Author: Guest post

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Opinion Editorial

How new VR experience can create empathy for farmed animals

Article originally published on Daily Hive.

At the Vancouver Vegan Festival held at Creekside Park, we launched a new form of animal advocacy and outreach through virtual reality. We’re excited to partner with Animal Equality to offer their iAnimal 360 virtual experience to Metro Vancouver.

For the first time, you can see what they see, as you take the place of either a chicken, cow, or pig as you experience their entire farmed lifecycle in a matter of minutes in a narrated 360° video. Filmed with the consent and approval of modern farms and slaughter facilities who are proud of what they do, you can see what the average day looks like through the eyes of an animal, rather than focusing on the most graphic footage we could find, or relying on hidden cameras. We believe that simply showing you what happens as the animal would see it is powerful enough to stir compassion in even the hardest heart.

The feedback we received was amazing. There were questions (“and this is legal?” “and this is normal?”), there were tears, and there was no one who left looking at farmed animals, or their manicured meat products, the same way.

The iAnimal 360 virtual experience (Vancouver Humane Society)

I’m not someone who’s easily impressed. I didn’t get excited about Avatar in 3D or the Tupac hologram. But the experience of immersion that VR can give us is almost incomparable to film or gaming as we know them today. It can open up new possibilities in the way it’s able to transport you seemingly out of your own body. I’ve tested out virtual rollercoasters that make your stomach drop, I’ve swum with pre-recorded sharks and dolphins, and they’re all pretty incredible. 

In the history of ideas “the virtual” is more complicated than the usual pop culture sense of the term. We usually think of “the virtual” as “the fictional” or “the illusory,” something that appears real but isn’t. Philosophers have used the term more broadly though to mean “the possible” or “the potential” (I actually wrote about this in a philosophical dictionary released a few years ago) and it’s this broader, more experimental notion of “the virtual” that really interests me.

Chilliwack Rodeo / Vancouver Humane Society

It’s no wonder that even rodeos and circuses are playing with the ideas of virtual animals and experiences. We’ve talked in our office about the possibilities that virtual reality and animal holograms could bring to antiquated institutions such as zoos and aquaria. You can even experience something like an existence in one of these facilities through a virtual prison experience. I can only imagine what an iAnimal take on modern zoos would feel like, putting you in a boring box for unending observation in an alien environment, surrounded by other animals you couldn’t possibly understand. You’d be able to take off the headset if you felt claustrophobic or anxious —  a luxury the animals don’t get.

Of course, we don’t have to have sophisticated camera equipment or advanced technology to empathize with these animals. Ethicists have put themselves in the place of the animal for thousands of years through thought experiments and observation, and come to the realization that their pain is difficult or impossible to justify given our own capacity for physical, psychological, and emotional suffering and knowledge of other animals.

The moral question of whether we are justified in killing and eating other animals for our survival is hard enough before you factor in the thought and planning that goes in to modern farming, the cunning it takes to commodify animals in order to think of them in terms of pounds and energy cost rather than as individuals with bodily autonomy and emotional awareness. We would never invent such a brutal system today, it would never make it past market research. Paul McCartney once said that if slaughterhouses had glass walls then everyone would become vegetarian. I don’t think that’s entirely right, but I don’t think it’s possible to justify what happens to any animal on modern farms if you’re capable of seeing them, if even for only a moment, as animal selves with feelings and wants. 

No, other animals aren’t people, but who decided that only people count for anything? Killing another person is wrong, whether it’s the law or not. Is it sometimes justifiable? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it “good” or “right.” Are we justified in killing animals for food? Maybe sometimes. Everyone seems obsessed with some Castaway scenario where they’re forced to eat their only friend (a pig usually) in order to survive. Would I eat a pig to survive? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it “good” or “right.” (Besides, the modern Western world gives us a reality that is the exact opposite of the aforementioned island: we live on an island with an abundance of choices that don’t require animals to suffer and yet we as a society demand more meat and cheese!) 

I also don’t buy in to the idea of purity politics though; ethics are about character and doing the best thing in the given situation, not about calculating how to extract the most utility out of a situation or blindly following a moral code. The best thing to do in a given situation may be to defend myself from someone, or to eat an animal in order to survive so I can once again continue living up to my own ethic. 

Just like the iAnimal videos, what we ask of our supporters and the greater community is to put yourself in the situation of the animal. What is good for them? What is for the “greater good” knowing that human beings starve every day while we feed soy and corn to cows in one of the most inefficient ways to generate food energy? What is moral, and what is justifiable, given that we throw away such huge quantities of food, while continuing to produce more animal products than we know what to do with?

Ethics and politics are lived, not calculated, and as we get better and know better, we should always aim to do better. This is obvious when it comes to other people, and should be obvious to anyone capable of imagining being in the situation of suffering, regardless of species. Is it “better” to kill a rat than a dog? It might be more justifiable, but when the question is of morality, it’s not so easy to answer. Do we want to live in a world where decisions about what’s easy or okay to kill go unquestioned? The answer should be a resounding “No,” but we don’t even get to ask the question. It’s unthinkable to some people, like trying to question the air that we breathe. Shouldn’t we be concerned at this mass failure of imagination? Of generations of people so divorced from the fact that they’re paying to breed and raise animals to be killed weeks later out of pure habit and convenience? Let’s at least give the animals we eat the five minutes it takes to see the world from their eyes. We owe them that much. There’s something truly powerful in a person’s capacity for empathy, something we share with many other animals, even if we often forget.

