first.

Nutrition

If you’ve come here looking for nutrition information, you might want to go instead to:

• Vegetarian Food for Thought Podcast: Vegan with Child, a Healthy Combination - Colleen Patrick Goudreau summarises nutrition advice for pregnancy
• VeganHealth.org: Pregnancy, Infants and Children
• UK Vegan Society: The Vegan Diet for Infants and Children

Credits

Thanks to all contributors, not just Rosemary, Elishama, and Andrew but also Mair, Daniel, and Hedi, who we didn’t have time to feature. Thanks also to the people who helped put us in touch: Brian Jacobs, Harold Bland, Elishama’s aunt Danielle, and Angie.

Particular thanks to Andrew’s family for tolerating us: his wife Hannah and children Florence (on our opening credits) and Tom (playing in the background).

The film is (c) BBC; a minimum clip is used in the show under fair use, on the basis that talking with its youngest cast member three decades later counts as comment.  Robb Masters, aka Idiotech, wrote our theme.

(Listener Aimee Daniels did, rightly, point out that we’re all born vegan. But we couldn’t think of a better title.)

There has already been some controversy over whether the ladybug (or ladybird, as Ian puts it) is playing with or trying to eat the sprinkles as you can see under any comment thread showing this video. But I decided to get an expert opinion. My friend Barrett Klein who has studied entomology in depth offered this explanation:

It is often too tempting and too easy to ascribe human behaviors to nonhuman animals.

At times, it can also be inappropriate, as with this case of a beetle presumed to be playing with sprinkles.

Although many nonhuman animals exhibit play behavior and this behavior can serve as an invaluable means of preparing for future challenges, this beetle is most likely on the search for viable edibles.  Ladybird beetles are voracious aphid predators and the sprinkles may fall within the aphid size range to warrant the beetle’s inspection.

I suspect we are witnessing a motivated (ie, hungry) predator responding to reasonably comparable stimuli by handling sprinkles as potential prey items.

Watching the video myself I thought that rather than having a joyful experience this beetle might be profoundly frustrated. Ladybugs can eat thousands of aphids in their 3-6 week life. Ever seen the dessert tray of a restaurant with surprisingly realistic looking plastic cakes and pies? Imagine pies were all you ate and you were hungry in a room full of plastic pies, or -as Ian offers – that you are on a street full of Asian restaurants but they all put honey in their stir fry.

Play behaviour is difficult to define but also pretty rare and, as far as I have seen, undiscovered in insect species. But ladybugs have been found to have an incredible ability that aids in their hunt for food.

Williams and Flaxman recently found (original paper) that ladybug beetles are able to do something that no other species has been scientifically proven to do. The scientists used a compound to toughen up the stems of plants that aphids commonly feed on. Because aphids drink plant juices they prefer softer skinned plants. Ladybugs were found to prefer the plants with the softer stems even when there were no aphids on them. As the authors conclude “While expected from theory, it is nevertheless surprising that the predators we studied were actually able to detect and use information about the quality of a resource they did not consume.”

Ladybugs’ cute colourful round appearance and the fact that you can’t see fangs or any other clues to their predatory nature cues our anthropomorphic tendencies to infer that their motivations are cute and cuddly as well.  To an aphid a ladybug is just as threatening as any lion and science has shown they can do something a lot more complicated than waiting by the watering hole for a wildebeest.

CC-BY

But, what exactly is anthropomorphism?

Anthropomorphism simply defined is when people infer the motivations, emotions or psychology of nonhuman animals or objects in a way that reflects their own human motivations or understanding. The classic study on this was done in 1944 by Heider and Simmel. Here is the movie they used; what do you think is going on here?

Humans automatically make inferences about mental states even in the case of objects. This has been shown repeatedly, even in infants  (example).

In the case of anthropomorphizing animals, there are many ideas about why this might have evolved. Some of the most intelligent animals or earth, such as species of dolphins, primates and parrots have to navigate a complex social world. Theory of mind, or an ability to attribute mental states, is essential to understanding the motivations of others for cooperation, competition, affiliation and mating. Generalizing your human theory of mind to nonhuman animals – in a way that projects human motivations onto them – is perhaps just a byproduct of this highly developed aspect of the human mind.  Another idea is that understanding the motivational states of other animals may have helped early humans hunt.

