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We don't seek to defend veganism. We strive to prevent suffering.

November 23, 2004

New Booklet Coming!

Fall Semester Adopt a College Update

Jon Camp (leafleting at MIT here) has now handed over 20,000 brochures to college students for Vegan Outreach's Adopt a College program. In total, more than 68,000 brochures have been handed out so far this term. Your generous support made this happen -- Thank you!

"No Thanks, I Like Meat"

Anyone taking part in Vegan Outreach's Adopt a College program has undoubtedly heard this comment numerous times when offering Why Vegan or Try Vegetarian.

As the Adopt a College program has grown, Vegan Outreach’s leafleters have gained insight into how college students react to being "cold-called" on campus, and what might be a better way to reach them. The result of these experiences is our newest brochure, designed specifically for leafleting: Even If You Like Meat (EI).

Jon Camp, Vegan Outreach's top leafleter, writes:

So far this semester, I've met tens of thousands of students. I'm incredibly excited about our new booklet, as it caters towards the mindset of today's youth. I look forward to getting these into the hands of thousands and thousands more students.

We now have a PDF ready of Even If You Like Meat (large file).

Some Highlights

Clarity of Message

When using Why Vegan or Try Vegetarian, many students think our goal is to get them to eat healthfully, which isn't their concern. To immediately convey our purpose while leafleting, the cover of EI includes three scenes of modern animal agriculture. In the past, anyone who has refused the booklet has been able to get away without facing the animals' plight. Now, even people who turn us down will get a brief view of the cruelty of factory farms. We were initially concerned that these pictures might reduce acceptance, but while handing out 300 copies (a laser-printed test run) at Sacramento State University, the acceptance rate was noticeably higher than previous leafletings with Why Vegan at the same school.

Opening Hearts and Minds

We are optimistic that EI will be more effective at opening people's hearts and minds to the animals' suffering. When leafleting, many of us have found that a "V-word" prominently displayed on the brochures can put some people on the defensive, which can lead to an "us vs. them" attitude and bring to mind negative stereotypes often associated with vegetarianism. For this reason, the cover does not say "vegetarian" or "vegan." Those words, while often engaging already-interested people, can create a barrier for the average college student who believes they won't / can't become a vegetarian.

The new pamphlet's front cover says: "Even If You Like Meat, You Can Help End This Cruelty. If everyone just cut their meat consumption in half, billions of animals would be spared from suffering." While most people oppose cruelty to animals, they do not immediately agree that it is always wrong to kill animals for food. Because of this, they reject the vegetarian message altogether. We believe that if people stop seeing the issue as "all or nothing" (hence: nothing), we can break through their initial resistance. EI should make people who dislike cruelty to animals see that we are all on the same side. This common cause will break down barriers and allow more people to consider the animals' plight and realize that they can make humane choices.

The booklet contains the following passage:

Each time you choose to eat less meat and eggs, you'll remove your support from a cruel system and help create a more compassionate world. If you decide you don't want to eat any animal-derived foods, please remember: the objective is to reduce suffering, not to achieve personal purity or perfection. Years worth of eating less meat and eggs will prevent more suffering than a brief stint as a vegan, so it’s more important to take an approach you can sustain. You can make exceptions, like eating meat on certain occasions, and still make a big difference by eating vegetarian the rest of the time.

Of course, we want everyone to go vegan and stay vegan. But just wishing won't make it happen. We believe that this new approach will reach more people, leading to more long-term vegetarians and vegans. More important, though, is to reduce animal product consumption as much as possible, which will prevent more animals from suffering.

We don't seek to defend veganism. We strive to prevent suffering.

We Need Donations for Even If You Like Meat!

EI has not yet gone to press. Given our current limited funds, we could print 100,000 copies. But this will cause our per-piece cost to be quite high, and probably won't be enough to get us through next semester. So we could really use donations at this time to increase the number of copies we can print. If we raise an extra $7,000, we can print 150,000 copies. If just 2% of the people getting this e-mail newsletter donated $20, we could reach this goal today! Please know that whatever you can contribute will go towards making the animals' case to more people!

Please donate here, or send a check to:

Vegan Outreach | P.O. Box 38492 | Pittsburgh, PA 15238-8492

"I hope you are as excited as I am -- these booklets will be an incredibly powerful statement for the animals! I promise you that I will give my all -- every day -- to get these booklets to more people."
-Jon Camp

Radio Interview

Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach was recently featured as part of an episode of Erik Marcus' Erik's Diner. In the interview, Jack discusses the new brochure, Even If You Like Meat. You can listen to the interview here (interview starts at ~12:50)

Vegan Outreach | P.O. Box 38492 | Pittsburgh, PA 15238-8492
VO is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization; all donations are tax-deductible.