Enewsletter

Notes from Vegan Outreach

Product of the Week

Vegan Outreach is happy to announce the availability of our latest booklet, Compassionate Choices (pdf). This booklet, which will replace Try Vegetarian, is essentially a less graphic version of Even If You Like Meat. The front cover is softer, the first two inside pages do not contain graphic images, and the slaughterhouse section is removed. This will be a good booklet to use for displays or at leafleting situations where the graphic images on the cover of Even If may be uninviting.

Thanks to Jon Camp and Lauren Panos for all their great work in creating CC!

You can order copies from the catalog.

Report from Mexico

Just came back from a long awaited trip to my homeland, Mexico. Don and I had been planning to start "Fuerza Animal" there, a small group dedicated to raising awareness about animal abuse. So, last Friday was our debut! Our target was my alma mater, UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico), which is the largest university in Latin America. We gave away all we had in an hour -- people were very receptive, and we had many great encounters, including:

• My cousin Alejandra (at right) offered the booklet to a philosophy professor who asked for more to distribute to his students. He said he has been a vegan for 15 years and that he as well as his thesis director were very interested in AR. He mentioned how much work is still needed in Mexico regarding animal issues and was very glad to see us there.
• Another faculty member also said she wanted to help the animals but didn't know how to get started. She gave me her contact information so she can join us in leafleting next time we are there. She also took 10 booklets and said, "I will give them to people that will truly read them, thanks!"
• I also interacted with several groups of girls that showed real excitement about getting the booklet. It was awesome! One approached me and asked for more booklets to distribute. She, too, gave me her contact info and wants to leaflet in the future.

-Italia Millan, 2/3/08

Report from South Africa

Karen Johnson, an activist who distributes Vegan Outreach literature at tables throughout Cape Town, made the Cape Times, in an article entitled: "Vegan venture turned into magical experience of an exotic culture."

The meaty side of dinner was the conversation. Karen is irrepressibly passionate and convincing about her vegan cause. She says the ethical decision about what we eat is a personal journey. She's come up with an inspired "veg pledge" - inviting the public to sign a commitment to not eat a specific meat for a week -- or to go all the way and experience the benefits of a vegetarian or vegan diet instead.... Ok, I'll take the pledge for seven days -- where do I sign up? Full story.

 

Report from Germany

Some people argue that Vegan Outreach should work more on reforms than promoting ethical eating. While we don't oppose the former, we recognize that as long as animals are regarded as food, there will be abuse.

A case in point: while the European Union is far ahead of the US in terms of animal protection laws, this report from Germany shows what goes on behind the walls (you don't need to speak German to understand the footage).

Thanks to Kristina Musholt, Vegan Outreach now has Warum Vegan? on our website.

More on Reforms: Report from California

Fallout continues from the undercover footage of the Chino slaughterhouse. See, for example, these articles in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. The latter makes the point, "The U.S. Department of Agriculture has 7,800 pairs of eyes scrutinizing 6,200 slaughterhouses and food processors across the nation. But in the end, it took an undercover operation by an animal rights group to reveal that beef from ill and abused cattle had entered the human food supply." USDA's inspectors have now been withdrawn, closing the plant. The key point, though, is that the inspectors were at the slaughterhouse the entire time the undercover investigation went on, a point repeated in this editorial.

Individuals generally evolve by small steps in their diet and activism; the same is true of how societies change. Reforms -- especially those that abolish some of the worst practices of modern agribusiness, as the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act in California would do -- are necessary, important, and inevitable; there is no other way to go from a carnivorous society, where farmed animals have virtually no protection, to a vegan society where they have near-total protection. But we have to keep in mind that as long as animals are viewed as food, and factory farms and slaughterhouses are closed to public inspection, tremendous suffering will occur.

Vegan Outreach is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the suffering of farmed animals by promoting informed, ethical eating. All donations are tax-deductible. Vegan Outreach POB 30865, Tucson, AZ 85751-0865