Viva!Life Issue 75 | Winter 2020

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anim a l -fr y r e v A >

Published by Viva! the vegan campaigning group

Issue 75 Winter 2020

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h r C i s y t m r r a e s!

M Say Cheese Super seasonal selections

Librarian to Ocean Warrior Interview with Viva!’s Lex Rigby

7-DAY VEGAN ALL THE HELP YOU NEED TO CHANGE

& s e p i c e r r e p u S s g n i r e f f o t e k r a Superm Dear John Telling encounter with a stranger Excuse me but Earth is dying Uncomfortable truths by Tony Wardle

Red Tractor exposed again Leicestershire farm amongst worst ever

VEGAN FOR ALL LIFE Viva!’s fight is a fight for life – for ourselves, animals and the planet.

Humankind’s abuse and exploitation of animals lies at the heart of most of the planet’s accelerating problems. The crushing number of farmed animals slaughtered every year impacts on almost every ecosystem and is the driving force that has propelled planet Earth into its sixth mass extinction.

The tens of billions of victims of this massacre are brushed aside by government’s across the world. Viva!, however, is constantly revealing the abject conditions in which they are forced to live by secretly going inside factory farms. They are not only cruel but provide stinking reservoirs of disease where antibiotic resistance flourishes, deadly superbugs mutate and pandemics take root.

Over the years we have captured the headlines with our exposes, triggered the decline of meat and dairy consumption and spurred the vegan revolution forwards.

Viva! is a registered charity (1037486) viva.org.uk

Contents

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LEX RIGBY – OCEAN WARRIOR Interview with Viva!’s Head of Investigations

11 FLAT HOUSE FARM Red Tractor approved misery

15 7-DAY-VEGAN

ON EVERY FRONT Viva! has four sections which are displayed on our new website - a mass of verifiable information on why veganism is imperative to the future – everyone’s and everything’s future.

Viva! Animals provides fascinating information on all the species exploited for food in the UK, fun facts about their private lives. You can, however, also witness Viva!’s brave undercover investigations that show the shocking reality of the UK’s meat and dairy industries.

Viva! Planet explains why animal farming is the driving force behind all the world’s environmental crises.

Viva! Health is science based and exposes the link between animal products and ill health; but also why varied vegan diets protect us. It takes you through the A to Z of diseases and the A to Z of nutrients.

Viva! Lifestyle is packed with advice on how to go vegan, plus has hundreds of recipes. Our V7 and V30 programmes make it easy for anyone to go and stay vegan.

New outreach campaign

17 BILLBOARD CAMPAIGN Protect against pandemics

18 SUPERMARKET SWEEP In-store Christmas goodies

21 CHRISTMAS DELIGHTS Super tasty recipes

28 MERCHANDISE Say cheese

30 VIVA! POLAND Fur ban blocked by deputy PM

33 EARTH IS DYING Tony Wardle looks at the science

36 DEAR JOHN A touching first-hand experience

40 VEGAN CHEESE We test festive platters

49 VITAMIN D

HOW TO GET THIS MAGAZINE Join Viva! for just £15 to get your copy of Viva!life magazine three times a year.

You’ll also receive a supporters’ card – giving you discounts at hundreds of shops and on services and holidays (see myvegantown.org.uk/discounts) – plus a free car sticker. Call 0117 944 1000 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm) or join online at viva.org.uk/join.

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Don’t forget it

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33 5 Lifelines 20 John Robb 25 Life Science 27 Viva!’s new website 31 HOGWOOD awards 32 Viva!’s Podcast 39 V-Biz 44 Media Life 53 Books Cover photo by Maryanne Hall viva.org.uk 3

Welcome

VIVA!LIFE MAGAZINE

Again, this is an issue packed with action.

On page 33 Tony Wardle makes the telling point that no one – not government, not the media – has bothered to seriously look at how we can reduce our risk of serious illness from Covid-19 nor how we can reduce the likelihood of another, different pandemic occurring. Well, we have and that information – go vegan – has gone up in various cities on giant Viva! billboards (see page 17).

Our shocking documentary, Hogwood – a modern horror story, has won two major awards (so far) and attracted hugely supportive comments from well-known people, including F1 racing champion, Lewis Hamilton (see page 31).

To prove that Hogwood farm was no aberration, our brave investigators have exposed yet another pig farm, which is possibly even worse than Hogwood. Flat House Farm in Leicestershire is the most obscene place we have ever exposed and yet still it had Red Tractor approval – but no longer. After our visit, I confronted the owner and his manager… You can view their reaction and our exposé in our new video – The Flat House Factory – at viva.org.uk/eff. It will be used to spearhead our campaign End Factory Farming Before it Ends Us. Since founding Viva! Poland in 2000, it has become the pre-eminent animal group in the country and its successes have been extraordinary. This August, they got the lower house of Poland’s parliament to vote overwhelmingly for a complete ban on fur farming (see page 30).

Normally, it would be passed by the upper house but the deputy prime minister killed it – a huge disappointment. However, it shows the influence that Viva! Poland now has and it will, with huge public support, continue the fight.

On page 15, we announce the launch of our new V7 vegan campaign. We are promoting it to meat reducers to entice them to try vegan for a week – but that’s just a starting point. The aim, of course, is to help them stay vegan and the timing couldn’t be better.

Talking of recipes, we have some super Christmas recipe suggestions starting on page 21.

But if, like me, you’re not the most enthusiastic cook in the world, we have a roundup of seasonal food offerings from all the big supermarkets and some of them are truly delicious – pleasure without the pain!

We open this issue by interviewing Lex Rigby, Viva!’s Head of Investigations (page seven).

Lex’s story is one of seven years of privation, extraordinary courage, determination and overcoming fear in order to put herself in harm’s way to save whales and other sea animals.

As a crew member of the Sea Shepherd vessel, MY Bob Barker, she has sailed from one end of the globe to the other to stop, expose and record the destruction of the ocean’s sea creatures. She is no less brave in the work she undertakes for Viva!.

While this is an interview with one of our more intrepid staff members, it is a reminder that all our staff, in different ways, are brave and dedicated and have made the decision to do all they can to end suffering and change the world for the better. I salute you all!

Yours for the animals Juliet Gellatley Founder & Director juliet@viva.org.uk facebook.com/juliet.gellatley

Viva! Founder & International Director Juliet Gellatley Executive Assistant Jess Nunn Editor Tony Wardle Head of Investigations Lex Rigby Head of Communications Roisin McAuley Campaigns & Outreach Laura-Lisa Hellwig, William Sorflaten, Louisa Kendal, Siobhan Dolan Viva! Health Dr Justine Butler, Veronika Charvátová Office Manager & Supporters’ Liaison Laura Turner, Renata Rzepecka, Beata Rzepecka-Wilk Merchandise, Business, Festivals & Events Emily Coster, Dani Lawton, Alice Short Food & Cookery Manager Maryanne Hall Design The Ethical Graphic Design Company Ltd Web & IT Roger Peñarroya i Zaldívar, Conor Haines, Jeremy Ludlow Podcast Presenter Helen Wilson Editorial enquiries 0117 970 4633 Advertising enquiries 0117 944 1000 Membership enquiries 0117 944 1000 info@viva.org.uk Online viva.org.uk vivahealth.org.uk veganrecipeclub.org.uk vivavegancharity vivacampaigns vivacharity Viva!, 8 York Court, Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8QH

General enquiries

Contact Viva! on 0117 944 1000 (Mon-Fri 9-5) Email info@viva.org.uk Write to Viva! at: 8 York Court, Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8QH 4

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vegan is a staTe of kind Kind to you, animals and the planet

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Viva!’s shorts

Turning up the heat The magic figure for avoiding the worst of climate change effects is an increase of 1.5ºC, according to the Paris Climate Agreement.