Highly anthropomorphic perceptions of animal provide hunting peoples with a framework of  understanding, identifying with, and anticipating the behavior or their prey- James Serpell quoted here

Regardless of why anthropomorphism exists – even if it evolved to facilitate hunting – it may play an important role in the foundation of ethics towards nonhuman animals.  A 2009 study found that belief in animal mind is a significant predictor of being against animal use.  Of course there is objective scientific evidence that most animals, especially the ones commonly eaten or otherwise used by humans, have minds. In this “On Anthropomorphism” series of blogs I plan to look at the ways people misinterpret the mental states of animals using their intuition or theory of mind.  Anthropomorphism can be benign but as we will see it can also cut both ways- acting to increase empathy and compassion or facilitate animal use in ways that cause suffering.

Lab Meat

A future with cheap lab meat could be drastically different – for humans and animals. How would it work? And is the development of this technology good for animals?

Ian talks to Nicholas Genovese, a PETA-funded scientist working on the stem cells that could make up what he calls cultured meat. I ask two vegans, transhuman philosopher David Pearce and activist Jordi Casamitjana, why they are for or against in vitro meat; and I reveal the results of my survey. Will vegans and meat eaters ever be able to get beyond the “ick” factor of cultured meat?

Nicholas Genovese, cultured meat scientist

Dr. Nicholas Genovese joined us from the University of Missouri.

You can find out more about Dr Genovese’s work on cultured meat in his interview at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies. Michell Sherrow of Peta has blogged about their sponsorhip of Dr Genovese’s work on lab meat.

David Pearce, transhuman philosopher

David Pearce co-founded Humanity+  and  has collected his interesting writings on transhumanism and the abolition of all suffering on his site The Hedonistic Imperative. 

Two blog posts that were very critical of in vitro meat, one by Jeff Perz [Facebook]  and the other by “The Rational Vegan”, inspired my questions for David.

Our thanks to all of you who filled in our survey – the results of which I’ll post soon; our interviewees Nicholas Genovese, David Pearce, and first ever studio guest Jordi Casamitjana; to Digital media artist Robb Masters who wrote our theme  …

… and VegFestUK, for nominating us for their media award. Please vote for us!

Unless you’ve been living in a cave like Al-Ma’arri you will no doubt know the media has been abuzz about in vitro meat (aka lab meat, shmeat) and the possibility of an incredibly expensive burger as soon as next fall. Our next episode deals with the issues involved but also hopes to shed some new light on the subject. Take the survey (which takes just a minute) and The survey has finished but stay tuned to find out the results.

Rebel Poet: The Life of Al-Ma’arri

A thousand years ago, Al-Ma’arri was writing Arabic poems of extreme complexity, promoting a rational ideal and most remarkably, making an ethical case for veganism. We tell the story of his life in conversation with fellow vegan rebel poet Benjamin Zephaniah.

We first found out about Al-Ma’arri through a blog by Gary Francione and were both intrigued and surprised more had not been said about him.  Al-Ma’arri’s conversations and opinions seem progressive even by today’s standards. And, like anyone with views ahead of his time, he was questioned by society. The show dramatises his exchange with a leading cleric about veganism.

Benjamin Zephaniah

In this episode Benjamin Zephanaiah, the vegan rebel poet of today, joins us to bring Al-Ma’arri to life.

Benjamin Zephanaiah began as a dub poet and his verses reach people who don’t often enjoy poetry; his rhymes have been celebrated around the world and in a BBC vote to find the UK’s favourite poet he was the only living poet in the top ten. He campaigns in poetry and deed for causes from animals to miscarriages of justice.

He once publicly rejected a royal honour – an “Order of the British Empire” - saying “Whoever is behind this offer can never have read any of my work”. In the show, he finds common ground with Al-Ma’arri.

You can read Benjamin Zephaniah’s poetry and find out more about him at his website.

Thanks

As well as Professor Benjamin Zephaniah, our thanks also to contributors Richard Foltz (who has also written specifically about Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures), Ghazala Anwar, and to voice actors Motaz Al-Shehail (Al-Ma’arri in Arabic), Will Trimble (Al-Ma’arri in English) and Ian Peacock (the Cairo missionary). Thanks also to folk who helped me with research: Sarra Tlili, Sandhya of MEVeg, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS Radio (who let me use their studio) and Marta of SOAS Veg.

Sources

Because most contemporary sources are in Arabic, and I can’t read Arabic, I relied largely on the work of Victorian Orientalists, particularly David Margoliouth and Reynold Nicholson. Fortunately, much of this is available online, thanks to the work of Google and the Internet Archive.

