January 2022
Exploitation in the cocoa industry
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 14th 2022
September 2021 was the 20th anniversary of the failure of The Harkin-Engel Protocol. Twenty years later, most chocolate remains unsuitable for vegans and we will ban from vegan certification Nestlé’s plant-based KitKat...
December 2021
Thank you: An overview of our work in 2021 and a look at 2022
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 23rd 2021
Thank you to all our donors and volunteers for your continued support throughout 2021. What follows is a brief update of our activities and a forecast for 2022...
Sustainable population
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 16th 2021
When we discuss our vision, we usually encourage everyone to end animal exploitation in their own life. However, it is part of a bigger equation that, overly simplified, looks like this...
November 2021
We are banning Lush products
Vegan Society of Canada News, November 15th 2021
We have written in the past about the serious issues with vegan labelling that threaten the achievement of our vision. As we explained in more detail in our ISO-23662 ban article, it is incorrect to think that the most popular certification schemes are the most stringent...
October 2021
Veganism
Vegan Society of Canada News, October 15th 2021
As we discussed in one of our articles, there is the possibility that veganism as practiced today will not bring about our vision. You may have noticed that our vision is vegan agnostic. Our commitment to our vision is steadfast. We hope the following analysis and discussion...
September 2021
When plants conflict with our vision
Vegan Society of Canada News, September 16th 2021
This may sound counterintuitive, but everything made from plants will not result in the achievement of our vision, because veganism is not about ingredients, and plants are not inherently better than anything else. We are not opposed to the molecular structure of meat or dairy, we are opposed to the animal exploitation behind it...
Climate offenders
Vegan Society of Canada News, September 2nd 2021
Despite the floods and wildfires in Europe and the record-shattering heat wave in North America that killed countless animals, we continue to ignore reality and are not taking steps toward preventing further disasters or a full-blown catastrophe...
August 2021
Selling good behavior
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 12th 2021
For the most part, people are willing to use paper straws, purchase energy-efficient light bulbs and deal with a slightly less effective showerhead to conserve water—products that are sold to the consuming public under the guise of serving some public good. The effectiveness of these products isn't our focus, but rather the marketing strategies used by these corporations that prey on a seeming preference in the population to purchase products that appear to support some public concern...
July 2021
Summer giveaway for our donors
Vegan Society of Canada News, July 10th 2021
The Vegan Society of Canada has been running on 100% volunteer power since the beginning. All donations are used only for the benefit of the organization. No volunteers, including directors, receive salaries or any other forms of payment...
June 2021
Why we don't care
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 4th 2021
The reason for the writing of this article was two simple questions “why don't people care and how can we help them to do so?” Naturally, these are very broad questions that could have any number of aspects explored and analyzed...
May 2021
Canada's proposed changes to novel food regulations
Vegan Society of Canada News, May 6th 2021
Canadian government practices, policies, laws and regulations make being vegan in Canada challenging. We feel it’s mandatory to disclose as much information as possible to consumers. If we don’t have the necessary information to make informed decisions, we could be unwittingly supporting animal exploitation with our consumer dollars...
April 2021
Lost in translation
Vegan Society of Canada News, April 23rd 2021
The French word “végétalien” is not equivalent to vegan. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to have misleading, confusing or outright incorrect translations on food labels. The word “végétalien” in French is defined by Larousse broadly as a person who follows a diet excluding any foods of animal origin...
Arthropods are important to the earth's ecosystems
Vegan Society of Canada News, April 6th 2021
If animals were represented using a proportional voting system, we would be spending a vast majority of our time discussing the exploitation of arthropods. The diagram below derives from the latest research on the biomass distribution on earth...
March 2021
Organic meat fallacy and an update on worrisome animal agriculture research
Vegan Society of Canada News, March 5th 2021
It’s been the scientific consensus for a long time that a vegan way of life has a significantly lesser carbon footprint than a typical North American way of life. There are some who claim that a lifestyle that includes eating organically raised animals is better for the environment than non-organically raised animals...
February 2021
Your fruits and vegetables may not be vegan certifiable
Vegan Society of Canada News, February 4th 2021
Animal exploitation isn’t limited to industries that directly use animals; it exists in the production of fruits and vegetables as well. In order to maintain our vision and to be in integrity, we are shedding light on this exploitation in plant agriculture. We have reached out to various organizations, including those that are representing migrant rights, and are simultaneously launching our whistleblower program along with our new toll free number...
