A few days ago my niece Beth told me about Mars’ announcement to put rennet (an animal enzyme) in their products. Because it was National Vegetarian Week I asked her to write me a post for GGG about it.

Over to you Beth….

Veggie Rights

With recent news that Mars have decided to use animal rennet in their chocolate the Vegetarian Society have protested against this and want to know why they have done this. The vegetarian alternative is cheaper and also healthier and the sales will obviously decrease due to the amount of vegetarians who will not eat or buy it any more.

Chocolates that would contain this product are: Mars, Snickers, Minstrels, Maltesers, Bounty, Milky Way, Twix

Since Beth wrote this post Mars have changed their decision, saying they had “made a mistake”.

What I think is amazing here is the power of the consumers’ voice. Like Beth many people wrote to Mars to protest against the use of the animal product and as a result that major decision was turned around.

Whether you feel strongly about animal rights, organic cotton in high street fashion shops or plastic wrapping in supermarkets, why not make the time to write a letter to let the shop / company / local MP in question know how you feel. This kind of activity does work and we’ve seen it in action this week.

Well done Beth and the Vegetarian Society!

National Vegetarian Week begins on Monday 21st May in the UK and I was wondering how you’re planning to celebrate.

I stopped eating meat when I was 12 years old. At that time my reason for doing this was quite simple, I found out about intensive farming. I was so horrified by the way that many animals are reared and slaughtered for meat production that the thought of contributing to it just disgusted me. Of course, there are some farmers who work hard to make sure that their animals are kept in natural living conditions, healthy and safe from harm and slaughtered as humanely as possible and I wouldn’t want to tar them with the same brush. I didn’t know much about this when I was 12 but I doubt very much that I would start eating meat now after all this time.

Nowadays my reasons for being vegetarian are more complex. Cruelty is still a huge factor for me but there is also the environment to consider, especially with the rising populations and amount of meat and fish that humans continue to consume today.

Having a vegetarian diet or reducing the amount of meat you eat does hold benefits for the environment. For example, it takes nearly 80 times more fossil fuel to produce one calorie of beef protein than one calorie of soyabean protein and up to 15 times more water is used to produce meat than plants. On top of that acres of tropical forests are destroyed every day to make room to rear livestock and oceans are being over fished to the point that some fishing grounds have not been able to recover. Just imagine the knock-on effects that these factors have on our climate, humans and wildlife.

So, to celebrate National Vegetarian Week why not cut meat out of your diet? You never know you might decide never to go back. To help you along Delia Smith and the Vegetarian Society are giving away yummy vegetarian recipes.

Check out the Vegetarian Society website for more info about becoming a vegetarian and National Vegetarian Week at www.vegsoc.org

For those of you who are already veggie, these might give you a giggle:

• Vegetarian Myths - some of these made me laugh out loud because they’re so familiar
• Jokes and anecdotes - from Veggieglobal
• What not to say to a vegetarian! - remember Nana Royle’s “Can she eat wafer thin ham?”

There are lots of veggie events happening all over the UK and in a few other countries. If you’re holding an event tell the Vegetarian Society about it or visit their website to see what’s happening in your area.