The World Meteorological Organisation reckons we’re on track to hit it by 2024.

Okay, it might dip again for a while after that but it casts doubt on our ability, or our commitment, to control carbon dioxide emissions and global warming.

Although greenhouse gas emissions have dipped slightly in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they are still on track to create a

new record high. Atmospheric concentrations of all the main global warming gases – carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂0) all continue to increase.

The global average surface temperature from 2016 to 2020 will be amongst the warmest ever – warmer than the previous five years – and has triggered devastating phenomena such as wildfires, droughts and hurricanes. But as the researchers say – there’s worse to come! (Read Tony Wardle on page 33).

The Baroness Bails Head of the Red Tractor ‘assurance’ scheme was, until very recently, one Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, for many years a Tesco director. In her other role as a Conservative peer, she recently stuck to her party’s line and voted against amendments in the Agricultural Bill which were designed to safeguard the UK’s agricultural standards against foreign imports. These include animal welfare standards, which are already so low that they drag along the floor. The Baroness’s support would have allowed the Conservatives to accept hormone beef and dairy and chlorinated chicken from the US as part of a trade deal. Farmers and the pubic were outraged and called for her head – but she jumped before they could push her. Oh dear, if she’d only hung on a for a few days, she would have seen her Party perform a screeching U-turn and decide to protect UK standards after all – and she could have continued with her nice not-solittle earner at Red Tractor.

Help us keep doing all this amazing work in 2021. Call 0117 944 1000, Mon-Fri, 9-5,or donate online at viva.org.uk/ donate

l Two years ago, just three per cent of ready meals in the UK were plant-based – now, the figure has risen to 16 per cent at most big supermarkets. The one exception is Ocado, where 40 per cent of ready meals are claimed to be meatless. l One in three Brits are now having plant milk in their cuppa.

What’s more, oat, soya, coconut and almond milk are no longer the preserve of millennials (if they ever were) as people of all ages opt for healthier plant milks. l While at University, singer James Blunt opted for a twomonth, meat-only diet to get up the noses of his veggie friends.

The outcome was predictable – scurvy. He gets so much stick you’d think he avoid selfinflicted wounds. l In an effort to combat climate change, Enfield Council (London) intends to ban all meat from the events it hosts as from December, 2020. l Manchester United footballer Chris Smalling is among a number of investors putting £3.5million into the plant-based meat company THIS. l Beyond Meat, Alibaba and dairy giant Danone are all ploughing resources into China to fund the country’s next wave of plant-based products.

Not so clear conscience How can you love animals and yet still eat them? It’s that age-old question that vegans grow tired of asking. It seems, however, that it’s having an impact.

A recent survey found that almost a half of Brits who eat meat feel hypocritical to a greater or lesser degree for loving some animals while eating others – 48 per cent to be precise.

Another simple question that simply asked if they ever felt guilty about eating meat and 40 per cent said they did.

It seems we’re doing our job!

(Attest for Future Normal and the Vegan Society).

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Poor old vegans According to a French study published in the Sun, vegans have the worst diets of anyone for processed foods and are less likely to cook from scratch. Of course, Viva!’s Dr Justine Butler investigated and found a few glaring holes in this rather bizarre reporting.

Soya milk and tofu were counted as ultra-processed foods and the Sun failed to say that the report found vegans were eating considerably more healthy plant-based foods such as fruits, pulses, wholegrains, nuts and seeds than all the other groups of people. And the Sun’s claims that vegans cook little from scratch appears to have been entirely made up as it’s not even mentioned in the study.

Photo © August de Richelieu

Pandemic sparks reduction in meat eating

And the winner is – Juliet Gellatley Now in its 10th year, the People, Environment, Achievements Awards (P.E.A) is the most prestigious green award in the UK. It covers finance and energy, music and art and honours the people and teams who are working to save our planet. Winning the Vegan Award was Juliet Gellatley, Viva!’s founder and director.

Jarvis Smith, co-founder of My Green Pod and the P.E.A Awards said: “Juliet has been leading the charge for the vegan movement for over 25 years. I can only imagine the resistance she may have come across in that time yet she has stayed true to her purpose. As a vegan myself and witnessing the unconscious cruelty to animals, especially in factory farming, Juliet is a hero for being a pioneer in making this a mainstream issue. Keep up the good work Juliet, you really deserve this award.”

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All over the globe, multiple news sources and research groups are reporting a big decline in meat consumption due to Covid-19.

Following a three per cent drop in per-capita consumption last year, a further fall is predicted this year (UN). This is a dramatic turnaround for an industry that’s come to rely on permanent and steady growth.

As well as the pandemic reducing eating out, there’s growing distrust over animal products following outbreaks of Covid-19 in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants and a growing awareness of the largescale greenhouse gas emissions from meat and dairy.

China is responsible for 40 per cent of global pig production but because of swine flu and higher prices, consumption is forecast to drop by as much as 35 per cent in 2021. In the EU, pork consumption is expected to fall to a seven-year low, with beef and chicken also hitting troughs (USDA). The German agriculture ministry reports that the country has become a vegetarian haven and meat consumption is falling due to environmental and animal welfare concerns. It says that the number of people who eat mostly meat have dropped from 34 per cent of the population in 2015 to 26 per cent now.

Even in Brazil, which is the world’s third-largest beef eater, risk management company StoneX says that producers should move away from deforestation and this will eventually make beef-eating a luxury.

Ban for Brazil Bang on song with the previous story, Nordea Asset Management (part of ESG Investing), Europe’s largest financial services group which controls £210 billion worth of investments, has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company has been excluded because of its links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation and past corruption scandals.

“The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it’s from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,” said the company. This is its second hit at Brazil having last year suspended the purchase of Brazilian government bonds after the Amazon fires crisis. You know that something big is happening when outfits such as this get involved.

Lex Rigby…

From Librarian to

Ocean Warrior (and Head of Investigations at Viva!)

Liberian enforcement officer, Bewowu, with Lex Rigby

ou can’t get further from the sea than Stoke-onTrent and it was near here that Lex Rigby grew up. So there was no inherent ‘call of the sea’ from a coastal community that drove her to become first a deckhand and welder then ship manager and navigation officer aboard a Sea Shepherd vessel ploughing through the world’s oceans looking for trouble.

After a BA in media studies at Nottingham Trent and an MA in Librarianship at Sheffield, Lex’s CV is sprinkled with professional information manager posts – information officer at the University of Law, library resources coordinator, science librarian, in fact she’s a chartered member of the Library and Information Association. She had not become the journalist she’d originally anticipated but there is a bit of clue to her eventual destination in her list of leisure interests at that

Y

BY TONY WARDLE

time – volunteer coordinator with the Sea Shepherd Marine Conservation Charity.

That started in 2006 when a northern bottlenose whale became stuck in the upper reaches of the River Thames in London: “She was a young female of a very rare species of deep-diving whales that are beaked and look much more like dolphins. They’re rarely seen in open water let alone in shallow rivers. Something had gone wrong and she was lost and people were talking excitedly about her but no one was talking about the continued decimation of whale populations worldwide.

Ultimately, she died and her sad death changed my life as I became determined to do what I could to end the barbarity of whaling.

“Throughout 2009, 2010 and 2011, I spent most of my free time hosting Sea Shepherd stalls at vegan fairs, music festivals and dive shows to help combat whaling.

