The Vegan Option including Vegetarianism: The Story So Far

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.

http://archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionBornVeganTheParentsTurn/theVeganOption_BornVeganParents.mp3 (18 min) Play or download (20 MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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).

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 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.

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.)

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

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.

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].

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

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

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.)

The post Born Vegan: from 1976 UK TV to the Hebrew Israelites, three very different vegan childhoods first appeared on The Vegan Option.

http://archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionLabMeat/theVeganOption_LabMeat.mp3 (23 min) Play or download (13 MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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?

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 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.

Listener Jeff Zick, who submitted a provocative question about the ethics of growing in vitro meat from human cells, requested the full uncut interview with David Pearce, so there it is.

Jordi Casamitjana is a zoologist, ethologist and consultant at Animal Protection Consultancy.

He had a central role in the abolition of bullfighting in Catalonia, Spain. Here is a video of him addressing the Catalonian Parliament [in Catalan]. He also wrote an Op Ed for CNN he wrote about his success with the campaign.

Ian mentioned Peta’s in vitro meat contest.

Why Cultured Meat, a site that makes an animal protection case for lab meat, posted a response to Jeff Perz’s critique.

New Harvest  is another organisation advancing meat substitutes.

We got most of the information about the development of in vitro meat from this review paper:

Disgust seems to be one of the major themes in reactions against in vitro meat and is one of my primary research interests. I spoke a little in the episode about disgust sensitivity, vegetarianism and attitudes towards meat. Here are the references:

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!

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http://www.archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionRebelPoet/TheVeganOption_RebelPoet_1.mp3 (24 min) Play or download (22 MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The post Rebel Poet: Benjamin Zephaniah discusses the life of Abul ʿala Al-Maʿarri (أبو العلاء المعري), the medieval Arab vegan philosopher poet first appeared on The Vegan Option.

http://www.archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionDigitalVegans/TheVeganOption_DigitalVegans_nb.mp3 (19 min) Play or download (17 MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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?

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.

Diana mentioned these iPhone Apps:

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.

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.

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.

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http://www.archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionPeaceOnEarth/theVeganOption-PeaceOnEarth-nb.mp3 (20 min) Play or download (18MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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.

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:

You can find him on the web at:

Q: It’s not clear from the section in “Better Angels …” how you might or might not engage with animal ethics personally. Can I ask if you boycott any animal products or any products tested on animals? (i.e. are you vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, totally omnivorous or do not eat things like veal or foie gras).

Q: How would you respond to the criticism that improvements in animal welfare have only taken place insofar as they are economically advantageous for producers and thus do not really represent a decrease in violence toward animals? (e.g. under the US Humane label animals are still castrated without anesthetic, male chicks who cannot lay eggs are routinely ground up alive and numerous other welfare changes that would increase cost are not being suggested even in Western Europe). 

I think I’ll keep my own practices out of the discussion, and respond only to the other questions. With any humanitarian advance, there are always cynics who insist that no one (or at least, no one in some demonized group that the cynic has in mind, in this case, evil corporations)ever acts out of true morality, that there always must be some self-serving interest (the Quakers opposes slavery because they were bankers who financed the industrial revolution; the British stopped the slave trade because their French rivals were getting rich from their Caribbean plantations, and so on). These always strike me as far-fetched, not just because we know (both from evolutionary psychology and experimental game theory) that people often incur costs for moralistic reasons, but because the particular explanations often seem more strained than the moralistic one, which is more parsimonious. I sense a dogmatic attitude in which it is simply inconceivable that any human (or any Western power, or any corporation, etc.) could act morally, so any deflating explanation, however conspiratorial, is accepted.

But the more important point is that I don’t care. My book is about the decline of violence, not a putative increase in virtue. I don’t think the chickens (or the slaves) care about whether their better treatment was motivated by an altruism that is pure in the eyes of God or other moralistic judges, as long as they suffer less. And if we set up institutions that allow people to be less cruel and destructive as they pursue their interests, that is a sign of progress–God help us if every advance in human welfare depended on Christ-like levels of moral purity.

Regarding your answer of whether we are “better humans,” again, that is not my question, if you’re asking a moral question. If you’re asking the biological question of whether our genomes have changed in a way that makes our nonviolent motives more powerful, I consider this question in chapter 9, but end up rejecting it. So yes, we need to teach it to each new generation so our progress doesn’t go away–that is why education, and socialization, are important.

Q: I am interested in an evolutionary perspective on why the animal movement has progressed slowly compared to other movements advocating nonviolence. You mentioned “meat hunger” and the fact that animals are not our kin and cannot negotiate social contracts with us. Do you have any other ideas why, from an evolutionary perspective, rational understanding of animal sentience (at least the vertebrates we eat) has been so slow to change human behavior?

I think you’ve identified the main reasons that animal rights have progressed more slowly than other rights. A more basic reason is that animals lack language (which influenced Descartes). Our sympathies tend to lie with animals like dogs (and to a lesser extent cats) that respond nonverbally but positively to human interaction.

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:

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:

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

Here is Diana’s full conversation with Peter Singer.

Stephen Pinker’s audio answer is an excerpt from ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: The Decline of Violence in World History and Its Causes’ by Professor Steven Pinker. Recorded October 2011, courtesy of the London School of Economics. That work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales License on the common understanding that this show is a collection, and it is non-commercial by being offered for free. Our thanks to LSE for permission, and Stephen Emmott for helping us clear rights.

Our theme is written by digital media artist Robb Masters (@idiotech).

We used Skype for VoIP conversations. Diana gathered the vox pops at the Animal Aid Christmas Fair.

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http://www.archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionVeganPoliticians3Of3/TheVeganOption-VeganPoliticians3-Debate.mp3 (20 min) Play or download (18MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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.

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:

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

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

You can also get the whole half hour debate:

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:

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http://www.archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionVeganPoliticians2Of3/TheVeganOption-VeganPoliticians2-QnA.mp3 (14 min) Play or download (15MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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http://www.archive.org/download/TheVeganOptionVeganPoliticans/TheVeganOption-VeganPoliticians.mp3 (40 min) Play or download (20MB MP3) (other formats) (via iTunes)

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.)

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

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

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.

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:

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