Thank you to all our donors and volunteers for your continued support throughout 2023. What follows is a brief update of our activities and a forecast for 2024.
We finally managed to publish our ebook on veganism, containing the original art produced by our artist, our most popular articles and our vegan philosophy mini-book. Our articles take countless hours to produce and we hope you enjoy our ebook as much as we enjoyed producing the content.
It seems the status of vegan labelling globally will have to get worse before it gets better. In 2023, instead of consolidation and consensus building, we saw even more fragmentation. There are more products labelled vegan on the shelves but fewer that are actually suitable for people who self-identify as vegan. We can understand why governments and for-profit corporations are acting the way they are, but what is unacceptable is organizations that self-identify as vegan are also failing to act.
We saw some improvements by businesses stopping incorrectly using the vegan label and instead giving consumers as much information as possible by using various free-from labels. The success was almost exclusively with large businesses. It should be easy to understand why: large businesses have much more to lose, and in a cost-benefit analysis caution sometimes wins over the potential increase in sales. Smaller businesses often rely heavily on virtual signalling to differentiate their products and may lose a large part of their sales if this were discovered to be only an illusion.
People who self-identify as vegan must always support products, services, certifications and organizations that align with their beliefs. Ours are clear and our dedication to our shared vision of veganism is unwavering.
Our deepest gratitude goes to all our volunteers. They work countless hours to make everything you see and many things you don’t see in the background. Without them, none of this would be possible. We always have room for more volunteers as our vision is far from being achieved. We encourage everyone to contact us to help shape the future of veganism. If you don’t see a role that interests you on our list, please contact us and we will work together to find something suitable.
Dealing with our government is a constant struggle. There are lawsuits we aim to bring against our government for various reasons. However, we can’t wait for a fully staffed legal department. If you are willing to volunteer with us, have the time and willingness to represent yourself in court and bring those actions on your behalf then contact us so we can discuss this further.
We know the vision of veganism is nearly infinitely difficult. One reason we know this is because among organizations who claim to care about animals we are unable to eradicate even the most severe form of exploitation of animals in things like slavery and slavery-conditions. We had some challenges this year in the Vegan World Alliance in part because of this. However, we will never give up.
Last year when Cadbury’s parent company, Mondelez, approached us to take their blood money to certify their plant-based bar as vegan, we did not. However, we are confident it took them no time to find an organization that would. The biggest losers in this are animals as for-profit corporations shop around for the lowest cost standard to implement, which generally means the standard that allows as much animal exploitation as possible. Many businesses fail our certification despite already being labelled vegan and some even continue to use vegan labelling despite being rejected.
Actions like these are infinitely worse when they are done by us than the actions of those we regularly denounce because, unlike us, they do not make any claim based on ethics, let alone lead a lifestyle based on it. The certification of all this as vegan is ineffable. Science is clear that human beings are animals and veganism is clear in that we refrain from the exploitation of animals. These actions will make veganism crumble under the weight of its own hypocrisy. By all means, if you believe that some species of animals are more deserving to be free from exploitation than others, then be concordant with your belief and support these actions, products, services, certifications and organizations. Otherwise please join us in ending this travesty.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, that is why we continued to augment some of our most popular content with new infographics. They can be found under the Infographic tag in the news section and they can be downloaded or printed.
This was once again a difficult year for animals; countless died due to wildfires, and our species was busy as 2023 was the first year various services were trying to get back to pre-pandemic levels.
We took some unprecedented steps this year to make it clear that it is untenable to move exploitation around from one species of animals to another. We believe in science and that humans are animals, and we all agree that the vision of veganism is to end the exploitation of animals—all of them. We spend time on non-human animals because they are under-represented in our society and not because they are more deserving to be free from exploitation .
The years ahead will be challenging; depending on which road our species takes, all animals may be in for a rough road ahead.
As a charitable organization, we depend on the generosity of others for our existence. If there are things that we are not doing but should be doing, consider joining us to make it happen.
We want to again thank all our donors and volunteers for their generous support, and we invite everyone who shares in the vision of veganism to join us. The exact details of our 2024 projects will be dependent on the interests of our volunteers and supporters. We look forward to working with all of you.