During this time, I developed a love of diving and 

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Barely visible between two much larger vessels, the Bob Barker in grave danger

life underwater and gained various certifications, which led me to Mozambique where I volunteered on a whale shark project, swimming up close and tagging them. It was here that I saw my first humpback whale breach the ocean surface and that’s a sight you just don’t forget.

Magnificent!”

Sea Shepherd has several vessels devoted to protecting the oceans’ creatures and in 2011 one of them, the MY Steve Irwin (now retired), called in at London and, now back in the UK, Lex and other volunteers organised tours of the vessel to help raise funds for the next whale defence campaign. This was pivotal in the Lex Rigby story as the ‘Whale Wars’ that had motivated her were now almost a reality as she chatted to crew members about their adventures and their interventions to save whales from the harpoon.

“You just don’t have time to think about the danger!”

When the vessel moved down to Southampton for maintenance, Lex followed and laboured on as a volunteer deck hand, painting and greasing, wielding a chipping hammer to remove rust and red leading. The hard graft was no deterrent and she begged for a berth on a Sea Shepherd vessel. “How soon can you be in Australia?” came the reply.

“Five weeks later, November 3, 2011, I took a flight to Sydney, having secured a five-month work sabbatical and stepped on-board the MY Bob Barker. Not long after, I was heading out on my first Antarctic whale defence campaign in the unglamorous role of deck hand and learning how to sleep in monstrous 10 metre seas. It was a dream come true.”

This was the Southern Ocean, which can be utterly terrifying as it swirls around the globe between Australia, the tip of Argentina and the Antarctic ice cap almost uninterrupted, often producing mountainous seas.

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Whaling in these supposedly protected waters was carried out by Japan which operated in the usual way of whalers, with a large factory or mother ship and several much smaller whale catchers which do the killing and then transfer the whales to the factory ship to be butchered.

The aim of the Bob Barker was to make this process as difficult as possible by harassing and hindering, placing themselves between the whales and the harpooners and streaming fouling lines to entangle the whalers’ propellers.

“It’s very sad that the first whale I saw in the Southern Ocean was one the smallest species that’s hunted – a minke whale (they average about eight metres – 25ft – long). She looked enormous to me as she was being towed by a catcher boat across a sea swirling with her blood – a beautiful creature killed for nothing. The boat tried to intimidate us and the bow was brought charging to within a few feet of our deck. They are incredibly aggressive.”

Having been in the merchant navy, I can assure you that two vessels that close to each other is the epitome of danger on water that heaves and falls with the swell. But there was to be worse. Lex Rigby is a champion of understatement! If she says: “That was a bit full-on!” anyone else would likely say: “That was utterly bloody terrifying.” And I’m thinking of a particular incident where the Bob Barker, displacing just 800 tonnes, was literally sandwiched between a massive factory ship and an oil supply tanker, each displacing several thousand tonnes.

Huge jets of water spout from their hoses as they deluge the Bob Barker and she almost disappears from sight in the spray, with just feet between the three vessels. One tiny mishap and the Bob Barker could have been crushed and disappeared beneath the surface. Lex’s comment on it: “You just don’t have time to think about the danger!”

Whalers’ hatred of Sea Shepherd goes back a long way and their bogeyman is Captain Paul Watson, its founder. This charismatic man, with his flowing white hair and beard, was a co-founder of Greenpeace (although they try very hard to pretend he wasn’t) and he left to be more interventionist, founding Sea Shepherd in 1977. In 1979 he was responsible for

sinking the pirate whaling vessel, Sierra, and in 1986 sabotaged the Icelandic whalers Hvalur 6 and Hvalur 7, effectively shutting down the country’s whaling operations for the next 16 years.

“Paul Watson is a highly intelligent man, utterly uncompromising and does whatever it takes to protect the ocean’s creatures – aggressive, non-violent action!

People are in awe of him and when he recounts his extraordinary experiences, they listen!”

Gaining navigation qualifications, Lex moved from the deck to the bridge, from a cabin shared with three others to her own. “It was still incredibly small and I learnt to have nothing with me that didn’t serve a purpose. I’m still a bit like that and all my clothes at home are tightly rolled or folded into neat little squares in their drawers.”

I can attest to her tidiness – her desk at work is a blank space, not so much as a paper clip to clutter it.

On different trips, the MY Bob Barker had other goals, such as monitoring and intervening in illegal fishing. One of the targets was a black-listed fishing vessel operating with impunity in Antarctica, fishing for Antarctic and Patagonian toothfish. This boat had the capacity to set gigantic drift nets that, once set, became a wall of death.

“Toothfish, or Chilean sea bass as it’s more glamorously known, is a type of cod icefish with white oily flesh that’s highly sought after. It’s a unique species, specifically adapted to its frozen environment with ‘antifreeze type’ enzymes in its blood and lives up to about 1,500 metres below the surface.

“We identified a boat called the MV Thunder operating in what we called the ‘shadowlands’ of Antarctica which had been purple flagged by Interpol as a vessel of interest. As we approached, the skipper cut his nets adrift and took flight with us following – we had no idea that we had started on what was to be the longest maritime pursuit in history lasting 110 days.

There was little we could do while at sea so we simply had to follow until she put into port.

Top left: A hammerhead shark discarded as by-catch Top right: Skipper of the MV Thunder finally pulls the plug on his vessel and sinks it

Continued on page 51 viva.org.uk 9

The Flat House

Factory

New undercover investigation is beyond shocking. Red Tractor involved again Juliet finds it hard to hide her emotions

BY JULIET GELLATLEY

ne after another, we expose the cruelty on different factory farms and just when you think you’ve seen the worst, something else comes along to show that there is no limit to the depravity. Flat House farm near Lutterworth in Leicestershire was one such place – so appallingly cruel that it shocked everyone who was involved.

I walked with trepidation in the dark, through fields of corn that were tall enough to hide me, following my nose, following the stench of hydrogen sulphide and ammonia that always give away the presence of factory farms long before you see them.

Viva! had been tipped off about widespread cruelty at the farm by concerned locals and we discovered almost 9,000 pigs incarcerated inside its ominous sheds. We were expecting it to be bad, very bad, but nothing had prepared us for just how bad it was.

I walked into the nearest of the big industrial sheds and almost immediately came across a pig of about three months old, alone in a squalid cell writhing on the floor, her eyes rolling back as death approached. I knelt by her side, helpless and whispered to her: ‘Let go, it’s time to let go’. It was absolutely devastating.

I was being filmed for Viva!’s campaign but also for 

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Bloated pigs left to die, feral cats feasting on piglets and cannibalism – all at the Flat House Factory

a documentary and it was really hard to hold myself together. I’ve been filming in farms for three decades but this was horror on another level.

I was told that farm workers had been spotted but rather than cut and run I decided to carry on filming and asked the camerawoman to run with me up a long gangway to the far end of the shed where it was unlikely we would be spotted.

Another cell along the gangway contained about 10 pigs. They were all young but already in a poor state, with thousands of flies crawling over the walls. The pigs and everything around them, including the empty feed containers, were smeared in dirt and faeces.

Dismembered body parts were found on every visit, as well as dead piglets alongside confined sows The cell opposite was worse. A piglet with pleading grey eyes looked directly at me but what could I say?

“Sorry?” “I’m mortified?” All useless expressions to this little soul who had been left to die a protracted and painful death from a rectal stricture and the blockage meant he could not digest food. Leaked gases bloated his belly whilst his spine and ribs protruded painfully.

This condition had not developed overnight and was so far advanced that he would never recover. He had been left to starve to death. We called the RSPCA in the hope they would put him out of his misery.