Reynold Nicholson:

• Studies in Islamic Poetry and Mysticism, 1921
  • Chapter 2, The Meditations of Ma’arri (pp 43-289), which includes a brief biography and selections of his poetry organised by theme
  • Full translation of “I do not steal from nature”  (not, as far as I can tell, a title Al-Ma’arri gave it) pp 134-6
  • “I do not steal from nature” in Arabic (197) on pp 258-9
• A Literary History of the Arabs, 1907
  • Al-Ma’arri pp 313-24

David Margoliouth:

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society:

I did check some other more modern sources, but unfortunately those aren’t in a form that I can link to.

Sound

Digital media artist Robb Masters wrote our theme. I also used these actualities and sound effects for atmosphere:

• Cavernscape, donated to the public domain by Blaukreuz
• Niger village muezzin call, donated to the public domain by Felix Blume
• Early Morning Riad by Gazdooks under CC-BY licence
• Essaouira Walkabout by acclivity under CC-BY licence
• Drop Slow Long 1 by Mich 3D under CC Sampling+ licence

In line with the usual artifice of radio, I edited our discussion with Benjamin Zephaniah and re-recorded some dialogue for clarity and flow.

Contemporaries called him “the son of the sublime”. Whilst he strove to be a recluse, students and academics came from all over the Arab world to learn at his feet.

Two centuries before Dante, he wrote an Arab Divine Comedy. Seven centuries before the Enlightenment, he promoted rationalism over revelation. And – why he’s so interesting to us – nine centuries before the word “vegan”, he refused to exploit other animals.

Can you imagine what is was like to encourage others to renounce meat, dairy, and honey in eleventh century Syria?

Many claim him as one of their own

I read about Al-Ma’arri on Gary Francione’s blog. Other people have picked the topic up with interest - Sam, author of The Nail That Sticks Up, has also blogged about him .

Several humanistic websites, who see him as an atheist, host translations of his work (Humanistic Texts) or  profiles (Center for Inquiry; writer & broadcaster Kenan Malik). Some of the things he says are explicitly Islamic, though, and I’ve talked with a Ghazala Anwar, a Muslim vegan who sees him as an inspiration and a coreligionist.

I won’t put write another biography in this blog post – after all, I want you to wait for something in the show! His Wikipedia page is a good simple biography, although it neglects his correspondence on veganism a year before he died.

Your thoughts on the rebel poet

Before the show we want to hear your comments, in case there’s something you want to hear a bit more of, or could tell us how you find the story of Abul ‘Ala Al-Ma’arri significant. Please say below.

On Thursday, we’re off to meet today’s leading rebel vegan poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, to find out what he thinks. (Yes. Benjamin Zephaniah will be in our next show. Perhaps that should have been in the headline.) So it’ll be nice to hear what you think before then.

Diana contributed to this post. The Arabic in the title is Al-Ma’arri’s name; some people who are interested in him speak Arabic and English, in that order, and I’d like them to be able to find this.

Digital Vegans

How has the digital revolution changed being vegan? We talk to Eric Brent, founder of leading vegetarian restaurant finder Happy Cow. Diana reviews smartphone apps. Ian finds out how the digital revolution changed his local vegan group in London.

The age of information brings together the Beijing Vegans and the Vegan Club of St. Petersburg in Russia and makes being vegan a lot easier. How has veganism changed? And what are the challenges to older organisations?

Veggie Restaurant Finders

Happy Cow is the best-known and one of the longest – I interview founder Eric Brent where he looks forward to changes for Happy Cow in 2012. It has apps for several mobile platforms.

VegDining, also launched in 1999. Looking for places to eat in London, I could see some problems with the interface (the seven districts of London were all called simply “London” and some were impossible to select) and content (it listed Otarian London, which closed in 2011, as “opening in 2010″ whereas Happy Cow has removed it).

VegGuide is a project of Minnesota USA group Compassionate Action for Animals along with national US group Mercy for Animals and joined this month by Vegan Outreach. They’ve been going since 2002, share their information via an open API and a Creative Commons share-alike licence; but have no apps. Their content seems up to date.

Most local vegan groups list restaurants; that’s too many to mention here. Listener Stephen Fenwick-Paul has created BunnyGo, which maps restaurants in the UK, and has an iPhone app and API.

Smartphone Apps

Diana mentioned these iPhone Apps:

• VeganXpress with vegan options at major chains (mostly in the US), vegan candy/junk food, wine and beer
• Recipe finders such as The VegWeb vegan recipe finder
• VegOut (which Eric said wasn’t being updated; there is the official Happy Cow app)
• iVegan and AnimalFree for looking up ingredients

Ian mentioned VeganEasy which also uses the alcohol lists from Barnivore.

VegNews has various articles listing 10 Vegan Smartphone Apps and 11  iPhone Apps.

