Vancouver cracks North America’s vegetarian-friendly top 10, and the food business reaps the rewards

July 23, 2010

Vegetarians are emerging as a powerful economic force, reshaping the city’s food business and cuisine.

Both Vancouver and Toronto were recently listed among the top 10 most vegetarian friendly cities in North America by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals. Hardly surprising since one in 10 Canadians now self-identifies as a vegetarian for moral, philosophical or health-related reasons, according to an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

An even more important finding in AgCanada’s 2005 report, Canadian Food Trends to 2020, is that up to 40 per cent of Canadians will seek a meatless meal at least some of the time, creating a critical mass of spending on vegetarian ingredients at retail and in the restaurant sector.

The shift in eating habits has grown the mock meat industry into a $1-billion-a-year business in little more than a decade, said PETA’s Amanda Fortino.

Although some of Vancouver’s venerable vegetarian restaurants have closed in recent years, some due to the age or ill health of the operators, the new wave of raw food restaurants is thriving, said Nancy Callan, chair of Earthsave Canada’s vegan dine-out program. Raw foods are prepared without the use of high heat to avoid altering or destroying the inherent enzymes in food.

“Raw food is an emerging cuisine and the restaurants that are doing that are doing really well,” she said. “[American chef] Charlie Trotter recently said if you can’t do raw you aren’t an accomplished chef.”

PETA cited the emergence of restaurants such as Organic Lives, Gorilla Food and Loving Hut as key to Vancouver securing sixth place out of 100 cities over 300,000 people.

Callan said she has observed in the past five years a huge rise in the number of so-called “flexitarians” who eat a mainly plant-based diet, but may occasionally include fish or meat. To support that growing market, Earthsave will distribute 30,000 copies of its Vegetarian Directory this year.

They will include lists of vegetarian friendly restaurants, businesses and organizations in Metro Vancouver.

Beef consumption has been in steady decline for 20 years, a trend that AgCanada attributes to the rise of vegetarianism and wide acceptance of the health benefits of fish-, vegetable- and grain-based diets and the growth of Asian-style cookery, which is less meat dependent.

“A lot more people are aware of the vegetarian lifestyle, whether it’s because athletes or musicians and actors are vegetarian, or because people want to live a more athletic or healthy life,” said chef Aaron Ash, owner of the Vancouver vegan raw food café and caterer Gorilla Food. “Around the world it’s a growing movement, now that people are aware that they can eat vegetarian food that is not just good for them but also appealing to the senses.

“Chefs are putting a lot of effort into making vegetarian food exciting,” said Ash, who started his catering and takeout business in a private home before moving into a storefront in Downtown Vancouver four years ago.

As his following and customer base grew he became convinced that a more commercial enterprise would be viable.

Even 10 years ago the vegetarian option at many restaurants consisted of a plate full of vegetable side dishes originally destined for the steak or chicken special.

That’s just not good enough any more, Ash said.

“It’s never a concern when you go to a restaurant now that there wouldn’t be a vegetarian option,” said Ash. “And most people think that having a vegan lunch is perfectly normal and those same people might go home and have meat for dinner.”

A growing number of conventional eaters are incorporating raw foods or vegetarian options into their lives, according to RawBC’s Clive Langton. His organization, which promotes consumption of raw or “live” foods, has grown from a core group of a few dozen seven years ago to 400 dues-paying members today.

“People know now that they don’t have to eat vegan or raw all the time, they just add a little more raw to their diet and feel better,” Langton said.

Read more: Calgary Herald story

Open Rescue and supporters will be holding a protest outside court to draw attention to the cruel nature of pig farming in New Zealand. The rally before court will start at 8.30 and continue until ten. Supporters are welcome to stay and watch the trial after this.

If anyone wishes to come from Auckland and requires a ride please contact J Darroch

Thursday 19th August

Hamilton District Court – 116 Anglesea St Hamilton

For more information about Open Rescue and for information about recent investigations visit http://www.nzopenrescue.org.nz/

New Zealand Open Rescue

PO Box 37612 Parnell,

Auckland,

New Zealand

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New Zealand Open Rescue
PO Box 37612
Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand
www.nzopenrescue.org.nz

Recently New Zealand Open Rescue inspected a Free Range egg production facility located in the lower North Island. This facility was a small scale commercial operation but we were shocked at what we uncovered. From the outside, the facility looked like a typical battery hen unit; ominous, industrial scale warehouse sheds with large feed silos. Inside the units, things looked quite different but the callous treatment of animals as mere units of production was exactly the same as on any other type of factory farm.

Several thousand egg laying hens were crammed inside the sheds which were sectioned in half. The hens were panicked and hysterical, terrified of humans. As we moved slowly through the crowds of hens documenting their living conditions, we noticed several of them suffered from prolapses and many had rubbed red raw skin. All the hens in this facility were de-beaked.  Free Range hens are still often de-beaked as living in flocks of several thousand is highly un-natural. Hens can’t find any sort of meaningful social order in such large flocks, so fighting is constant in order to establish hierarchy.