I continued walking down the same gangway and discovered another pig in agony, kicking the air

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repeatedly, her eyes rolling, another animal abandoned to die along with a cell mate who was desperately walking in circles.

Later, in the farrowing shed, I sat near a mother sow who was trapped in a crate and had just given birth. She looked at me for a long time and I talked gently to her. I could see this was not her first pregnancy and she knew only too well that her babies would be stolen from her when they reached four weeks old. It happens repeatedly.

We had already placed hidden cameras inside some of the sheds and when we reviewed the footage, we saw sickening images of a worker swinging newly born little piglets by the hind legs and slamming their heads onto the metal bars of their mother’s metal cage. She was witness to the killing of her babies. This is factory farming, this is what pigs have to endure in this ‘civilised’ nation of ours.

PIGLETS EATEN BY FERAL CATS Viva! returned to Flat House farm on several occasions, collecting evidence to submit to the authorities.

Dismembered body parts were found on every visit, as well as dead piglets alongside confined sows. Our hidden camera footage revealed the horror of feral cats dragging away new-born, sickly piglets into the walkways and feasting on them while still alive.

Animals being eaten by other animals is a sure way to spread viruses and bacteria – in this case it was cats whilst at Calvesley Farm that supplies Morrisons, reported in the last edition of Viva!life, it was wildlife.

The list of horrors we exposed on this ‘high welfare’ farm is almost endless: piglets having teeth and tails chopped off without anaesthetic, cannibalism of both living and dead animals, ruptures the size of footballs, a

pig’s anal prolapse being attacked by others, rotting abscesses, filth and overcrowding, feed troughs containing only excreta, and on and on.

Factory farms clearly raise serious welfare concerns but they also create an ideal environment for mutating viruses and antibiotic-resistant superbugs to prosper and spread. The World Health Organisation believes that the next pandemic will be caused by an avian influenza (bird flu) virus emerging from chickens or pigs, just like those at Hogwood, Flat House and Morrisons.

REPORTING THE CRUELTY Viva! called the RSPCA, begging them to visit the farm to put the dying out of their misery. Two inspectors did turn up, went inside the farm, but refused to communicate with us so we have no idea if they did what we asked. Only later, after we had obtained widespread media coverage did the RSPCA finally report the farm to Trading Standards.

We also sent written reports and video footage to Red Tractor, who approved the farm as ‘high welfare’, to the government agency, APHA, and to Trading Standards, who say they are now investigating. Just as in the past, it is unlikely they will ever reveal the result of their ‘investigation’ or do anything of consequence.

RED TRACTOR EXPOSED – AGAIN Flat House farm has subsequently been expelled by Red Tractor. For the first time, they did not deny our evidence but claimed to have been ‘appalled’ by the barbaric conditions captured by Viva! Campaigns. Being appalled is not enough! They claim to have conducted an inspection of the farm in March, the same month we installed the first cameras. So much for their inspections.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today,

Red Tractor admitted that their reputation has been damaged by Viva’s exposé – another first for us.

CONFRONTATION The next day, my team and I confronted the owner at the farm about the appalling conditions and the numbers of dead and dying pigs: “Oh really, and what pigs are they, then?” In fact he claimed to be anything but the owner: “I work for a sign company and you’re trespassing so get off the property.” Next it was: “It’s got nothing to do with me, I work for a wind turbine company!” He showed no concern at all for the animals in his care and neither did his aggressive female farm manager.

We filmed the whole encounter.

MILLIONS REACHED Our investigation was reported across Britain, with major pieces in the Daily Mail, the Sun, BBC Online News, BBC TV East Midland News, BBC Radio 4 Farming Today, Joey Carbstrong’s YouTube channel and many others. We know it will have spurred the vegan revolution onwards as many more join us as a result of what they’ve seen.

CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED A film showing the dramatic confrontation with the famer launched our major new campaign End Factory Farming Before it Ends Us. You’ll be hearing lots more from us over the coming months. Share the films and campaign viva.org.uk/eff

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Near miss at Flat House Imagine if you can, the sense of anger and helplessness we felt after exposing possibly the worst cruelty on any pig farm we have ever seen and nothing happened. We had called in the RSPCA, police and Trading Standards and then it went silent – no outcry, no charges brought, no action. To make it worse, the media seemed disinterested. And so our team hit the phones over and over again, refusing to give up and then suddenly… millions of people knew about the cruelty at Flat House farm.

The Daily Mail led the charge with a superb picture piece and damning words such as ‘shocking catalogue of neglect’. The Sun also went to town on the appalling way the farm treated animals and left no one in any doubt about the horror – Left to rot: starving pigs forced to eat each other. BBC TV East

Midlands did several segments, including an outside broadcast from the farm and a lengthy interview with our Head of Investigations, Lex Rigby.

BBC Radio Leicester covered the story as did Harborough FM as well as local and regional papers such as the Leicester Mercury, Harborough Mail and Rugby Advertiser.

Publications from further afield queued up to report – Media Entertainment Arts World Wide, the London Economic, One Green Planet, The Canary, World Animals Voice, Brinkwire and the Ecologist.

What at first had appeared a lost cause turned into triumph for the pigs as we moved the vegan revolution ever forward with the message that the only true way to end animal suffering is to go vegan.

Flat House on Film You can see just what we discovered at this Leicestershire farm and the confrontation our team had with its owner and its manager. It is the subject of our latest film, The Flat House Factory. Go to viva.org.uk/eff

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tRyvegan foRone week Switching from animal products to plantbased ingredients can have huge benefits for your health, the planet and animals. That’s why we’ve launched V7 – our brand new ‘one week’ food challenge.

As veganism continues to soar in popularity, more and more people are becoming interested in trying vegan food and reducing their consumption of animal products. Viva! are dedicated to making veganism accessible and appealing to everyone, regardless of where they are on their vegan journey.

V7 has been lovingly created by Viva!’s Vegan Recipe Club, a team of foodies

passionate about creating awesome vegan dishes. The team have created a delicious meal plan which is designed to appeal to meat-eaters, reducers and those interested in trying veganism but don’t know where to start.

Sign up and you’ll receive a complete vegan shopping list with seven days of delicious recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner – plus tips and advice on vegan health, nutrition and lifestyle. Our daily emails will show you how incredibly easy and delicious vegan food can be. So if you, or someone you know, wants to try veganism for just seven days, sign up to V7 at 7dayvegan.viva.org.uk.

Sign up at: 7dayvegan.viva.org.uk

tasty easy

• Shopping list • Recipes • meal plan • suppoRt This beautiful Spinach and Potato Rosti recipe is taken from the V7 meal plan. Sign up to V7 today for more delicious recipes like this, delivered straight to your inbox!

Delicious!

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l 500g/16oz potatoes, peeled and grated l 200g/7oz firm tofu, patted dry and crumbled into small pieces l Handful of fresh spinach or rocket, roughly chopped (or use frozen, defrosted) l 3 tbsp gram (chickpea) flour, mixed with 3 tbsp warm water in a small bowl l 2 tbsp plain flour l 1 tsp cumin or caraway seeds l 2 tbsp vegetable oil l 1-2 tsp salt l 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper (optional)

1 Pat dry the tofu, before crumbling it into a mixing bowl with the grated potato.

2 Add the spinach or rocket, gram flour mixture, cumin, plain flour, salt and pepper and stir the ingredients.

3 Shape the mixture into six round rosti, be firm with it but try not to over handle. If it is too wet to hold its shape, add a little more flour.