Categories
Opinion Editorial

Orcas may be the first species with individual proper names to go extinct

Article originally published on Daily Hive.

The vaquita, the smallest cetacean (the family of marine mammals that makes up whales and dolphins), is dangerously close to extinction. It is estimated that 10 individuals remain, though the nature of scientists’ best estimate means there could actually be anywhere from six to 22 left. Except that only days after this new population estimate was released (already down 50% over 2017), animal activists discovered what appeared to be the decomposing body of a vaquita trapped in a gillnet. Activists have been calling for a ban of such nets off the coast of Mexico but fear it may already be too late for the vaquita.

I’ve been finding it hard to write about the topic of extinction, as urgent as it feels now more than ever. Others have more insight into the science behind it, but ethicists have been thinking about death and loss for thousands of years, how death occurs and what it means for those who go on living. Socrates gives many beautiful theories around the nature of life and death in Plato’s Phaedo, written over 2,000 years ago. I’m always amazed at the creativity and pure interest in ideas on display as Socrates lies on his deathbed in deep discussion with his closest friends. Few in human history have thought through anything like species extinction though, let alone anything on the scale of mass extinctions.

The topic feels so distant, like something that’s always in the future but never arrives. It feels like trying to think through something like climate change. How do you think meaningfully about what could or will happen in the future without sounding naïve or alarmist? How do you write meaningfully about a species or individuals who no longer have a place in this world while ensuring you are doing them justice?

Both extinction and climate disaster feel like a threat from a parent who doesn’t really mean it: we know the possibility exists, but we don’t really believe it. At least, we don’t believe it in any meaningful way such that we change our actions in significant or timely ways. When I look out the window and see a beautiful day, I don’t see climate change. But when the city smells like smoke all summer, the fire feels more real.

We’ve been witness to animals washing ashore with stomachs bloated with plastic for years and only recently has anyone shown any concern for the straws and bags and cups we have been filling the planet with, let alone the bottles and the packaging and who knows what else. Of course, while the City of Vancouver declares a climate emergency and seeks advice on how to meaningfully combat imminent disaster, the State of Florida has sought a ban on plastic straw bans until at least 2024, so not everyone is making responsible collective choices in the best interest of all animals.

Historically, human beings have been responsible in some way for the extinction of multiple species. Our pop culture even features these long-gone creatures like the dodo who was easily and quickly hunted to extinction by humans. It didn’t help that we destroyed its habitat, along with basically all native animals on the island of Mauritius. The dodo is now of course mocked as stupid or clumsy based on its quick death and descriptions from the 1600’s, though we now know that it, along with the countless other creatures killed were adapted to their environment. It just happens that we have historically eaten just about anything that moves (or rather doesn’t move too quickly) and then use up ever-expanding swathes of land to raise and grow more animals to eat.

In the 1800’s, colonial settlers in the “New World” were responsible for virtually wiping out the buffalo, a species that numbered over 60 million the previous century and roamed from Alaska to Mexico in the south and as far east as Florida. Through a combination of hunting for food, and simply slaughtering them to eliminate a vital food source for First Nations communities (as well as the introduction of disease from farmed cattle), there were only 541 individuals remaining in 1889. In our history of grievances against other animals we should remember that humans are responsible for wiping out creatures simply as a means of eliminating other human beings, with animals and natural habitats destroyed not only as collateral damage in warfare, but used as pawns and weapons as well. The Buffalo now has a conservation status of Near Threatened.

It’s only relatively recently that human beings have reflected in any significant way on the result such mass deaths and land transformation have on other species or ecosystems. Our world has remained relatively small and fairly anthropocentric for going on 5,000 years now. We are slowly but surely becoming more aware of the needs of other animals, of expanding our concepts of intelligence and communication and community to better grasp the non-human animals we share this Earth with. It brings me hope when individuals truly care for other creatures and our collective decisions and actions reflect our compassion for others. These collective actions can’t come soon enough.

Locally, many have been following the slow decline of the southern resident killer whales, best exemplified by last summer’s tragic tour of grief as J35 (Tahlequah) swam for over two weeks carrying her calf who had died within half an hour after birth. The southern resident killer whales are composed of three pods, lending the individuals the familiar Letter-Number naming convention; J Pod is composed of 22 members, while K and L Pods are composed of 18 and 34 members, respectively. That means the entire population of southern resident killer whales is only 74.

There’s something truly unique about the possible extinction of the southern resident killer whales though, something that separates it from the dodo and the buffalo: If the southern resident killer whales are allowed to go extinct, it will be the first species to be wiped out where every individual had a name.

This means that the death of these whales may be closer in kind to the deaths of the Beothuk or of the countless genocides and wars that make up human history. Or maybe it means that all animal deaths are a matter of degree. I mean, J35 has her own Wikipedia page, while friends from graduate school, now published with teaching positions, have their own pages marked for deletion. Tahlequah the killer whale is more socially and culturally significant than respected educators and published authors.