Some of these, such as Animal Free, are also available for Android. Vegan Eating Out offers a similar fast-food list to VeganXpress, although it includes foods with honey. Eric Brent recommended the barcode-scanning Vegeble for Android.

Animal Hack-tivism

Jasmine Singer reviewed a range of apps in January 2011, suggesting that if you’re a software developer looking to “change the world for animals”, an Android app would be a good place to start.

A couple of our contributors appealed specifically for volunteers. Eric Brent would like Happy Cow to develop its Android app, and would like to hear from an Android developer. Stephen Fenwick-Paul is also appealing for folk to help him test his UK restaurant finder BunnyGo.

We link to VeganFeed.com‘s list of other podcasts in our “help” section.

Contributors

Our thanks to contributors Eric Brent of Happy Cow, Peter Despard of London Vegans, Stephen Fenwick Paul of ActiVeg, Sara from Belgium, and vegan lawmaker Kerry McCarthy MP. Digital media artist Robb Masters wrote our theme.

Plus, I wanted to gather some information; you might be exactly who we want to talk to for a show.

Please email me directly, or leave comments at the bottom. Here are four of our planned shows.

VEGANISM IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Let’s look at how web 2.0 has transformed the movement, bringing us together and making it easier to share information and inspiration – such as The Vegan Option. So what are your favourite apps and websites?

Because Diana and I have iPhones, I’d really like to hear from people who have Android, Windows, or Symbian smartphones: what are your favourite apps?

And if you think the information age has been bad the for the movement, say so too.

MAKING THE PLEDGE

Going back to The Pledge and talk about the challenges activists face when they organise the vegan pledge and support people to go vegan for a month. What would you like to find out from those activists?

SO YOU WANT TO RUN A VEGAN RESTAURANT?

I’d really like to talk to someone who is planning to set up a vegan restaurant, to find out you think you need to know – and what advice experienced restaurateurs have for you. So please let me know if you’re planning to set up a restaurant.

And we’ll talk to experienced restaurateurs and find out about their advice and experiences.

THE VEGAN TAX

Does vegan stuff cost more? Are we buying products sold at a premium, or reaping the benefits of needing less water and land? I’d really like to know, particularly if you’re outside the UK and US. In India, for example, are things more expensive with the red dot or the green dot?

Not only do I further expand my multimedia empire, but I do manage to sneak in a less human-centric world view - explaining the evolutionary origins of altruism and how many other animals including ants have a code of conduct that can be described as altruistic.

If you’re in the UK, you can catch me on BBC iPlayer for 7 days after broadcast. The shows are an hour long. You can (until Sunday morning) see me in the last 10 minutes of the first show, but I don’t yet know how I’ve been edited for the show this Sunday (the 15th).

But I must say, competing with everyone on “The Big Questions” isn’t as hard discussing the topic of upcoming shows with Ian!

Peace on Earth?

This season of peace and goodwill, in our special Christmas show, we ask whether there will ever be peace on Earth.  Steven Pinker, author of “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, says that human violence has decreased over the centuries – but does that include violence to other animals? Diana asks him. What does “peace on Earth” mean to Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation and grandfather of the modern animal movement? What does animal rights iconoclast Gary Francione think of Steven Pinker’s theory? Listen to find out.

Steven Pinker and “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined”

Professor Pinker’s book has gathered a lot of media coverage, including a review by Peter Singer in the New York Times where he calls it “supremely important”, as well as a more skeptical one in Scientific American. There’s more about Steven Pinker’s core thesis, about human intraspecies violence, here:

• the London School of Economics podcast of Steven Pinker’s talk, which Diana attended and features in the show
• Steven Pinker’s TED talk on the myth of violence
• Better Angels of Our Nature

You can find him on the web at:

• Steven Pinker .com
• Publisher page for Steven Pinker at Penguin USA

Gary Francione

What Pinker doesn’t understand is most of the advances towards supposed more humane exploitation of non-human animals – he doesn’t appreciate that for the most part, most of those efforts result in the more efficient exploitation of animals.

Gary Francione  (@GaryLFrancione)  is a distinguished professor of law and scholar of law & philosophy at Rutgers Law School, New Jersey, USA. More information from and about Professor Francione is available here:

• Gary Francione’s website, The Abolitionist Approach
• Professor Francione’s own podcast, Abolitionist Approach Commentaries
• Gary Francione’s faculty page as a Professor at Rutgers Law School
• Gary Francione fan site, with transcripts of interviews

Peter Singer

Ultimately one day we would stop using animals for food …

Professor Peter Singer (@PeterSinger) is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, New Jersey, USA, and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He’s best known as the author of Animal Liberation. More information is at:

• The Life You Can Save, his charitable giving campaign
• Peter Singer’s faculty page as a Professor at Princeton

He recently appeared in the hundredth episode of “Our Hen House“, where Jasmin Singer also asked him about “Better Angels of Our Nature”.