Following our visit to this facility, we were shocked to learn that there are no regulations around how often supposed ‘Free Range’ hens are meant to be allowed access to the outdoors. A local in the area told us that they had seen the hens at the facility we visited outside only once in over a year!  We felt that the many people who purchase Free Range eggs in good faith that conditions for animals are better in this type of production system, would be shocked if they had seen what we witnessed. The idyllic scene of happy Free Range hens scratching in the earth and basking in the sunshine that comes to mind when people purchase Free Range eggs was certainly not what we experienced during our investigation at this typical Free Range facility.

View photographs from our investigation here

New Zealand Open Rescue
PO Box 37612
Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand

Animal advocates from SAFE welcome the animal welfare bill drawn from the ballot at Parliament yesterday and say the bill could improve conditions for millions of farmed animals.

The Animal Welfare Amendment bill, as proposed by Green Party MP Sue Kedgley, would close a loophole in the Animal Welfare Act 1999 (AWA) that currently permits battery hens and crated sows to live in horrific conditions that breach the legal obligations of the AWA.

“The Green Party bill has the power to help over 20,000 crated sows and nearly three million caged hens. These animals are currently denied the opportunity to express their normal patterns of behaviour such as walking, foraging, nest building and mothering their young. Section 10 of the AWA stipulates that animals must be able to express their normal behaviour and the proposed bill will ensure this actually happens,” says SAFE campaign director Hans Kriek.

“Ms Kedgley’s animal welfare bill will see any practice that does not meet the obligations of the AWA phased out within five years. This will greatly improve the welfare of animals in New Zealand,” says Mr Kriek.

SAFE is calling on all New Zealand MPs to uphold the legislative process by supporting the bill.

“We expect widespread support for the bill as many MPs have already expressed concern about the cruelty of factory-farmed pigs and layer hens,” says Mr Kriek. “Now these MPs have the perfect opportunity to back up their words with action.”

“This bill has been drawn at a very opportune time. The public are outraged at the animal suffering on factory farms that they have seen exposed in the New Zealand media recently. SAFE believes the bill will receive widespread public support and hopes that the cruel systems used on factory farms will finally be banned,” says Mr Kriek.

For more information contact Hans Kriek on 027 446 2711.

July 21st 2010
Lower Coyne Street,
Callan,
Co. Kilkenny,
Ireland

Dear Friends,

Following the recent historic ban on carted stag hunting in Ireland, campaigners against blood sports are hopeful that the Irish government will follow up this achievement by banning the horrific practise of live hare coursing, in which hares are used as live bait in contests between competing greyhounds.

Here is a link to a film of what hare coursing in Ireland involves:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFdjBy5S8k8

Thousands of hares are captured annually in Ireland for this “pastime”…to be chased and terrorised in wired enclosures for “fun” and “entertainment”. Many are mauled to death; others die of stress-related ailments or internal injuries after being released back into the wild following the coursing events.

Other hares, mainly the ones deemed unsuitable for coursing, are used to “blood” dogs as part of their training. This involves feeding them live to greyhounds. The greyhounds also suffer injury, ill-treatment, and neglect in coursing.

A decision will be made by the Irish government shortly (at some point before the end of August) on whether to permit yet another season of this barbaric blood sport. The hare-coursing season itself, if allowed to go ahead, would begin in the final week of September.

The Irish government is sensitive to outside opinion as tourism is one of our most lucrative industries, so messages from abroad can influence the decision.

Can you congratulate Ireland’s Environment Minister John Gormley on his achievement in banning carted stag hunting…a brief message will suffice…And ask him to now consider banning live hare coursing in Ireland?

You can contact him at: minister@environ.ie

Thanking you,
John Fitzgerald,

Campaign for the Abolition Of Cruel Sports

The footage, filmed by Open Rescue who accompanied Mike King on the Levin farm last year, reveals stressed and injured sows tightly packed in crates or confined in small concrete pens. The grisly footage shows pigs suffering from a variety of injuries that include bleeding sores caused by constant contact with the bars, flesh wounds that appear to be gangrenous, bloody feet and a sow with a badly infected and swollen ear.

Watch the Close Up interview

We now need your help to end animal use at Wisconsin’s other medical school—the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). Please ask MCW dean and executive vice president Jonathan Ravdin, M.D., to replace the school’s use of rabbits, frogs, and rats.

One of the last holdouts among United States medical schools, the University of Wisconsin (UW) now joins the overwhelming majority of institutions that no longer use live animals to teach future physicians. During the first year physiology course at UW, medical students used to participate in laboratory sessions during which procedures were practiced on live pigs before the animals were bled out and killed.

Earlier this year, MCW also eliminated its pig lab, but MCW is still using live frogs, rats, and rabbits. Please e-mail Dr. Ravdin and ask him to end this animal use too. Ninety-five percent of U.S. medical schools have already ended their live animal laboratories. With your help MCW will be the next school to completely replace animal use in its curriculum.

Thank you for all of your help.

Best regards,

John J. Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C.
Senior Medical and Research Adviser