How would we respond if Shanawdithit came to us today as Tahlequah did, a tragedy across both old and social media, crying out for help? Shanawdithit, born 1800 and the last of the Beothuk People, died as a servant in Newfoundland in 1829. Her mother and sister died of tuberculosis when brought to St. John’s where they were to all serve white immigrants after they were found searching for food in Badger Bay, a present day five-and-a-half-hour drive away, or four and a half days of continuous walking. In 1820 there were only 31 Beothuk remaining. Shanawdithit’s legacy has lasted through her retelling of her people’s story and as a symbol for cultural and racial extinction. If hashtags and Instagram stories asked us to save a dying people today, would we act?

I hope that we would. But when faced presently with a refugee crisis, with war ravaging parts of the world for decades or longer, and with the global divide between the wealthy and the poor expanding evermore, not to mention those in need in our own country facing poverty, illness, or lack of basic community infrastructure, I can’t say we’re really doing much to help those in need.

Like our history with other animals, our history with other human cultures is honestly pretty shameful. Spoiler alert for those without a cursory knowledge of human history: human beings have been pretty awful to just about everyone and everything for about as long as we’ve been around. It doesn’t have to be that way though. There are pockets of hope in human history where people have come together to better themselves, to understand what it means to be just, or to reflect on human action and its effects.

There are different schools when it comes to ethical theory. Some weigh the value of intentions, while some look to the benefit of an action’s outcome as the measure of whether this or that action is “good.” Others maintain that the things we hold valuable change over time, through social and political change, that our ethics reflect the collective aspirations of humanity to always be better, whatever that means according to our best available knowledge and wisdom.

We don’t need to reflect for even a moment on the plight facing whales all over the world, both wild and captive, we already know that we can and need to do better. But we need to ensure we actually do something with our “knowing better” before it’s too late. We owe them more than being a quickly forgotten part of our 24-hour news cycle of rotating tragedies, only to be relegated to the place of memory and fiction.

Categories
Opinion Editorial

What the internet weeping over death of NASA robot tells us about empathy

Article originally published on Daily Hive.

On February 13th, 2019 NASA confirmed the death of the Opportunity rover. Its last image a dark static greyscape, the last view of the sandstorm that destroyed the rover, and its last message “my battery is low and it is getting dark.”

And the Internet wept.

There has been an outpouring of sympathy at “the loss of Opportunity” (the most 2019 phrase thus far), but it’s not hard to see why. Designed for a 90-day mission, the rover explored for 15 years, outliving its sibling rover, Spirit, by years.

It was programmed to know its own birthday and it sang to itself every year to commemorate the occasion. It was basically a real life Wall-E. And it lived its life like many of us, terribly online. On Twitter, Opportunity and Spirit shared the @MarsRovers handle, and have amassed over 475k followers. Opportunity had an identity.

“This is a hard day,” said project manager John Callas. “Even though it’s a machine and we’re saying goodbye, it’s still very hard and very poignant, but we had to do that… It comes time to say goodbye.”

NASA lost communication with the rover after a sandstorm, declaring the mission, which has indicated that Mars once had water capable of sustaining microbial life, complete.

The online response to the “death” of Opportunity shows clearly if nothing else how essential compassion is to the human condition. We know that a robot in outer space isn’t actually celebrating its birthday, or even really dying. But it’s sad. We feel for the robot.

That isn’t to say sympathy for a dying robot is a bad thing. I used to research and teach political and ethical theory (among other things), and as an ethicist, I take compassion to be a moral virtue and one of the best qualities a human being can have. The philosopher in me is excited for the ethical considerations that will have to come about as a result of more and more complex artificial intelligences as machines and AI continue to become more and more a part of our lives. Our capacity to care, for other humans, for non-human animals, even for fictional characters and objects with identities, tells us something incredible about human beings.

The entertainment industry has played on this for years — robots, mutants, animal-human hybrids, and aliens can all be protagonists or love interests and no one bats an eye. You only have to name a pencil in front of a group of students and suddenly if you snap it you’re destroying an individual, not a mere object.

Animals are individuals. Not exactly like us, but they are individuated in similar ways. Depending on the species, some individuals will be more curious, social, food-motivated, dominant, playful, or any number of other “personality” (animality?) traits that mark individuals within that species.

It makes sense that people sympathize more with an individual like Opportunity, just as they did with Tilikum, the orca profiled in the film Blackfish which highlighted the keeping of cetaceans at Sea World and other marine parks. The film brought to light the ethical issue of keeping highly intelligent, social creatures in environments that the best science tells us is inadequate.

I had the fortune of seeing a similarly eye-opening film in Ottawa a few years ago. Sled Dogs examines some of the issues surrounding the Iditarod dog sled race and the use of sled dogs in tourism and entertainment, including a large scale cull of dogs that took place in British Columbia. It is heartbreaking to see the lives of these creatures. In this year’s Yukon Quest, considered by many to be more difficult and dangerous than the more famous Iditarod, a dog named Joker has died. Last year a dog named Boppy died when he asphyxiated on his own vomit which froze in his throat. A dog has died or had to be euthanized every year for the last ten years of the Yukon Quest. Boppy’s owner had a dog die in a previous race, and was once disqualified based on the condition of his dog team.

The environmental conditions these dogs were in at the time of their death, white, grey, getting darker, if we could capture that image, it may not be unlike the last photo from Opportunity.

Dogs are not meant to run 1600km in some of the most dangerous conditions on the planet, and they certainly don’t *want* to. They are not capable of the kinds of complex decision making required for that. Dogs, regardless of breed, want to be happy and like us, that comes in a variety of ways. Exercise is definitely one of them, and all dogs need some level of physical activity to be healthy and happy.