Veganism in Politics 3: The Debate

At the end of our last episode, Kerry McCarthy MP said she’d asked for a debate in Parliament to mark World Vegan Day.

She was successful, and at the end of business on November 1st the House of Commons debated veganism. I was watching from the gallery.

In this episode, concluding our series of three about veganism in politics, we give our account of the debate. We explain what’s going on, who everyone is, and tell you which of the MPs who spoke against is officially the least sexy Member of Parliament.

Who’s Who

The three vegan MPs, Kerry McCarthy, Chris Williamson, and Cathy Jamieson, are profiled the first set of show notes from this series about veganism in politics.

Jim Paice MP is the minister of state at the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs – or farming minister – who answered Kerry McCarthy MP. Not all holders of that portfolio are as hostile to veganism. Under the previous government it wasn’t unusual for a vegetarian – like immediate predecessor Jim Fitzpatrick - to hold the portfolio.

Simon Hart MP asked Kerry McCarthy for peer-reviewed science on how farm animals were treated.

Jim Shannon, the UK’s least sexy Member of Parliament, quoted his GP as saying we needed to eat meat. There are, of course, vegan medics and dieticians.

Also present in the chamber (identified in a tweet by Kerry) were:

• Alistair Carmichael, the chief “whip” (organiser) of the smaller government party, the socially liberal and fiscally middling Liberal Democrats. In contrast with Caroline Lucas, who lives in Brighton on England’s south coast, his constituency is two islands off the north of Scotland.
• Robert Goodwill, another whip, for the governing Conservatives
• Kerry pointed to a while a Labour Party comrade, also a whip, as someone whose bacon joke she’d just had to put up with.

The sole Green Party MP, mentioned in the show for not being at the debate, is Caroline Lucas.

Watching the full debate

In our show, we summarise and analyse the debate in 20 minutes.

You can also get the whole half hour debate:

• watch on BBC Democracy Live
• watch at the UK Parliament website (the adjournment debate is the last half hour)
• read the official Hansard text at Parliament.UK
• read the annotated marked up version at They Work For You

The Nocton Dairies controversy

Kerry McCarthy traded blows with Farming Minister Jim Paice over this defeated plan for a large intensive dairy farm - not for the first time. This time, it was over whether it was multi-story.

The proposal had been the target of the award-winning “Not in My Cuppa” campaign by several British animal welfare groups. Farming Minister Jim Paice had been supportive of intensive dairies, but Nocton Dairies withdrew the proposal in February after the Environment Agency insisted the risk of groundwater pollution was too high.

I checked the original planning application from 2007:

Update: these plans have since been taken down (perhaps because there’s no need for a local authority to display withdrawn plans), so these links are now broken:

• The overall plan;
• Plan showing that milking parlours have a second story, but not one that the cows would use
• The planning application doesn’t show how much space the cows would have had when confined, but dividing the length of the “accommodation” in plans by the number of cows shows that each cow could not have had more than 70cm (2’3″) of width, including any space taken up by fixtures between cows.

Ethics, health or environment?

In 2009 and 2010, the pledge questionnaire administered at the beginning of the pledge asked people to nominate reasons why they decided to go vegan for the month. I broke these reasons down into categories. 93 participants nominated a total of 132 reasons; here is a pie chart of the breakdown.

Interestingly, health was the number one reason. “Other” comprises lots of reasons including some that were rare (e.g. girlfriend pressure) and most that were vague (e.g. wanted more info; I don’t think I need animal products; get ideas). One reason health might have been such a big factor in this dataset is because  London Vegan Campaigns specifically advertised the pledge to help pledgers learn more about health and lose weight.

Only a couple of the nominated reasons appeared to have an effect on whether participants who showed up to the last meeting said they were going to stay vegan, which nearly 70% of participants said they would. Ethics was nearly significant with 84% of participants nominating this reason deciding to stay the course whereas those who viewed it as a challenge/experiment came out at only 33%.

Two factors that have very small numbers but were interesting: all 3 participants who said they had tried to be vegan before decided to stay vegan after the pledge (proving that ex vegans aren’t irredeemable!) whereas only a third of those who said they wanted to be vegan for spiritual reasons stayed vegan, call Richard Dawkins.