4 Add a little oil to a large, non-stick frying pan and fry on a medium heat, turning half way through, until golden. Press down the rosti and encourage them to keep their shape using a fish slice.

5 Serve with a small side salad or leaves and tomatoes and a tablespoon of hummus (optional).

Viva!’s Great New Billboard Campaign Neither the Government nor media is advising us how to avoid the worst health effects of this pandemic nor are they telling us how to avoid future pandemics.

Well, Viva! is!

Our Slash the Risk campaign involves placing 80 billboards, many of them huge, in the West Midlands and Bristol in November and December which will reach 12 million people. One reveals the risk from factory farming and urges people to try Viva!’s new V7 offer and go vegan for one week; while another urges people to protect themselves from severe Covid symptoms by going vegan.

A major PR initiative will support the campaign along with back-to-back radio interviews, which will reach millions more. We also have a door dropper flyer – order yours from vivashop.org.uk/slashtherisk-leaflet.

Being vegan does not reduce your risk of contracting Covid-19 but being vegan does reduce people’s risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, COPD, obesity and heart disease – and it is people with these underlying health conditions who are most at risk and are more likely to be admitted to the ICU. You can read the science behind our claims at viva.org.uk/slashtherisk.

Help Viva!

To help Viva! expand our billboard campaigns, go to viva.org.uk/get-involved/choose-veganbillboards. If you’d like to mail a donation (payable to Viva!), please send to: Billboards, Viva!, 8 York Court, Wilder St, Bristol BS2 8QH. Please email the Director’s Assistant, Jess Nunn jess@viva.org.uk if you’d like to fund a billboard campaign in your region.

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It’s never been easier to have a merry vegan Christmas – and you don’t have to cook everything from scratch, either!

Supermarkets are now falling over themselves to offer the best vegan centrepieces, appetisers, sides, desserts, sweets, treats, cakes, cheeses, mince pies, chocolates and alcohol – phew, how times have changed!

As usual, the cheapest offerings are in Aldi and Iceland but all supermarkets have got really inventive and created some delicious original dishes. Asda have added a whopping 48 vegan options to its Christmas menu!

Ocado has one of the widest ranges of vegan products out of everyone but are only available online – so book a delivery slot!

Here are some of our top picks from the shops this year – looks like we’re in for a treat!

Viva!’s Seasonal p e e w S t e k r a m r e p Su …and the vegan bells rang out on Christmas day CONDUCTED BY MARYANNE HALL, FOOD & COOKERY MANAGER

Tip

You’ll generally find better quality and more original dishes in independent health food shops, which also tend to cater better for dietary requirements – gluten-free, diabetic and sugar-free. Most health food shops offer an ordering service so if you can’t find the item, they might be able to get it in for you.

d e Duo: fille mas Cottag te o p m Asda Christ ry co orello cher with dark m with a tiffin e, ss u o m te la co o ch d an ed dates, with chopp base made late and a dark choco raisins and te shell. la ark choco luxurious d

Marks & Sp encer Mini No Chicken Kievs: made from soya protein with an oozing garlic filling and coated in crispy, gol den breadcrumbs .

Marks & Spencer d Festive Wreath: roaste uts stn mushrooms, che and pumpkin seeds, y topped with a cranberr ze. gla and orange

Aldi Plant Menu Ve gan Turkey: made from soya an d filled with cranberry, red pepp er, apricot and pumpkin seed stuffin g and coated in a barbecue flavo ur glaze.

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Vegan Christmas Marks & Spencer ly spiced and Pudding: delicate vine fruits, plus packed with juicy and sherry for er cid , m plenty of ru a proper kick.

Sainsbury’s Salted -free Caramel Star: a dairy rt sse de le panna-cotta sty an lgi Be h ric h made wit ted dark chocolate and sal ce. caramel sau

Sainsbury’s No Turkey Parcels: turk ey-flavoure d seitan filled with rich sa ge and onion st uffing, all wrapped up in a smoky vegan baco n rasher.

Morrisons Christmas Sta r Tarte: a blend of sweet potat o, parsnip and mushrooms in a cre amy sauce, cream cheese and mo zzarella, finished with apple sau ce, festive fruit, seeded crumble and a golden puff pastry star.

Waitrose Breaded Vega n Baking Melts with Redcurrant Relish: fille d with melting vegan che ese with a hot, golden cris p breadcrumb exterior.

Tesco Wicked Kitchen Wellington: hand-rolled, ‘no-beef’ wellington centrepiece, filled with a seasoned pea protein, onion and garlic sautéed porcini and chestnut mushroom duxelles wrapped up in flaky pastry.

Tip

Pound shops and other saver shops offer many cheaper lines of chocolate, biscuits and other items that are sometimes vegan (check the packaging).

Waitrose Festive Filo Swirls: filled with Moroccan inspired h spiced vegetables wit apricots and raisins in crispy filo pastry.

gan Roast: Tofurky Ve eat lend of wh b a savoury ha it w d lle d fi and tofu an d ild rice an flavourful w stuffing. b m u breadcr viva.org.uk 19

Media man, punk-bred John Robb

Once a splodge of mashed potato or boiled-to-death cabbage on the site of a glowing plate of seventies plastic food was all you saw but now they are being hunted mercilessly as veganism becomes full-on mainstream.

What was once fringe, then underground and then fashionable has been planted (ha!) firmly into the everyday as we try and work out how to make a better world.

What we need is a road map.

A plan!

We don’t want a Trump world of aging buttocks excreting gormless tweets. We no longer want to live in a world of casual meat-eating from the death factory.

We no longer want to pick at the carcass that we got someone else to murder and the only time we get our hands red is when we make a beetroot salad.

We want the future and we want it now.

It has been a privilege during the lockdown writing a book with Dale Vince, the green energy provider, Ecotricty boss and friend of Viva!. It’s called Manifesto and comes out this autumn.

Dale’s life is interesting enough – a modern day ecopirate, at times beyond the law and on the fringes. Our paths have crossed in moribund, early eighties polytechnics in Stafford and free festivals on the traveller circuit in my touring days with my band, the Membranes.

It was a micro world of alternative culture, intense ideas and future thinking – and then losing it at wild, flailing gigs or all-night parties that could last a month.

Vegan recipes were photocopied in grubby, ink-stained fanzines and life changing ideas would be thrashed out around all-night campfires. Ideas like a meat base economy is a massive drain on resources – dismissed as fringe lunacy. But just before the virus rolled into town, these ideas of

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veganism, green populism and business for positive change were entering the mainstream. Dale Vince was at the forefront of this and green ideas are his currency.

Suddenly, the world needs resetting and Manifesto points out the only future left that will work.

The book is about this green populism and green ideas. It argues that the future doesn’t have to be a dour and earnest monochromatic box-ticking exercise and we can still have all the stuff we love, like transport, but without the pollution. We can have sport like his vegan football club, Forest Green Rovers, and we can even have burgers but nothing has to die to make them.

Green populism is about doing what we like to do but not fucking up the planet or each other or killing animals to do it.

As the great wizard will tell you – where there is despair there is sometimes hope and glimmers of the shiny stuff appear on the horizon like specks of green surrounded by the bedlam of modernity. It was interesting to read about the heartwarming story of the African grey parrots telling humans to eff-off with great glee. They knew exactly what they were doing and the weary fauna and flora of an exhausted planet, clogged up with child-like humans, must have been cheering the cheery birds along.

In these tumultuous times we need solutions and the ideas that we have all embraced for years are now rampaging into the mainstream as they should. Maybe, just maybe, one vision of the future is for a green populism.