Certainly some dogs enjoy the snow and the cold, I can remember vividly trying to bring a Malamute mix in at the shelter I managed in St. John’s. It was a literal blizzard and he had curled up and gone to sleep outside. I had to pick him up to get him in for the night.

But no dog wants to die, and since they aren’t capable of making complex choices in their own best interests, we owe it to them to advocate on their behalf. If we can empathize with a robot dying alone on Mars, we have to be able to empathize with Joker dying in the cold, in pain and confused.

Non-human animals do not experience time the same way we do since they don’t plan for the future or construct a narrative identity through memories of the past. What they “know” in any meaningful sense of the term is what they are immediately and directly experiencing through their senses. They react based on previous experience as well as individual disposition, something like what we experience as memory and identity. The complexity of this basic experience varies depending on the animal, but remains essentially the same.

This means that in moments of trauma and stress, dogs, cats, cows, pigs, and a lot of other animals, “know” only that trauma. A dog can’t rationalize its final moments by telling itself it’s a hero. It doesn’t grasp the concept of death in the way we do, it may not “know” it’s dying in the same way we do, but in that moment that’s all it thinks it will ever experience. Every moment is forever.

We care a lot about our pets. Some care passionately about wildlife, and others care tremendously for the animals who suffer as part of our agriculture system. We even care about cartoons and brands and robots on Mars. In a world where we have rules around infrastructure to preserve the dignity and integrity of views and scenery, let’s try to empathize more with those who depend on our care the most, and always strive to do them justice. Like most things, we can always do better.

Categories
Opinion Editorial

Treatment of sled dogs is morally indefensible

Article originally published in the Vancouver Sun.

The welfare of sled dogs came to public attention in 2010 when Robert Fawcett, an employee of Howling Dogs Tours in Whistler, B.C. filed a claim for post-traumatic stress disorder. He had allegedly been ordered by his employer to kill surplus sled dogs after a downturn in business following the 2010 Olympics. He shot, stabbed and bludgeoned 56 dogs to death.

In the same year, filmmaker Fern Levitt and her husband went dog sledding in Northern Ontario. In her words: “After an exhilarating ride, I went back to see where the sled dogs lived. What I saw was unexpected and distressing — hundreds of dogs, all attached to chains several feet long, unable to move beyond their very short restraints. It was an image that I will never forget.” One of the employees told her that 30 of the dogs would be ‘culled’ if homes couldn’t be found for them.

The result was Levitt’s film Sled Dogs, which was released at the Whistler Film Festival in 2016. Every winter, Canadian SPCAs and humane societies across the country warn people to keep their animals indoors.

The Nova Scotia SPCA describes what can happen to a dog left outside as “an excruciating death.” Yet all across Canada and the US there are thousands of sled dogs chained to stakes, often 24 hours a day, with only a wooden hut or plastic igloo for a shelter. Sled dog operators say these dogs are different from companion dogs– that they’re bred for these conditions. But science does not support their claims.

In Sled Dogs, Dr. Paula Kislak, a veterinarian with the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association states: “(Sled dogs) have the same basic needs and requirements and desires (as pet dogs), and people who claim otherwise don’t have any scientific basis to claim that.”

In fact, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s code of practice for Canadian kennel operations states: “Tethering of dogs (i.e., chains or ropes used to tie the animal to an immovable object such as a stake or building) as a primary method of confinement is not acceptable.”

The code also states: “All housing should allow for enrichment strategies. Dogs are pack animals and require social interaction with their own species and with people. They do not do well in isolation.”

Dr. Kislak cites the extremes of weather as sometimes unendurable — both the high temperatures in summer and the sub-zero cold in winter. “The animals succumb to frostbite, they succumb to hypothermia, they succumb to stroke.” In summer, there’s no escape from biting insects and flies.

Perhaps even more morally indefensible is the use of sled dogs in the gruelling eight to fifteen-day, 1,000-mile Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska (due to start on March 3) and the similar Yukon Quest race. The dogs are exposed to a high risk of injury or death, as documented in Levitt’s film. They’re expected to pull a sled weighing up to 250 pounds through harsh winter conditions, including blizzards, whiteouts, gale-force winds and temperatures that can reach -73C with the wind chill.

Levitt’s film shows heart-rending scenes of dogs suffering from vomiting, extreme exhaustion, dehydration, bloody diarrhea and bleeding feet at checkpoints during the Iditarod. Dogs can’t be replaced, so mushers may be reluctant to remove ailing animals. In one disturbing scene, a severely compromised dog was forced to go on, in spite of advice from a veterinarian who was obviously trying to get the musher to remove the dog voluntarily, pointing out that the dog’s pulse was abnormally and dangerously high.

In fact, the Iditarod’s chief veterinarian admitted that about a third of the dogs fail to finish. In 2017, despite all precautions and the sled dog controversy, six dogs died — and that doesn’t take into consideration those who may have died before the race in training, or after the race as a result of the strain on their bodies.

As a result of the Howling Dogs “massacre” in Whistler, B.C.  there were increased penalties in the Provincial Cruelty to Animals Act and basic standards were created for sled dog care.