At the end of the pledge, participants also nominated reasons for completing the pledge and/or staying vegan and in this instance animal ethics was mentioned substantially more than at the beginning. (2011′s dataset isn’t so interesting because pledgers just rated the importance of health, environment, and ethics and most of them rated all three with the highest importance so there’ s no variance to work with).

Pledgers and social support

As we mentioned before on the podcast, the vegan pledge sets up pledgers with a “buddy” who can provide advice and support. Pledgers who rated their buddy support more highly were more likely to stay vegan with one person specifically faulting their buddy with their decision to drop out. In 2011, about a third of the 108 participants had a friend or family member who was vegan but this didn’t predict how likely a pledger was to remain vegan. Only a small minority of the pledgers from all three years (2009,2010,2011) had a friend, spouse or relative do the pledge with them.

What might you predict about the impact of social support on whether or not people chose to stay vegan? This was our most surprising finding. Six pledgers in 2009/2010 who mentioned “unsupportive people” as a challenge during their pledge (e.g. “friends winding me up”; “people’s attitudes”) and all 6 of these pledgers decided to stay vegan at the end of the pledge and 3/3 who answered the one year followup were still vegan. In 2011 pledgers were asked at the end of the pledge about how difficult various challenges had been including “other’s attitudes” rated from 1 (very easy) to 5 (very difficult). Those who found other’s attitudes more difficult were more likely to stay vegan. Out of 49 pledgers, 13 gave a rating of 4 or 5 on the difficulty of other’s attitudes and all but one of these (92%) chose to stay vegan.

Why might those who found friends and family least supportive be the most likely to stay vegan? One obvious reason might be a third variable. Those who were most passionate about being vegan were most likely to stay vegan and also to have disagrements with others. Another reason might be that those who had trouble with lack of support or others’ attitudes became more committed to being vegan to better integrate with a new social community. Why do you think we found this effect?

And, if you’re a meat eater hoping to dissuade a friend or relative from staying vegan, be very accepting and supportive!

Thanks again to London Vegan Campaigns letting me analyse their data for them.

Veganism in Politics 2: Q & A

The three vegan Members of the British Parliament (MPs) answer your questions. Are they afraid about how voters will react to their veganism? And what’s the food like at the House of Commons?

Press the play button to find out. (Or, better still, subscribe via iTunes or your podcast catcher of choice.)

Veganism in Politics

This is the second of a series of three shows about veganism in Politics: you can also hear the first show, in which we profile vegan advocates in politics around the world, and the MPs answer questions from their counterparts Maneka Gandhi and Dennis Kucinich. The third show will be about the World Vegan Day debate.

Show notes

The first show’s notes have more about interviewees Chris Williamson MP, Cathy Jamieson MP, and Kerry McCarthy MP.

Jordan Wyatt’s show is Coexisting with Non-Human Animals. His World Vegan Day episode included us amongst dozens of vegans talking about their year. Other people provided questions here on this blog.

Diana mentioned Peter Singer being offered ham by someone in the RSPCA. This incident is in his book Animal Liberation.

Robb Masters wrote our theme.

A tangent about the Green Party

Kerry McCarthy MP and Cathy Jamieson MP, from the main opposition Labour party, both talk about lawmakers from the environmentalist Green Party. Listeners from the United States might be used to a two-party system and surprised to hear a minor party get elected; listeners from countries with more proportionate systems might wonder why the Greens only have one MP.

The Green Party is the fifth Great-Britain-wide party in opinion polls. The British Parliament, in common with national parliaments in the USA and India, uses an electoral system which hurts minor parties with evenly spread voters. This is why it’s taken the Greens until the 2010 election to gain a single representative. The Scottish and European Parliaments use more proportionate voting systems, so the greens have more representatives there. In the show, Cathy Jamieson mentions green Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs).

I talk about some of the other ways that animal activists engage with British politics in my Verdant Reports blog post about the 2010 UK general election.

Veganism in Politics 1: Worldwide

We profile the handful of people who combine veganism with politics at their country’s national level. I went to the UK Parliament to meet Britain’s three vegan MPs. What was their path to politics? And I took with me questions from their counterparts in the rest of the world.

Press the play button to find out. (Or, better still, subscribe via iTunes or your podcast catcher of choice.)