There is not a lot of time left and with the sixth great extinction upon us, even the greedy claws of capitalism have to embrace what they would have once sniffed at.

The future is green. Not because it’s nice but because we have no damn choice. There may only be a decade left of the fast-forward, gas-guzzling, lunatic planetdestroying, shouting-but-not-listening Trump, monoculture. It’s a stark decision as we stagger up to the crossroads that decide what crucial turns we have to take for the future of this planet and ourselves.

(Book not yet available but will eventually be on sale in the Viva! shop).

Where there is despair there is sometimes hope

Photo © Melanie Smith

it has been a rough year for vegetables

Christmas vegan gorgeousness

BY MARYANNE HALL, FOOD & COOKERY MANAGER

For the ultimate Christmas feast, here are four recipes that will bring some sparkly amazingness to your festive spread. The two mains we’ve featured this season cater for all tastes, including gluten-free, and are both seriously tasty! The turkeyless roast was inspired by the rescue of two wonderful turkey chicks who stole our hearts last year and found their way to The Farm Animal Sanctuary, where they’re now happily living out their lives. The pithivier is mouth-wateringly rich and flavoursome, with a delicious flaky puff pastry crust. If you feel like indulging further (and why wouldn’t you – it’s Christmas), you could also try making our top festive tipple: vegan Irish cream liqueur (Bailey’s)! It’s velvety, creamy and tastes almost identical to the original. Last, but most certainly not least, our friends at All About Greens have provided us with their incredible orange steamed pudding recipe – think soft, moist, citrussy sponge with a high-end twist!

Maryanne with the two turkeys who inspired her

Vegan Irish Cream Liqueur (Bailey’s) l 75ml Scotch whisky or Irish whiskey l ¼ cup strong fresh coffee, cooled OR 1 heaped tsp instant coffee l 1 tsp vanilla essence l 1 tin coconut milk l 4-6 tbsp agave or other syrup or more to taste

1 Place everything in a blender and whizz for 2 minutes or until completely smooth. Taste and adjust sweetness/whisky strength/coffee strength as desired.

Whizz again.

2 If storing in the fridge, soften it up again in the microwave or in a pan of hot water and whizz once more.

This recipe comes straight from our Deliciously Vegan Christmas guide – over 25 recipes including scrumptious starters, luscious mains, tempting sides and heavenly desserts, not forgetting truffles, Christmas cakes and cheese! Get yours here for just £2 vivashop.org.uk/christmasguide viva.org.uk 21

Turkeyless Roast Wet ingredients for the roast l 1 onion, finely diced l 2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped l 200ml soya or other plant milk l 160ml vegan white wine (replace with plant milk to be alcohol free) l 1 tbsp syrup (eg maple or agave) l 1 tbsp dried or fresh sage, finely chopped l 1 tbsp dried or fresh rosemary, finely chopped l ½ tsp smoked paprika l 1 tsp salt l 4 tsp vegan stock powder (eg Marigold), dissolved in 1 tbsp boiling water and stirred l 2-3 tbsp white miso paste l 100g firm tofu, drained and patted dry l 60g chickpeas, drained and rinsed l 1 tsp Dijon mustard (optional) l 2 tsp lemon juice (optional) l Pinch freshly ground nutmeg (optional)

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Dry ingredients for the roast l 285g vital gluten flour (seitan) l 3 tbsp nutritional yeast l 70g chickpea/gram flour Stuffing l 130g (approx.) of your favourite dry stuffing mix (make and set aside). OR use 1 batch of our Apricot & Chestnut Stuffing recipe (again, don’t bake yet) – see veganrecipeclub.org. uk/recipes/apricotchestnut-stuffing Skin l 3 large sheets dried yuba (dried bean curd skin – buy online or from Asian supermarkets – the spongy variety, not the hard crispy sheets). This stage is optional

1 Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan)/350°F/Gas Mark 4 (ideally using combined fan and conventional setting).

2 Fry onion until golden, add garlic and fry for a further minute.

3 Add the garlic/onion mix to a blender with all the other wet ingredients. Blend until smooth.

4 In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix well.

5 Add blended wet ingredients and combine into a dough with your hands.

6 On a floured surface, knead the dough for a minimum of 10 minutes.

7 With your hands, stretch dough into a rectangle around 1 inch deep.

8 Fill the middle of the seitan dough with your stuffing, fold each end around it and roll it up lengthways so it is fully sealed.

9 If using yuba skin, run each sheet under the tap to rehydrate. Wrap them around the seitan until it is fully covered. Tie in three different places with baking string (it will look a soggy mess at this stage but it crisps up in the oven!).

10 Wrap a large piece of foil around the seitan roll and twist both ends to seal tightly (it is really important to ensure it is watertight).

11 Place the foil-wrapped seitan on a deep baking tray with about half-an-inch of water. Place in oven and cook for 45 minutes, turning once halfway through. Add more water if pan dries out.

12 Open the foil and check to see if the roast is golden.

If not, place back in oven.

13 Once cooked, remove foil and transfer to a dry baking tray. Brush with a little oil and replace in the oven for 5-10 minutes.

14 Serve with roast potatoes and all the trimmings!

Chestnut, Mushroom & Red Wine Pithivier l 640g puff pastry (2 x sheets eg Jus-Rol) l Vegan butter/spread for frying l 1 red onion, finely diced l 2 leeks, ends removed and finely sliced l 400g button mushrooms, halved l 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped l ½ tsp cayenne pepper l 50g/4½ tbsp plain flour l 2 tbsp tomato purée l 200g vacuum packed chestnuts, roughly chopped l 3 tomatoes, roughly chopped

l 10 sundried tomatoes, finely chopped l 1 tbsp dried or fresh thyme, finely chopped l ½ tbsp dried or fresh rosemary, finely chopped l 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar l 175ml vegan red wine (1 tbsp red miso mixed with 175ml boiling water for alcohol-free) l 500ml vegan stock l 1 tbsp soft brown sugar l 150g pre-cooked quinoa or lentils (add at the end) l 2 tbsp soya milk for brushing

1 Preheat oven to 190°C (fan)/375°F/Gas Mark 5. Line a large baking tray with parchment.

2 Place one pastry sheet on a floured surface, put a large dinner plate on top and cut around it to get a plate-shaped disc of pastry.

3 Repeat with second sheet but with an additional 2cm border around the edge.

4 Place the smaller circle on the lined baking tray and set aside.

5 Fry onions in a little vegan butter until soft and golden.

6 Add leeks and fry for a further 5 minutes.

7 Add mushrooms and fry for another 5 minutes.

8 Add garlic and the cayenne pepper and fry for a minute.

9 Remove from the heat and stir through the flour until all vegetables are coated.

10 Place back on the heat, stir through the tomato purée and add all other ingredients apart from precooked quinoa/lentils and soya milk.

11 Allow mixture to simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring regularly.

12 Add quinoa or lentils to the mix and stir through. It should be thick but not too thick. Add more stock if necessary – you don’t want it to be runny.

13 Transfer mixture onto bottom layer of pastry, leaving 4cm of pastry free around the edge.

14 Cover with the bigger circle of pastry and seal the edges with your fingers. Brush edges with oil.

15 Brush the pastry with soya milk.

16 To create the sun pattern, make a tiny hole in the centre and then score wavy lines from the centre to the outer edge, using a sharp knife.