Shamefully however, both 24-hour tethering and shooting dogs remain legal. The rest of Canada has no standards at all. Sadly, any time animals are used as commodities, their welfare is in danger of being compromised, even when the animal is man’s best friend.

Categories
animal welfare compassion Cruelty-free Food and Drink News/Blog plant-based diet Promoted vegan vegetarianism

The knowledge of suffering was too much to bear alone

The Vegeteers at work on Gabriola Island.

 

Our guest blogger Sigrid Bjarnason is an animal advocate and vegan living on Gabriola Island. Here, she describes why she made these important life choices and how she and her fellow “Vegeteers” work on behalf of animals.

Forty years ago when I was in my mid-20s, I stuffed my flip-flops, a bathing suit and some shorts into my neon orange backpack and headed off with a couple of friends on a South American adventure.  Two months into our trip we found ourselves on a bargain-basement ocean voyage to the fabled Galapagos Islands.  We’d booked passage on a rusty old ship that was taking supplies to the Islanders and, we later learned, picking up cattle to transport back to the mainland of Ecuador for slaughter.

You might think I have happy memories of blue-footed boobies and lumbering tortoises from that trip to the Galapagos so long ago.  But no, instead I carry two unsettling memories: The agonizing sight of dozens of cows crammed together on the open deck below us standing day after day in the blazing sun without food or water, a handful of them collapsing and dying along the way; and worse, the screams of a tethered pig, destined to be dinner for travelers and crew, struggling for her life as two crew members stabbed and sliced at her until her desperate shrieks became pitiful whimpers and finally, mercifully, stopped altogether.

You might think those two incidents would have been enough to cure my meat-eating habit right then and there. But no. Instead, I told myself a story. The story was that farm animals were treated harshly in Ecuador but Canada was a kinder, gentler nation and we had laws to protect animals from such horrible suffering. I didn’t research it. I just decided it was true.

Then, seven years ago, a close friend phoned. She was devastated. She had just watched a Global TV documentary called “Revealed: No Country For Animals.” The documentary showed in sickening detail the horrific hidden abuse of millions of animals trapped out of sight in Canada’s industrial food system. Turns out Canada does not have effective laws to protect farm animals after all.  So, that was it – my story was blown. 

I’ve been a vegan ever since.

So, what to do with the knowledge of all that suffering? It was too much to bear alone.  So I found some like-minded people on Gabriola Island where I was living. We formed a group, called ourselves the Vegeteers and set out to raise awareness about compassionate food choices.

We are now a well-established organization on Gabriola Island.  One of our regular activities is to set up information tables at community events on Gabriola like the fall fair, the food forum and theatre festivals. When we started tabling we had to entice people to talk to us by offering vegan treats and prizes. We got used to fielding the usual derisive comments and bacon jokes, but these days people are more likely to search us out for new vegan recipe ideas or plant-based nutrition information.  The world is changing but it feels right to nudge things along by giving people who want to change some support to help them do that.

We have a website and a Facebook page. We show animal advocacy movies at our local library. We hold regular vegan potlucks, arrange special restaurant meals, distribute brochures, participate in street fairs, hold cooking demonstrations and organize plant-based cooking workshops.  This summer, we sponsored a Gabriola music festival where all the food was vegan.

There are billions of animals suffering in horrific conditions in Canada and around the world, but there is reason for hope.  More and more people are coming to recognize the environmental, health and ethical advantages of a plant-based diet.  The shift to veganism is snowballing and it feels wonderful to be part of such positive change.  

To learn more about what the Gabriola Vegeteers are up to, check our website or our Facebook page.

 

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compassion Cruelty-free Food and Drink News/Blog plant-based diet Promoted Recipes vegan vegetarianism

An amazing vegan holiday feast!

 

Our guest blogger Amanda Tracey is from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, and started her blog All She Does Is Eat to share her favourite recipes and tips to living as compassionately as possible. She now lives in Vancouver and works as a communications professional and blogger.  

 

 All She Does Is Eat’s Holiday Feast

When I first adopted a vegan lifestyle, one of my worries was “how am I going to participate in the holidays?” I was concerned that my veganized recipes wouldn’t live up to the part – but boy was I wrong. Growing up I always thought the turkey was the centrepiece of the dinner, but my favourite things were always the potatoes, stuffing and gravy (I’m pretty sure gravy runs through my veins). So, for me personally, I’ve never missed the turkey.

I’ve been vegan for three years, and it was only last year that I decided to step my game up. I’ve had family and friends try everything I am going to share with you here, so I am 101% positive that you will like it. 

I’ve taste-tested the Tofurkey roast and it wasn’t really my thing. Other people I know really enjoy it, but my favourite is the Gardein roast. If you don’t like either, you could try a roast like this one from hot for food or you can just stick with a bunch of delicious vegetables. But for me, I’m going with the Gardein roast. Just bake it according to instructions. It’s very straightforward! As for the rest, keep reading for the recipes. 

Serves: 2

What you’ll need:

Gravy 

  • 2 tbsp vegan butter
  • 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon maple syrup
  • 1 pinch of sea salt 
  • Black pepper to taste

Stuffing

  • 3 pieces of bread
  • 2 tbsp vegan butter (melted)
  • 1 tsp parsley flakes
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/2 tsp Italian seasonings

Garlic, whipped potatoes

  • 3 medium potatoes
  • 1 tbsp almond milk
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

Other ingredients you’ll need:   

  • Gardein roast
  • 3 carrots
  • 1 cup peas

Directions:

*A little note, all of the above serves 2 people (fairly big plates though). Make sure to double or even triple each recipe depending on how many guests are joining you!