January 2021
Plant-based labels are changing
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 21st 2021
We haven’t used the term “plant-based” as a broad substitute for various concepts in veganism for a while. Instead, while we still use plant as an adjective, we use phrases like “food suitable for vegans” or “this food is vegan certifiable”...
The truth about Canada's emissions
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 4th 2021
In a recent report, the World Meteorological Organization had some sobering projections. They forecast that we have a 24% chance of exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius before 2024 and a 70% chance...
December 2020
Call for volunteers
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 23rd 2020
This year has been a challenging one for all animals for various reasons, and while we expect challenges to continue, we look forward to the many ways and opportunities to benefit all animals in the coming years...
Thank you: An overview of our work in 2020 and a look at 2021
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 20th 2020
Thank you to all our donors and volunteers for your continued support throughout 2020! What follows is a brief update of our activities we did not discuss in previous articles, and a forecast for 2021...
Coronavirus mutation in Danish minks
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 4th 2020
On November 4th, the Danish government announced, then later retracted, that it will kill all minks being raised on farms, about 17 millions individuals, due to a very serious mutation of the virus in minks that potentially puts the effectiveness of vaccines currently being developed at risk...
November 2020
Non-compliant certification schemes
Vegan Society of Canada News, November 21st 2020
We are aware of various certifications currently available in and outside of Canada that we have banned. We will provide further details in our annual update, but we had some success in having the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) change their definition of what is vegan...
Ocean of trauma
Vegan Society of Canada News, November 3rd 2020
While human animal exploitation in slaughterhouses is horrendous, the suffering and abuse of workers in the global fisheries industry surpasses it...
October 2020
Fundraising campaign
Vegan Society of Canada News, October 16th 2020
The Vegan Society of Canada has been running on 100% volunteer power since the beginning. All donations are used only for the benefit of the organization. No volunteers, including directors, receive salaries or any other forms of payment.
September 2020
Celebrate World Egg-Free Day on October 9th
Vegan Society of Canada News, September 23rd 2020
Mark October 9th on your calendars and get ready to join us and vegans across the world as we celebrate veganism on World Egg-Free Day...
Don’t get cracking: How egg lobbies skew research
Vegan Society of Canada News, September 23rd 2020
As a prelude to World Egg-Free Day on October 9th, 2020, here is the latest research on the health concerns of egg consumption...
Slaugtherhouses and COVID-19
Vegan Society of Canada News, September 11th 2020
As we do our part by wearing masks and physically distancing, experts and government agencies are trying to contain and control COVID-19, while the cost is spiralling out of control. But it seems we need to be reminded that, most regrettably, we brought this upon ourselves...
August 2020
Are we courting another pandemic?
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 12th 2020
As we do our part by wearing masks and physically distancing, experts and government agencies are trying to contain and control COVID-19, while the cost is spiralling out of control. But it seems we need to be reminded that, most regrettably, we brought this upon ourselves...
July 2020
The dairy industry’s toll on our planet
Vegan Society of Canada News, July 7th 2020
As we have shared before, dairy is problematic for many reasons, including our health as well as environmental and ethical concerns. The latest report by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) provides us with an update of the dairy industry’s toll on our planet...
May 2020
Celebrating veganism on World Vegan Burger Day
Vegan Society of Canada News, May 23rd 2020
Mark May 28th on your calendars and get ready to join us and vegans across the world as we celebrate veganism on World Vegan Burger Day!
The Vegan World Alliance and BEVegan, Belgium’s vegan association, have chosen May 28th as the day to come together to recognize the benefits of switching from traditional meat-based burgers to flavourful and healthier vegan burgers.
Our review of new research into vitamin B12
Vegan Society of Canada News, May 16th 2020
In the last few years, there has been interesting new research shedding light on the contentious issues surrounding vitamin B12. In light of this, we are updating our recommendations and remind everyone who self-identifies as vegans to supplement and monitor their B12 levels...
April 2020
The dairy and breast cancer connection
Vegan Society of Canada News, April 14th 2020
A new study, funded by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the National Cancer Institute at the National Institute of Health (NIH), finally sheds some light on the relation between dairy and breast cancer...
February 2020
Motivation: Preventing future pandemics
Vegan Society of Canada News, February 14th 2020
Some effects of animal agriculture get very little attention. And while they may not lead to mass extinction like our climate emergency, they have caused millions of deaths over the centuries, which will continue if the status quo prevails...