17 Place in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes or until crisp and golden.

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RECIPE BY ALL ABOUT GREENS

Orange Steamed Pudding l 2 tsp ground flaxseed l 3 oranges, zested and juiced l 100g vegan butter/spread (eg Naturli) l 100g soft light brown sugar l 30g maple syrup

l 150ml soya milk l 2 tbsp vanilla extract l 230g self-raising flour l ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda l 100g marmalade l 1 tsp ground ginger l 15g vegan spread for greasing

1 Thoroughly grease a 1-1.2 litre pudding basin with vegan margarine. Place a disc of baking parchment in the bottom to prevent the top of the pudding from sticking. Pop the kettle on.

2 Mix together flaxseed and 45ml of orange juice in a small bowl to make a flax egg. Set aside for at least 10 minutes to go gloopy. It should have the consistency of a raw egg.

3 Place vegan butter, light brown sugar, remaining orange juice and maple syrup in a large pan over a low heat and stir until melted. Remove from heat.

4 Mix soya milk, vanilla extract, orange zest and flax egg into the melted mixture then sift in the flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda and whisk until no lumps remain.

Add marmalade to the bottom of the pudding basin and spread evenly.

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5 Pour batter into the prepared basin and spread level.

6 Cut a square piece of baking paper approximately 3cm bigger than the top of the pudding basin. Then cut a square of foil approximately 6cm bigger than the top of the pudding basin. Place the baking paper in the middle of the foil and make a crease down the centre (to allow for expansion when the sponge is cooking).

7 Place the foil and baking paper (baking paper facing the batter) on top of the pudding basin and press the foil over the edges, tucking it under with your fingers.

8 Tie a length of string very tightly around the foil (tying the string under the lip of the basin).

9 Place a saucer upside down in a large saucepan and put the pudding basin on top, adding enough boiling water to cover the saucer but not the pudding basin.

10 Place a lid on the pan and cook over a low heat at a gentle simmer for one and a half hours. Check after an hour to see if the water needs topping up but resist the urge to take the lid off the pan too often. Once done, remove foil and baking paper and test the sponge with a skewer to see if it comes out clean with no batter adhering. Gently place a plate on top of the pudding bowl and turn it upside down. Your pudding should gently decant onto the plate ready to serve.

lifeSCIENCE

Viva! Health unravels scientific research and makes it easy to understand.

Here we update you on the latest findings…

BY DR JUSTINE BUTLER, VIVA! HEALTH MANAGER

It’s a winwin-win for vegans Solving the dietenvironment-health trilemma

Scary dairy Yet more evidence links cows’ milk to breast cancer Women who drink cows’ milk could increase their risk of developing breast cancer by as much as 80 per cent, according to a new study from Loma Linda University in the US. They followed nearly 53,000 North American women for over seven years and found that those drinking even moderate amounts of cows’ milk – a quarter to a third of a cup (6080ml) a day – had a 30 per cent higher risk of developing breast cancer than those drinking soya milk. One cup (237ml) increased the risk by 50 per cent and two cups (473ml) by a whopping 70-80 per cent. There was no notable difference between full-fat and nonfat dairy milks and lead author, Dr Gary Fraser, said the study gives “fairly strong evidence that either dairy milk or some other factor closely related to drinking dairy milk is a cause of breast cancer in women”.

One reason, they say, may be the hormones in milk. Cows are, of course, lactating when they’re milked but threequarters of the herd is also pregnant and subject to the flood of hormones that accompany any pregnancy. Animal protein is also associated with higher levels of the growth hormone IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1) which is thought to promote certain cancers. Swapping dairy for soya milk was found to lower the risk markedly.

They concluded that people should view recommendations to consume cows’ milk with caution – please note, Dairy UK! Fraser GE, Jaceldo-Siegl K, Orlich M et al. 2020. Dairy, soy, and risk of breast cancer: those confounded milks.

International Journal of Epidemiology, published online ahead of print, 2020 Feb 25.

A simple truth – the diet that is good for you is also good for the environment. To maintain our health and that of the planet, and all its important natural systems upon which we depend, we must use the Earth’s limited resources more wisely, according to this report. The way we currently produce food contributes considerably to climate change, land degradation, water use and other impacts, which threaten food security. Most plantbased foods use considerably less resources and are much less harmful to the environment than meat and dairy – greenhouse gas emissions from vegan diets are 50 per cent less than from meaty diets.

To resolve what they refer to as the diet-environment-health trilemma, the report says widespread dietary changes are essential. Although the human health and environmental benefits of a vegan diet are now well known, there are still big questions over the political will to promote meat-free diets as the social norm. Please note, UK Government.

Fresán U and Sabaté J. 2019. Vegetarian diets: Planetary health and its alignment with human health. Advances in Nutrition. 10 (Supplement 4) S380-S388.

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Don’t forget your B12 Deficiency is no more common among vegans who take a supplement

Dodge diabetes with diet Weight for weight – vegetarians have lower risk The number of people around the world with diabetes is high and rising rapidly. In the UK, for example, around 10 per cent of the entire 2011 health service budget was spent on treating diabetes. This EPIC-Oxford study looked at the link between vegetarianism and the risk of hospitalisation and death from diabetes in a study of over 45,000 British adults who were followed for over 17 years.

Results showed that, compared to meateaters, vegetarians and vegans were 35 and 47 per cent less likely to develop diabetes respectively. When these results were adjusted for body mass index (matching

vegetarians to meat-eaters that were as slim as them) the vegetarians were still 11 per cent less likely to develop the disease.

This, they say, may be because of the many harmful substances found in meat, some of which result from processing and cooking methods. These findings fall in line with results from previous studies that show the diabetes risk is 40-50 per cent lower in those consuming meat-free diets.

Papier K, Appleby PN, Fensom GK et al. 2019. Vegetarian diets and risk of hospitalisation or death with diabetes in British adults: results from the EPIC-Oxford study. Nutrition & Diabetes. 9 (1) 7.

Not much is known about the nutritional status of vegans in the Czech Republic despite the fact that 10 per cent of Czechs aged 18-34 describe themselves as vegetarian or vegan, according to a 2019 survey. It investigated whether the use of B12 supplements prevented deficiency in 151 Czech vegan adults compared to 85 non-vegans and found that vegans who regularly took a B12 supplement had similar levels to non-vegans but those not supplementing had significantly lower levels. This is a predictable result but one that carries a simple and important message – remember to take your B12! Low levels are not uncommon in older people, regardless of diet, as absorption from food declines with age. In the US, all adults over 50 are advised to take a supplement.

Selinger E, Kühn T, Procházková M, et al. 2019.

Vitamin B12 Deficiency Is Prevalent Among Czech Vegans Who Do Not Use Vitamin B12 Supplements. Nutrients. 11 (12) 3019.

Too much pressure!

Go vegan and take the pressure off The beneficial effects of a vegan diet on hypertension (high blood pressure) have been reported in many studies. This review looked at 15 different studies with over 800 participants.

Results showed that vegetarian diets significantly lowered blood pressure compared to diets containing meat and dairy – but vegan diets had an even greater effect. Vegetarian diets and especially vegan diets, reduce blood pressure when compared with omnivorous diets. Changing your diet could help prevent and manage hypertension.

Lee KW, Loh HC, Ching SM et al. 2020. Effects of Vegetarian Diets on Blood Pressure Lowering: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis and Trial Sequential Analysis. Nutrients. 12 (6) 1604.

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More on health and nutrition at viva.org.uk/health

Spinning a new website viva.org.uk

We’ve cleared away the old cobwebs to create a spanking new website

BY ROISIN MCAULEY, HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS

For many people, our website is their first interaction with Viva!. It is how we connect and interact with new audiences, it is home to our campaigns and investigations and – just as importantly – it is the starting point for new vegans on their journey of compassion.