1. Peel and wash your potatoes and carrots. Then place them in a medium to large sized pot, and boil them for 20-25 minutes. They will be fork tender when finished.

2. For the stuffing, crumble your bread by hand in a bowl or in a food processor. Add the butter to your bowl, along with the parsley flakes, garlic powder and Italian seasonings. To bake, add to a small casserole dish and cover with tinfoil. Bake for 20-25 minutes on 450F. Once done it is ready to enjoy!

3. Cook your Gardein roast according to package. So yummy!

4. In a food processor, blend your garlic clove until it’s broken into small pieces. Add the vegetable broth, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, maple syrup, sea salt and black pepper. If you don’t have a food processor, mince your garlic by hand and add all ingredients to a blender. Heat the butter in a small pot. Once melted, add the all-purpose flour, whisking immediately. It will be a thick paste. Let cook for 1 more minute, and then add your blended ingredients. Whisk again until fully combined. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for 5 minutes on low heat. Now it is ready to serve!

5. You can either eat your potatoes plain like the carrots, or you can whip them up a bit more! In a small bowl (big enough to fit all potatoes), mash the potatoes with a fork or potato masher. Add the almond milk, garlic powder and Italian seasonings. Stir together until fully combined.

6. For the peas, drain and rinse them and then heat them up in a small pot/pan or the microwave. Whichever is easiest!

I hope you enjoyed this recipe! For more recipes follow me on Instagram @allshedoesiseat_

Amanda xx

Categories
Cruelty-free Food and Drink News/Blog plant-based diet Promoted Uncategorized vegan vegetarianism

Where To Eat Vegan In Vancouver

VHS volunteer and blogger Patricia Charis is a huge lover of nature and animals, which ultimately led her to embrace a vegan lifestyle in an effort to protect animals, the planet and her health. She wrote this fantastic blog post, Where To Eat Vegan In Vancouver, about her cruelty-free adventures around the city and we just had to share it:

Since going vegan around 8 months ago (on September 1, 2015) it has been one food adventure after another. I have to say I am extremely blessed to be living in a city like Vancouver where vegan options abound, with a ton of vegetarian/vegan restaurants all over the city, and even non-veg places have been including more and more vegetarian/vegan options on their menus. And we aren’t even in the Happy Cow list of top 5 vegan-friendly cities in the world!

Today I would like to share with you some of these aforementioned food adventures, and some of my favourite places to eat Vegan in Vancouver! Enjoy:)

1. MeeT on Main (& MeeT in Gastown)

Safe to say that MeeT on Main and MeeT in Gastown have become two of my absolute favourite vegan places in Vancouver! In the past their menu included both vegetarian and vegan food, but recently they have updated (or shall I say, upgraded) their menu so that all of their items default to vegan (they do still carry dairy cheese, but it has to be specifically requested by a customer to be substituted in their meal, and even this is being phased out I believe). I am very impressed by this business for making such positive changes. Not to mention their Taco Tuesday ‘Ish Tacos (pictured below) are pretty friggin fantastic!

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2. Heirloom Vegetarian

Another amazing restaurant, located on 12th and Granville, is Heirloom Vegetarian. The atmosphere at this restaurant is the perfect combination of casual and classy, and the food is just the right mixture of delicious and super healthy (as long as you order from the vegan half of their menu). This picture here is of the very first meal I had in 2016 and it did not disappoint. I absolutely LOVE avocado toast, and this dish was elegant and delicious and I have been dreaming about it ever since. I have to say that so far Heirloom has been my favourite place for vegan brunch in Vancouver.

Heirloom - Avocado Toast.png

3. The Naam

The Naam, on 4th and Stephens St., is a favourite for vegans, vegetarians and meat-eaters alike. I have taken several non-vegan friends to this restaurant and it hasn’t disappointed anyone I know thus far. They are opened 24/7 and are often packed full with a line going out the door. Their Thai Noodles, pictured below, is my all-time favourite of their dishes, followed by the California Burger, as well as their Blueberry Soy Shake. The portion sizes at the Naam are quite large as you can see and I always leave super full and satisfied!

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4. Tera V Burger

My favourite place for vegan burgers in Vancouver? Tera V on West Broadway, hands down. The Smokey No Bull Burger with Daiya Cheese is SO legit, I can’t even tell you, you have to try it yourself. The burger patty is not like many veggie burgers I’ve encountered which, although still very yummy, tend to be a bit mushy and fall apart easily. The No Bull Burger patty has the perfect texture, and when covered in smokey BBQ sauce, it is just heavenly. Add to that a side of yam fries and I am a very happy vegan.

Tera V - Smokey No Bull and Yam Fries.png

6. Vegan Pizza House 

Think that vegans can’t eat pizza? Think again. We like our junk food too, and I can’t explain my delight when I found Vegan Pizza House, a cute little pizza place on Kingsway and Victoria. This place has been my absolute go-to when in need of an easy, convenient, and affordable meal to bring to parties or to just pig out on at home. There are 15 different pizza options, and I haven’t tried them all, but this picture is of the Mediterranean Special which is topped with artichoke, olives, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and onions, and covered in daiya cheese. When my mother first tried this pizza she didn’t even believe it was vegan and has asked for it on several occasions since!