January 2020
Demystifying our inflated calcium intake recommendations
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 23rd 2020
Let’s continue to explore the broad impact of animal agriculture influence by looking at the inflated Canadian calcium recommendation. There is a lot of scientific evidence to go through and there is still more we do not know...
Show me the money: Following the money trail of animal agriculture
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 4th 2020
When things in our society do not make sense, it is often helpful to follow the money. In the case of tobacco, lead and asbestos it took decades before the scientific evidence reached the mainstream and countless had to suffer the consequences. The money trail of tobacco, now publicly available in history books, gives us an important piece of the puzzle as to why so many people had to die before things started to change...
December 2019
Thank you: An overview of our work in 2019 and a look at 2020
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 27th 2019
With the end of the year approaching, it is a good time to thank all our donors and volunteers for their continued support and provide an update of our activities in 2019 as well as a forecast for 2020...
Torment and butchery or torment in butchery
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 2nd 2019
The follow up report by Human Rights Watch on the cruelty, torture and exploitation of human animals in slaugtherhouses is out, and unfortunately nothing since their 2005 initial report or the Oxfam 2015 report we covered here has changed. In fact, conditions seem to be much worse...
November 2019
Another romaine lettuce E. coli outbreak
Vegan Society of Canada News, November 23rd 2019
Unfortunately, it seems animal agriculture once again cross-contaminated some romaine lettuce. The Public Health Agency of Canada recommends that people avoid any romaine lettuce harvested from the Salinas, California growing region in the U.S...
Ocean rising: Special report on the ocean and cryosphere
Vegan Society of Canada News, November 15th 2019
The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on the ocean and cryosphere is out and not surprisingly confirms that we are selfishly destroying our oceans and all its inhabitants. The oceans have already done much for us to protect us from our own selfishness...
Broad recall of Compliments brand fresh-cut vegetables
Vegan Society of Canada News, November 3rd 2019
We wanted to warn the Canadian public of a broad recall by the CFIA of Compliments brand fresh-cut vegetable products due to possible Listeria monocytogenes...
October 2019
Discussion of vegan labelling
Vegan Society of Canada News, October 21st 2019
We have discussed before the issues with the word vegan being used on products that are not vegan certified. Today we will not cover why having independent third-party certification is a good idea as this is the same reasoning that all Canadians have already accepted with regards to organic, kosher, halal and many other non food certifications in Canadian society...
Got misery?
Vegan Society of Canada News, October 6th 2019
As we have discussed before, the people working in slaughterhouses, who kill the animals that eventually land on our plates, go to work each day doing a job that most of us would never do. Nevertheless, we are schedule to import this misery starting in early 2020...
September 2019
Climate Emergency: What Are Canadians Willing to Do About It?
Vegan Society of Canada News, September 15th 2019
The results of this new survey published by the CBC should be of grave concern. On the one hand it’s a good sign that Canadians do not seem to have a bias against giving up meat. On the other hand, the reason we do not have a bias against giving up meat in particular is simply because we seem to be disinclined to do anything at all...
August 2019
A review of the scientific evidence on the health risks of dairy products
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 3rd 2019
When the new Canadian food guide made water their beverage of choice, we were glad that scientific evidence and common sense prevailed over profit and disease. Let’s review the current scientific evidence with regard to the health risks of dairy...
July 2019
More vegan labelled product containing dairy recalled by CFIA
Vegan Society of Canada News, July 19th 2019
Once again we wanted to warn vegans, and the Canadian public at large, of a series of products labelled vegan under the Probar and Chocolats Favoris brand containing milk...
The verdict on tackling our climate emergency in 2018: We failed
Vegan Society of Canada News, July 13th 2019
We know we are in trouble when a major fossil fuel corporation tell us we have grounds to be concerned. While 2018 saw many promesses of the climate emergency being taken seriously, unfortunately it turns it these were just empty words...
A plant diet increases many biomarkers indicative of good health
Vegan Society of Canada News, July 6th 2019
There are a barrage of research being published constantly and much of it has various problems from simply being early research that needs broader validation to having some strong conflict of interest. Today we will go over one of those papers that shows some promise but that we would normally skip...
June 2019
Warning of food labelled as "plant-based" that contains animal-based ingredients like meat, eggs or dairy
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 30th 2019
We are continuing to work with the CFIA to fix their errors with regards to their definition of vegan labelling and will update you as soon as possible. For the time being we wanted to further issue a warning concerning practices of labelling food as "plant-based" that contains animal-based ingredients like meat, eggs and/or dairy...
