AIA Patron, Nitin Mehta MBE, took the Young Indian Vegetarians stall to the Olympia Vegfest held in Kensington on 21st and 22nd October.

Around 15,000 people attended over the two days. Vegan lifestyle is now the fastest growing lifestyle.  At Nitin’s stall, two people agreed to go vegetarian and 15 vegetarians agreed to go vegan.  Special thanks to Reema Ajmera for helping to run the stall.

Mismanagement of UK uplands for Driven Grouse Shooting leads to the illegal killing and persecution of British raptors, including Hen Harriers, Golden Eagles and Peregrine Falcons and causes significant flood risk, water pollution and environmental damage contributing to global climate change.

Sign the petition here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/201443

*Raptors, Foxes, Badgers, Stoats, Hedgehogs and Mountain Hare are killed in their thousands each year
*Draining of peat bog (internationally valuable Carbon storage resource) and burning of heather has been shown to pollute our waterways, increase lowland flooding and cause significant environmental damage, contributing to climate change
*Grouse moorland estates and wealthy landowners have so far received £20m+ in subsidies paid for by the tax payer

*www.BanDrivenGrouseShooting.Wordpress.Com

On 5th & 6th October 2017 Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) held their ground-breaking Extinction and Livestock Conference at the QEII Centre in Westminster, London. The conference brought together animal welfare organisations and environmental organisations to highlight both the cruelty and the unsustainability of large-scale factory farming and to suggest solutions to prevent the imminent threat of Farmageddon.

The first session, chaired by Joy Carter, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Winchester, set the planetary scene. The second session, chaired by Stanley Johnson, environmentalist, politician and author, highlighted the impacts of livestock production on the natural world, while the third session, chaired by David Madden, former British Ambassador, highlighted the impacts of livestock production on societies. The fourth session was divided into three parallel sessions to look at policy solutions that worked for people and the planet, animals, and the future, respectively. On day two, the fifth session was chaired by Jeremy Wates, the Secretary General of the European Environment Bureau (EEB) and was entitled ‘Moving to flourishing food systems’. The sixth session, chaired by Joyce D’Silva, CIWF’s Ambassador Emeritus, concerned healthy eating and was entitled ‘healthy people, healthy planet’, while the seventh and final session was about future food solutions.

There was an array of high profile key speakers, including CIWF’s own Chief Executive, Philip Lymbery and their Chief Policy Advisor, Peter Stevenson; WWF’s Executive Director of Global Programmes, Glyn Davies; Martin Palmer, Secretary General of Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC); John Webster, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bristol; Don Broom, Emeritus Professor of Animal Welfare at Cambridge University; Tony Juniper, former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth and many others, including some by video link, such as Dr Jane Goodall DBE. Finally there were speakers who had set up businesses to help resolve the problems, such as Martia Lettini, director of Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) which invests only in ethical farming practices; Kevin Brennan, CEO of Quorn Foods Ltd and Seth Goldman, Executive Chair of Beyond Meat, whose burger CIWF patron, Joanna Lumley, is pictured tasting. Delicious vegan food was served throughout the two days of the conference.

The conference marked the beginning of a new movement for a humane and sustainable future, a turning point away from the imminent farmageddon of large-scale agriculture and factory farming. For further details see http://www.extinctionconference.com.

Listen to AIA’s International Campaign Manager, Marian Hussenbux, being interviewed on Safe & Sound FM, the animal rights radio station, about individual and threatened migratory birds, increasingly affected by climate change and other man-made factors, which are followed by webcam.

http://www.accessradio.org/Player.aspx?eid=e5f999e9-6178-4afc-815c-bddab0cd4514

Safe & Sound Radio can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/SafeandSoundRadioShow/posts/

“Judaism’s way of life, its dietary practices, are designed to ennoble the human spirit. It is therefore a contradiction in terms to claim that products that come through a process that involves inordinate cruelty and barbarity toward animal life can truly be considered kosher in our world. In our world today, it is precisely a plant-based diet that is truly consonant with the most sublime teachings of Judaism and of the highest aspirations of our heritage.”

Rabbi David Rosen, Former Chief Rabbi of Ireland 

Jewish Veg wishes to thank the U.K.-based Jewish Vegetarian Society for helping to recruit rabbis to sign this statement.

 

This Statement is signed by 13 Orthodox rabbis, 24 Conservative rabbis, 25 Reform rabbis, 8 Reconstructionist rabbis, 3 transdenominational rabbis, 1 Renewal rabbi and 1 Secular Humanist rabbi, as well as by 2 rabbinic students and one cantorial student.

Sneha’s Care is helping to rescue animals who were caught up in Nepal’s floods this year.  They are in desperate needs of funds to help with their work.  Please visit their website at http://www.snehacare.org and support them.

Our congratulations to Formula One diver, Lewis Hamilton on going vegan.  The 32 year old gave up eating meat after watching a documentary about meat consumption because of his concern for animal welfare, the welfare of the planet and for human health.  We applaud such leadership.

Indian cuisine
by Nishma of Shambhu’s

(cookery class for adults)
Saturday 23rd September, 2.30pm to 5pm,
Central London.

Featuring as part of London’s Urban Food Fortnight
(8-24th September)

** Book now – only a few days left to book your place – don’t miss this special opportunity **

https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-gb/suite?lang=en&locale=GB

 

Sign the petition here

London Fashion Week starts this week! It has long been regarded as one of the pioneering and defining events of the fashion world. Spawning countless trends and providing platforms for some of the most famous designers that have ever existed. Yet even though London Fashion Week prides itself on paving the way for the future of fashion it is unable to progress beyond some of the darkest and most horrific practices committed by the fashion world.

Every year the fur industry is responsible for the death of 1 billion rabbits and 50 million other animals  – including foxes, minks, dogs, cats, racoons, chinchillas, seals and many more. Most of these animals are raised in fur farms, intensive facilities where the animals are kept in tiny cages and confined to a life of misery. These farms can hold thousands of animals and are designed to specifically maximise profits. These animals go insane performing psychotic repetitive behaviours such as circling endlessly in their cage as well as cannibalism and self-mutilation. 

The most common methods of killing animals in fur farms is anal electrocution, gassing, poisoning or stomping on the animals and breaking their necks. These are all done to try and preserve the quality of the fur.

In the year 2000 fur farming was banned in the UK due to the horrific nature of these practices but fur can still be legally imported into this country. Why is it that London Fashion Week finds it morally justifiable to still provide a platform for fur and profit off the exploitation of an industry that was outlawed in the UK 17 years ago?

Big fashion labels like Armani, Stella McCartney, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, The Kooples, Vivienne Westwood and many more have denounced fur, yet London Fashion Week continues to provide the largest platform for fur in the UK. This has to stop.

As high fashion drips down into high street fashion, the relentless promotion of fur by high brow designers is culpable in the normalisation of cheap high street fur items that have been brought back into shops and market stalls. No doubt imitations of the the fur items featured in LFW this year will soon be seen donned by members of the public in the not too distant future.

Please sign our petition to ban fur from London Fashion Week.