Vegan Pizza House - Gourmet Special .png

6. Fairy Cakes 

I have a bit of a sentimental attachment to this little cafe on Fraser Street because my first experience with it was when I had vegan cupcakes sent to me on Valentine’s Day from my now fiancé (then long-distance boyfriend) two Valentine’s Days ago in 2015. I was vegetarian at the time but I was getting more and more into veganism, and was happily surprised with a delivery of a dozen super cute and delicious cupcakes (pretty much my favourite thing ever) on Valentine’s morning. Now that we are getting married in a few months we have ended up ordering our cupcake cake from Fairy Cakes as well. In addition to cupcakes, Fairy Cakes also makes cookies, cakes, cheesecakes, etc. They are 100% vegan, with gluten free options! Basically heaven on earth.

Fairy Cakes - Cupcakes.png

7. Nice Vice Creamery

Last but not least on this list of favourite vegan food spots in Vancouver is Nice Vice Creamery in Yaletown! This little ice cream shop opened up just this year and I have already been there on multiple occasions for their deliciously cruelty free ice cream. All of their ice creams are dairy, soy and gluten free, made with organic ingredients and are sooo good. Now you can enjoy your ice cream completely guilt free knowing that it is not only way healthier for you, but far kinder to the animals and the planet as well. The picture below is of the matcha avocado ice cream and was taken by my fiancé (stolen off of his Instagram account @echan037😛 ).

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So there you go, some of my favourite places to eat vegan food in Vancouver! A couple of honourable mentions which are also pretty fantastic:

– 3G Vegetarian on Cambie St. (super legit vegan Chinese food)

– Chau Veggie Express on Victoria Dr. (Vietnamese pho and vermicelli, need I say more?)

– Panz Veggie on Victoria Dr. (vegan hot pot!!)

– Zend Conscious Lounge in Yaletown (amazing food, 100% of profits go to charity!)

– Lotus Seed Vegetarian on Kingsway (sushi, burgers, burritos, pasta, curry, smoothies !!!)

– Eternal Abundance on Commercial Dr. (super healthy raw & cooked vegan food)

– Dharma Kitchen on West Broadway (Asian inspired burgers and curry bowls)

Categories
animal welfare Cruelty-free Food and Drink News/Blog plant-based diet Promoted vegan vegetarianism

New meat alternatives offer great promise

 

Homemade Healthy Vegetarian Quinoa Burger with Lettuce and Tomato

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But don’t look to ‘lab meat’ for a solution

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Guest post by David Steele

There is a promising trend in food these days. Meat substitutes are on the rise. More and more plant-based meats that look and taste like their cognate animal products are coming to market. They have been in the news big time lately. The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine and Slate are just a few of the publications that have run feature stories in recent months.

 

Most recently, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote effusively about the latest products. High in protein and other nutrients, these plant-based meats, Kristof tells us, are nearly indistinguishable from cooked animal flesh. What a wonderful development! As The Guardian bluntly states, modern animal agriculture is one of the worst crimes in history. Soon, just maybe, we’ll be able to consign that crime to the past.

 

The vast majority of animals raised for meat, eggs and dairy today are raised on factory farms. Debeaking, tail docking, castration, even tooth cutting – all without anesthetics – are standard practice. Dairy cows have their calves taken from them within hours of giving birth. Egg laying hens live six or eight to a cage; each has less than a standard 8½ x 11” sheet of paper’s ‘floor’ space to her. Pregnant and mother pigs live individually in cages so tiny that they can’t even turn around.  As the Guardian article points out, “The fate of animals in such industrial installations has become one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time.”

 

And the severe problems don’t end with the animals’ hellish lives. Raising livestock and the grain and soybeans to feed them is easily the biggest contributor to rainforest destruction; credible analyses indicate that animal agriculture is responsible for roughly 15 to 25% of global warming.  And animal agriculture is grossly inefficient.

 

As Cornell University’s David Pimentel calculates it, the way we raise meat, it takes some 28 calories of fossil fuel to generate one calorie of food value. This is enormously wasteful. And worse, because so much grain and soy is fed to animals instead of humans, the price of basic staples is raised, pricing out hundreds of millions of the world’s poor (see, e.g., this book review). In effect, we’re throwing away the majority of the protein and calories that humans could have taken in. Clearly, we can’t allow this to go on. Not for long, anyway.

 

In step the meat substitutes

That is why the appearance of ever more meat substitutes is such a very good thing. As Kristof says, “If the alternatives to meat are tasty, healthier, cheaper, better for the environment and pose fewer ethical challenges, the result may be a revolution in the human diet.” And he may very well be right. Tech giant Google wanted to bet big time on it this summer. They made a $200,000,000+ offer for one of the new startups – Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown’s Impossible Foods. Brown’s product won’t even be out until next year! Google, by the way, was turned down; Impossible Foods has raised $108,000,000 on its own instead.

Dr. Brown’s big innovation? He’s adding plant-derived heme to his new veggie burgers. Heme, he argues, is responsible for much of the flavour of meat. If Google’s interest in it is any indicator, he’s probably right. His products will join those of Beyond Meat and the older Tofurky, Yves, Gardein, Field Roast, etc., etc., etc., on store shelves soon.