Unexpected methane rising
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 27th 2019
We have no safety margin in the Paris climate agreement target, so when researchers published a paper a few months ago highlighting the unexpected rise of methane this could well be the push that make this whole house of card tumble...
Biodiversity loss: Nature’s dangerous decline unprecedented
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 12th 2019
A new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on the unprecented decline of nature globally was recently published and we spent some time going through it...
May 2019
Objective profit: How to save 1.2 trillion USD
Vegan Society of Canada News, May 18th 2019
Today we're going to look at a very important part of motivation: Profit. We could discuss how profit is not the best motivation to have and we could even discuss why having legal entities whose sole purpose is to maximize profit was not one of our brightest idea and is probably one of the cause we are where we are today. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to ignore that for many entities profit is the driving motivation...
Government of Canada tries to redefine what food are suitable for vegans
Vegan Society of Canada News, May 15th 2019
We noticed in the last year an influx of businesses being confused about the word vegan, contacting us having trouble with overseas customs and requiring urgent certification, and an increase of Canadian products being labeled vegan that are not suitable for vegans and not vegan certifiable. We were puzzled as to why this was happening until we became aware of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) information...
April 2019
Happy 75th Vegan Birthday
Vegan Society of Canada News, April 10th 2019
Before the year passes us by, we wanted to wish everyone "Happy 75th birthday"! This year marks an important milestone in the history of veganism...
Canada's changing climate report
Vegan Society of Canada News, April 4th 2019
According to a new climate change report published by the Government of Canada the Canadian story is more catastrophic then the global one as we are warming up at double the global rate...
March 2019
Review of the new Health Canada food guide
Vegan Society of Canada News, March 5th 2019
After doing some more extensive research, our initial conclusion on the new Canadian food guide is largely unchanged.
However, while crunching numbers, we came upon some interesting results with regards to similarities between the new Canadian food guide and the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet...
January 2019
The new Health Canada food guide
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 23rd 2019
After years of reviewing all the scientific evidences, Health Canada released their new food guide. We will have more extensive coverage in the weeks to come but for now we will like to share major changes that are in the new guide. One of such change is that Health Canada recommends our plates be proportionally filled with at least 88% of plant-based foods.
In addition, to make sure nobody ignore the science and is tempted to get stuck in the past Health Canada makes it clear: The drink of choice is water...
EAT-Lancet report: A discussion of the shift to a plant-based world
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 19th 2019
The new 'planetary health diet' released by the EAT-Lancet commission is in many ways similar to the previously released Greenpeace’s report, in this article will explore the many implications...
Is 2019 the year of lab-grown meat?
Vegan Society of Canada News, January 5th 2019
There has been tremendous progress in lab-grown meat and the beginning of the end seem to be coming for conventional animal agriculture...
December 2018
Charges laid against corporations in animal cruelty case
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 31st 2018
As a Canadian rarity, charges were laid against two corporations under the federal Health of Animals Regulation. Usually individuals are charged and corporations themselves escape any consequences claiming that all of these incidents are isolated...
We must not become complacent about climate change
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 28th 2018
Are we starting to forget about climate change? Perhaps we think that our representative at the climate change conference COP24 would sort it all out? Unfortunately we would be severely mistaken...
Thank you: An overview of our work in 2018 and a look at 2019
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 21st 2018
As the year end is approaching we thought it was a good time to thank all our donors and volunteers for their continued support and provide an update of our activities in 2018 and a forecast for 2019...
An update on our work with Nestle
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 3rd 2018
We wanted to give you an update on our work with Nestle. There seem to have been some miscommunication and little progress has been made since we originally contacted. Nevertheless, we found out that non-dairy Häagen-Dazs® is unsuitable for a vegan diet because of the sugar it contains...
Deciphering labels: We eat meat without knowing
Vegan Society of Canada News, December 3rd 2018
In the context of our recent update on Nestle, we wanted to discuss more broadly the difficulty we face in deciphering products on a daily basis...
November 2018
Another romaine lettuce outbreak in Canada
Vegan Society of Canada News, November 21st 2018
Unfortunately, it seems animal agriculture once again cross-contaminated some romaine lettuce. The Public Health Agency of Canada recommend that people in Ontario and Quebec avoid eating romaine lettuce for the time being...
October 2018
Vegan product containing dairy recalled by CFIA
Vegan Society of Canada News, October 23rd 2018
We wanted to warn vegans, and the Canadian public at large, of two products under the brand Emborg and Nora's that are marketed as vegan but contained milk...