The British Vegan MPs

Chris Williamson (@ChriswMP on twitter) has an official site at www.chriswilliamson.org, but also find: Chris Williamson on Wikipedia; Chris Williamson at They Work for You ; Chris Williamson on BBC Democracy Live

Kerry McCarthy (@KerryMP)’s official site is www.kerrymccarthymp.org. Also: Kerry McCarthy on Wikipedia; Kerry McCarthy at They Work for You ; Kerry McCarthy on BBC Democracy Live

Cathy Jamieson (@cathyjamieson) is officially at CathyJamieson.com, but also: Cathy Jamieson on Wikipedia ; Cathy Jamieson at They Work for You ; Cathy Jamieson on BBC Democracy Live

The American Congressman

Dennis Kucinich (@repkucinich) has two official sites: kucinich.us and, for his constituency, kucinich.house.gov. He’s also Dennis Kucinich on Wikipedia.

The Indian MP

Maneka Gandhi chairs People for Animals. She is, obviously, also Maneka Gandhi at Wikipedia.

As Diana mentioned in the show, Maneka advocates veganism and sometimes identifies as such, but admits she doesn’t always live up to it.

References for science

I referred to studies by the large long-term EPIC-Oxford study, in particular their 2009 paper on cancer incidence. The team have a particular interest in vegetarians and vegans, and I reported their results in my 2008 podcast short at Verdant Reports.

Diana talked about sex differences between men and women with respect to vegetarianism and veganism, and levels of testosterone. Her sources were:

• (for vegetarian sex differences) Beardsworth, A., & Bryman, A. (1999). Meat consumption and vegetarianism among young adults in the UK: An empirical study. British Food Journal, 101(4), 289-300. doi:10.1108/00070709910272169
• (for vegetarian sex differences) Neumark-Sztainer, D., Story, M., Resnick, M. D., & Blum, R. W. (1997). Adolescent vegetarians: A behavioral profile of a school-based population in Minnesota. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 151(8), 833.
• (for veganism being equally distributed between sexes) Stahler, C. (2006). How many adults are vegetarian. Vegetarian J, 4.
• (for vegan men having the same testosterone levels as omnivores)  Key, T. J. A., Roe, L., Thorogood, M., Moore, J. W., Clark, G. M. G., & Wang, D. Y. (1990). Testosterone, Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin, Calculated Free Testosterone, and Oestradiol in Male Vegans and Omnivores. British Journal of Nutrition, 64(01), 111-119. doi:10.1079/BJN19900014

I’m not posting this just to expand my multimedia empire but also because the clip does in fact have relevance to the way I view the world, through a vegan philosophy about a world filled with minds. Not going to spoil my short appearance for those of you who decide to watch but suffice to say that I for one will welcome our octopus overlords.

see?! vegans are shiny happy people

The seduction of dairy

Ever talked to someone about a vegan diet and they say “I could never give up cheese!”? Well, we found some longing for dairy in our data.

In the 2009/2010 pledge 54 participants were asked about what they found most challenging about their month of vegan living. Check out this graph:

I might mention that these are spontaneous responses that I coded into categories and the numbers on the left are the percentage of participants who mentioned each category of challenge (they are also not mutually exclusive).  Dairy scores second next to convenience and eating out. While around 20% of participants reported missing some kind of dairy only one person reported missing anything else (this was eggs).

At the end of the 2011 vegan pledge 104 participants answered what foods they missed/craved most during the pledge. This was also pretty skewed with dairy mentioned in 67% of responses versus all other foods (including eggs) mentioned in 42% of responses (including some people saying they missed both dairy and other foods and several people saying they would miss nothing).

Gradual transition or “cold tofu”?

We were interested in whether or not people who began as vegetarians would be more successful than pescetarians (those who eat fish, bivalves, molluscs etc.  but not birds or mammals) and omnivores. Vegetarians are already familiar with eating differently than most of those around them and eat fewer animal derived foods than the average person.  I pooled all the data together here* of those who both answered questions about what they ate at the beginning of the pledge and if they decided to stay vegan at the end of the pledge. All together this was 122 pledgers, 41% vegetarian 21% pescetarian and 31% omnivore. Check out the (completely gratuitous) graph. You can see that omnivores were less likely to decide to stay vegan compared with pescetarians and vegetarians, but is it statistically significant?

*(as an aside I think it’s more valid to ask people what they eat e.g. meat, eggs, fish, chicken, like the questionnaire in 2011, rather than how they categorize themselves)

Well, if I hadn’t been too lazy to put in error bars you might have been able to tell by yourself  but statistically, vegetarians are significantly (α=5%) more likely to stay vegan than omnivores. Pesce’s were somewhere in the middle and didn’t statistically differ from either of the other groups. Keeping in mind that there’s going to be a selection bias in who attends the last meeting (those who majorly fall off the vegan wagon are unlikely to stick around and fill out the end of month questionnaire) the rate at which people decide to stay vegan is still pretty darn impressive.