All of these substitutes for animal products save animals from horrific lives and reduce the environmental footprint of our meals. There are other products on the horizon, though, that are nowhere near as beneficial. They are not even benign.

 

“Lab Meat”

 

Mark Post and colleagues at the Maastricht University in the Netherlands and New York City’s Modern Meadow are attempting to make meat outside of animals’ bodies. Beef seems to be their main goal for now. This is not artificial meat, per se, but rather meat made by growing cells taken from animals. On the surface, it sounds like a great thing. But, when you dig deeper, you see that it is nothing of the sort.

 

The first lab meat burger was made, cooked and eaten a couple of years ago. Constructed from 20,000 tiny strips of muscle cells, the thing was reportedly on the flavourless side and cooked up well only with the liberal use of butter. It was lauded by Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, as the world’s first cruelty-free burger.

 

Unfortunately, in this case Dr. Singer was wrong. Immense cruelty went into it – and goes into the continued work on it and its competitors.

 

Lab meat is made by taking cells from the bodies of living animals and growing them in a liquid medium. The end result is short strands of muscle-like tissue that are then stuck together. Post, at least so far, manually assembles them; Modern Meadow is trying 3D printing.

 

Growing those cells requires serum. Serum is the liquid left over when all of the cells are removed from blood. The serum used to make these burgers comes from fetal calves and, in later stages of the cells’ growth, from horses. Fetal calf serum is ‘harvested’ by killing a pregnant cow, cutting her still living calf from her belly and then puncturing the calf’s still beating heart. About 1 litre of serum is obtained from each calf. Producing those 20,000 strips in the first ‘lab meat’ burger probably required hundreds of liters of the stuff. That’s hundreds of fetal calves taken from slaughtered cows … all for one 4 oz. burger.

Modern Meadow says that it gets more meat from a liter of serum but their claim (as stated in The Guardian) of getting 22 lbs of meat per litre is outrageously high. I doubt very much that anyone with any experience in tissue culture believes that they’re really getting even a tenth of that. My guess would be more like a fiftieth. In any case, if one wants to grow ‘meat’ in the lab, one needs the serum.

 

And, sadly, the prospects for doing away with that serum in the process are bleak. Serum contains enormous numbers of growth factors, hormones and proteins necessary for cell growth. Expert scientists have been trying for decades to come up with an alternative but so far none matches serum in promoting cell growth and all are wildly more expensive (in dollar terms, at least) as well.

 

Still, you might say, it’s not nice to animals but it must be better for the environment. You might cite the paper that says so. It loudly claims that ‘lab meat’ would require 99% less land, 82-96% less water, even 7-45% less energy than meat produced from animals raised in Europe.

 

True, that paper is out there. It got a lot of publicity. Unfortunately, it also is just about the worst example of a failure of peer review that I have ever seen. The study is deeply flawed. Its assumptions are highly questionable, to put it mildly: i.e., that the meat would be raised as free cells in unheated vats, that 80% of the water used to grow the cells would be recycled without treatment, and that the cells would be fed entirely with cyanobacteria. None of these assumptions are even close to realistic.

 

There is not the slightest chance that meat can be grown like that. Instead, the complex mix of nutrients, growth factors and hormones found in fetal calf serum will be required. The media will have to be heated to a constant 98 or 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37-38 degrees Celsius) for the cells to grow; oxygen will have to be delivered and waste products constantly removed. Reusing even 1% of the water without treatment is extremely unlikely.

 

And, because there is no immune system in cell culture, large amounts of antibiotics and antifungal drugs will be needed to keep the growing meat from being over run with germs. The possibility of viral infections will be high.

 

Beyond those problems, growing something that approximates the beef or pork or chicken that people expect will be a daunting task. The meat that Mark Post is producing is only 100-200 micrometres (1/250th to 1/125th of an inch) thick and roughly an inch long. It is nothing like what most people would call meat.

To grow a steak or a piece of chicken will require some sort of degradable scaffold with a complex vascular system capable of bringing food and oxygen to the growing cells and taking waste and carbon dioxide away. 3D printing may help, but it’s hard to imagine a meat anything like what people think of as meat emerging from this process. (I suppose that it might be pulled off by putting the animal cells into one of the excellent plant-based meats, but what would be the point of that?!).

 

All in all, this seems insane. It is true that animal agriculture needs to go. But it does not make sense to attempt to replace it with an enormously expensive high tech system that, if it does work, is highly likely to require major inputs of blood serum. There is little chance, even, that a venture like this will ever be economically viable.

 

And there’s no need. If one feels the need for something that tastes like meat, there are already plenty of plant-based alternatives available. Field Roast, Gardein, Tofurky, Yves, etc. As noted above, ever more flavourful alternatives are on the horizon.

 

By the way, there is a new cheese alternative on the horizon, too. This one will even have plant (actually, yeast)-based casein in it. The cows’ milk protein has been engineered into the yeast. It’s not as scary as it sounds.

 

And, if you must eat meat, do the responsible thing. Eat the plant-based stuff.

 

David Steele is a molecular biologist retired in 2013 from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He has also held faculty positions at Cornell and Queen’s Universities. Dr. Steele has been Earthsave Canada‘s President since 2009. He is also a regular contributing writer to the Earthsave Canada newsletter and an occasional contributor to various other publications.