We must do more to prevent human caused climate change
Vegan Society of Canada News, October 14th 2018
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released another report ahead of the COP24 summit in Poland later this year. The report is titled "Global Warming of 1.5c", continues to remind us that
Limiting warming to 1.5°C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changesSome of those unprecedented changes of course have to do with animal agriculture and our diet...
September 2018
Balanced plant-based diet one of the healthiest
Vegan Society of Canada News, September 28th 2018, September 28th 2018
It should now be clear that a simple balanced plant-based diet is one of the healthiest diet. In case there is still some doubt one of the most comprehensive study just published talks about the dangers of low or high carbohydrate diet and the benefits of plant-based foods...
August 2018
Our economy needs change: The UN Global Sustainable Development Report
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 28th 2018, August 28th 2018
The input document on the economic transformation that will be required for a sustainable future, which will be used in the upcoming UN global sustainable development report 2019 is out. Like many others they also realized that a sustainable future will require drastic change to the way we eat...
Strengthening our motivation: Fostering peace, preventing conflict and the illusion of sustainable animal agriculture
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 26th 2018, August 26th 2018
In our series aim at strengthening our motivation we wanted to discuss the illusion of sustainable and organic animal agriculture and how plant-based food foster peace and prevent conflicts...
Discussions of Greenpeace's meat and dairy consumption target
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 7th 2018, August 10th 2018
We wanted to both congratulate and discuss Greenpeace's meat and dairy consumption target for 2050...
We must do more
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 7th 2018, August 7th 2018
We must do more. The latest estimate for meat consumption for 2018 and projection for 2019 for the USA are out and apart from milk, we can see the US is breaking all time high records and Canada is also following in their footstep increasing since 2014...
Emission impossible: How big meat and dairy are heating up the planet
Vegan Society of Canada News, August 2nd 2018
Did we talk about climate change yet? Of course we are biased: We have a bias against human caused mass extinction events and the suffering it will cause to all animals including human beings. This new report confirms our internal calculations...
July 2018
Peacebird vegan eco-village
Vegan Society of Canada News, July 6th 2018, July 6th 2018
You have been contacting us with interest in vegan communities so we went searching. In this article we will look at the vegan eco-village Peacebird in Ontario and an upcoming offshoot in British-Columbia.
New partnership and call for increase cooperation
Vegan Society of Canada News, July 1st 2018, July 1st 2018
Today we are announcing the start of our initiative to partner with another vegan organization in order to maximize our impact and efficiency. We are hoping to announce in the weeks and months to come shared initiatives and increased cooperation where we take the best of what others have done for decades and use them in Canada and we cooperate on projects where we have made good progress like vegan financial services. Read on and happy Canada day...
June 2018
New tariffs on food coming July 1st 2018
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 21st 2018, June 21st 2018
New tariffs will come into effect July 1st 2018. In this article we look at the impact this will have for vegans in Canada.
Closing the gap
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 21st 2018, June 21st 2018
We were discussing earlier this year the gap that exist between countries with long time active Vegan Society like in England and Canada. For example, Nestle UK provides a list...
VegFest best practices
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 16th 2018, June 16th 2018
To avoid confusion and recent problems at some VegFest here are some best practices to follow for event organizers...
New Vegan Society of Canada gear
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 15th 2018, June 15th 2018
We are currently working on various branded gear and we have some special gift for our donors...
Vegan abandonment
Vegan Society of Canada News, June 5th 2018, June 5th 2018
Unfortunately a recent survey conducted by Kellogg’s only reinforce a 2014 study which indicated that many people who change to a vegan lifestyle abandon within the first year. In this article we will explore this further.
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
The Guardian, May 31st 2018, June 2nd 2018
It has been said for a while and now this latest comprehensive study on the subject confirms what everyone has been saying for a while.
"A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use"
March 2018
The costs of a plant based diet
Vegan Society of Canada News, March 31st 2018, March 31st 2018
We wanted to address some discussion currently in the media surrounding the cost of following a diet compatible with the vegan philosophy. Read over our article and make your own opinion.
The first vegan ETF in the world
Vegan Society of Canada News, March 6th 2018, March 6th 2018
Ethical financial services will be an important building block of a sustainable future. That is why we are launching today the first Vegan ETF in the world. If you have a sizable portfolio and are interested in shaping the first Vegan ETF in the world contact us for more details.