One year later…

Finally, we have one year follow up data several of the 2008 and 2009 pledgers. 5/10 from 2008 and 18/25 from 2009 which means that 66% stayed vegan – which isn’t including  whole families that became vegan along with a mother or father. Well done London Vegan Campaigns!

In the next blog I’m going to talk about the effect of reasons for going vegan, vegan buddies (or vegan booties as Ian pronounces it)  and the paradoxical effect of unsupportive people.

On Monday I head over to Westminster to meet the three vegan Members of the British Parliament.  What do you think I should ask them?

Say in replies to this post, or with the hashtag #VeganMPs on Twitter.

The Pledge

We start our show at the beginning – when folk choose the vegan option. In this case, for a month, challenged and supported by London Vegan Campaigns. I talk to mother Ananthi and middle-aged couple Bryan and Cliff. What challenges will they come across? And will they last the month?

Diana has the statistics from three years of pledges, and finds out what makes people more or less likely to stay vegan. And she’s very surprised by what she finds.

So go on, press the play button. (Or, better still, subscribe via iTunes or your podcast catcher of choice.)

Our thanks to Ananthi, Bryan, Cliff, Lesley and our other contributors, and to London Vegan Campaigns for letting me record there and inviting Diana to analyse the data. Robb Masters wrote and composed our theme.

Other similar events, where vegan activists challenge and support pledgers to go vegan for a month, happen in Baltimore and Philadelphia in the US and Victoria, Australia. Colleen Patrick Goudreau has a book out on a similar theme, The 30-day Vegan Challenge.

I mentioned vegan podcasters Gary Francione and (should he return) Bob Torres.

This is a small introductory snippet to let folk who get our podcast in iTunes or other podcast readers check that it’s working – and the first hint of our theme tune.

Every year Vegan Campaigns in London supports over sixty people through potentially their first month as vegans. Many vegan groups – from Baltimore, USA to Victoria, Australia issue similar challenges. I talked to pledgers who took that challenge, asking them what the challenges had been.

Ananthi is a mother of two adorable daughters. Bryan and Cliff are a middle-aged gay couple. They took the challenge, and you’ll find out how they found a month of veganism in our first programme.

But there isn’t a boundary between (proto-) audience and contributors. Here’s a question for vegans (and ex-vegans). How was your first month as a vegan? What was most difficult when you went vegan? We’ll likely mention some of your answers in the programme.

That’s part of why I feel like I have such a window into the psyche of those who are most dismissive of veganism and really understand where defensiveness both about the sentience of nonhuman animals and drastic changes in diet comes from. And yes, I’m aware my name roughly translates into “huntress meatman”.

For about a year I became a “humaneitarian” endeavoring to eat animals who had at least led wild or reasonably good lives before being killed for my consumption. In practice this meant I ate only fish, venison, eggs and dairy. I tried to eat “Happy Meat” and I used this phrase on my own without irony.

In May of 2008 I read Animal Liberation and went vegan the next day without even knowing anyone vegan, just lots of carnivorous Buddhists and evolutionary scientists using the naturalistic fallacy (i.e. we evolved eating meat therefore eating meat is right) to justify their derogation of animal interests. A tremendous amount of support came from podcasts like Vegan Freak and Vegetarian Food for Thought which is part of why I think producing podcasts is so important.

In my day job I am a lecturer and do research in comparative and evolutionary psychology. This means that I see the human mind as evolved to solve the problems our ancestors have recurrently faced through deep time. I see humans as endowed with natural moral and altruistic limitations – such as overestimating the importance of the death of one’s fellow countryman compared to a foreigner and minimizing their impression of the suffering of animals compared to humans.

I’m an abolitionist in practice because I belive it’s foolish to think that people are going to show equitable regard for other sentient beings full stop and especially within a system where self interest and the interests of nonhuman animals are pitted against one another. Scratch the surface of the production of any animal product and one will inevitably find human moral limitations and impotent halfhearted enforcement where it exists at all.

I come down on the pragmatic end of the vegan scale always asking “what difference does this make to animals?” including being critical of vegans like Ian for being purist, sentimental and unrealistic.

Through this podcast we will learn more about human psychology towards nonhuman animals. How can we help influence people towards evaluating their moral blind spots and working towards making their lives more consistently ethical? How can this offer the support to others that internet radio gave me as a new vegan? What can science tell us about this world of minds which is far more interesting than a world of things?

And can I get Ian to laugh at my jokes?

Diana blogs at Sentientist.org.