Our website represents Viva! as a whole, providing a strong statement about who we are, what we do and what we aim to achieve – and first impressions are everything. Research tells us that it takes web users just 50 milliseconds to form an opinion of a website. They quickly infer all sorts of judgements about an organisation, such as credibility and effectiveness, from the design of their website alone.

So – we’re asking a lot from our website. Up to this point, it has served us well. It grew and evolved to meet our needs alongside those of the ever-changing technological world in which we live. But now, it is time for change.

We have been busy working away behind the scenes on a brand new website and I really do mean brand new! No small undertaking as our old site had over 6,000 pages, all jam-packed full of useful information and valuable resources – and that’s without including our other websites, such as My Vegan Town or Scary Dairy. We needed to dismantle the current site step by step, condense the information and rebuild entirely from scratch.

And that’s what we’ve done – the results speak for themselves. Website users are now greeted with a stylish and clear homepage, with vibrant photography and smooth transitions. They are presented with the four key tenets of our work; Viva! Animals, Viva!

Health, Viva! Planet and Viva! Lifestyle, with each section beautifully designed and colour coded.

We not only built a website from scratch but also developed new content to launch the site.

Viva! Animals is now more detailed and fully-referenced, with each species of animal having its own page which features fun and

interesting facts about it. We also detail how each type of animal is farmed and killed.

Viva! Health features our A-Z of Nutrients, Diseases and Foods at centre stage, alongside a range of timely and compelling health features.

Viva! Planet features the latest research on meat, dairy and environmental destruction, presenting the clear case for veganism.

Viva! Lifestyle addresses everything you need to know about going (and staying!) vegan, from budget recipes to cosmetics and fashion, market insights and product guides – we’ve got it covered.

In the next phase of development, My Vegan Town and Vegan Recipe Club will transition into the new site.

I could go on and on but the best thing is to see it for yourself (viva.org.uk). Take a stroll (and a scroll) through our great new website and let us know what you think.

I would like to thank our wonderful web designer Roger, who has worked swiftly and smoothly to produce the new website.

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For the foodie

r o f g n i h t e m So

e n o y r eve Emily Coster picks out some cracking, cruelty-free presents from the Viva! Shop for you to buy for loved ones (or yourself!) this Christmas!

Cocoba

Vegummies Vegan Sweet Pouch

These hot chocolate spoons are deliciously smooth and creamy, with a vegan milk chocolate block on a wooden spoon, complete with vegan mini marshmallows. I don’t really need to sell them, do I? The ultimate vegan hot chocolate treat from Cocoba for friends and family who love a hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day!

Chocolate bombes are made from 55 per cent dark Belgian chocolate, with delicious and fluffy vegan marshmallows hidden inside! Simply put the vegan hot chocolate bombe in a mug, slowly pour over your favourite steaming plant-milk and watch as the chocolate melts to uncover the white mini marshmallows hiding within.

Cocoba Hot Chocolate Bombes 150g £10.99 FO5978 Cocoba Hot Chocolate Spoon 50g £3.49 FO5979

These Vegummies pouches are filled with a range of vegan pick and mix sweets and include some of the classics – cola bottles, bubblegum bottles, cherries and gummy strawberries. And you can choose fizzy or nonfizzy! The packaging is compostable! 600g £7.50 Fizzy FO5953. Non-Fizzy FO5952

Vegan Surprise Treat Box This Vegan Surprise Treat Box is filled with delicious vegan goodies which we think you’ll love! As the contents are a surprise I can’t tell you exactly what they’ll contain so take a gamble and maybe discover some new tastes. Each box contains a mix of treats including chocolates, fudges, sweets, biscuits, marshmallow and toffees to a value of approximately £20. You can find all these tasty treats on our shop so you can repeat buy all your favourites!

Please note that one or two treats in the box may have a shelf life of just eight weeks from the date you order. £20 FO5811

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For the cocktail makers For the cocktail lover, we have a range of spirits to choose from for the perfect Long Island Iced Tea or Gin fizz! Or choose a single malt for a classic whisky on the rocks.

Juniper Green Organic London Dry Gin 70cl (UK) 1 Bottle £24.38 HEV02 Fatty’s Lower Alcohol Pink Grapefruit 20cl (UK) 1 bottle £31.50 HEV30 Papagayo Organic Reserva Rum 70cl (Paraguay) 1 bottle £36.00 HEV28 Highland Harvest Single Malt (UK) 1 bottle £41.25 HSS12

For the animal lover This collection shows everyone why you are vegan and why you continue to be vegan! Give as a gift to a friend who loves animals and wants to shout about it!

This minimalist, animal design is cute but powerful. Easy to wear and perfect to pair with your favourite jeans. Featuring four of our mostcampaigned-for animals, these adorable faces are on unisex fitting tees and jumper.

Vegan For The Animals Unisex Classic Jersey Tee Soft, combed, organic cotton. Climate neutral. Classic Jersey T-Shirt.

Sizes: S, M, L. £16.99 each. Black CL5934. Light Blue CL5935

Vegan For The Animals Unisex Raglan Jumper Soft, combed, organic cotton. Climate neutral.

Sizes: S, M, L. £29.99 each. Black CL5936

Adoptions Give the gift of life to a rescued farm animal through our adoption scheme – makes the perfect pressie for any occasion!

Half of your donation will feed and care for your A FARM A N I M A L ADOPT chosen adoptee and the WITH other half will go towards Viva!’s campaigns to help save millions more lives in our battle against factory farming and to promote a vegan world. For £25 (inc p&p) a year, your new pack will include: a letter, personalised A5 certificate, 6x4in colour photo, supplied in a cool magnetic frame, and one update. Please allow up to 10 working days for the delivery of your adoption pack. £25.00. Timmy the Pony AD3630, Adam the Sheep AD3474, Toto the Fox AD4258, Ofilia the Horse AD3727, Falafel the Dog AD5410, Asphalt the Goat AD4256, Fargo the Bull AD3726, Paul the Goose AD3634, Peppa the Pig AD3725 D P O L A N

ify that This is to cert has adopted

Signed

– Juliet Gellatley Viva! of Founder & Director

Manager – Founder & Janet Taylor Sanctuary Farm Animal

of

i– Cezary Wyszyńsk Manager Viva! Poland

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So near yet so far For more than a decade of campaigning, dangerous undercover exposes, constant protesting and educating politicians, Viva! Poland has been demanding an end to fur farming in the country. Their public education campaigns have been hugely successful and 65 per cent of Polish people now oppose fur farming.

On August 22, this work reached its zenith when the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, adopted an Amendment prohibiting the rearing of animals for fur. Of the 450 Deputies in the Sejm, 356 voted for it, despite massive opposition from the fur industry. What normally happens when the lower house passes a Bill or Amendment is that it is endorsed by both the upper house and the president and subsequently becomes law.

At the end of October, Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s deputy prime minister and de facto leader, stepped in and killed the Amendment. The reason is almost certainly its timing. Poland already had some of the most stringent abortion laws in Europe and the courts had suddenly issued a ruling (with the backing of the Government) that ‘severe foetal abnormality’ was no longer a valid reason for a termination. It meant that women whose foetuses have died in the womb or which were incapable of surviving after birth, have to be carried to term.

Protesting women (mostly) are filling the streets in huge demonstrations not seen since the fall of communism. Clearly, Kaczyński did not want to add protesting fur farmers to the civil unrest.

But it isn’t the end of the campaign as Viva! Poland manager, Cezary Wyszyński makes clear: “With 65 per cent of the population behind us, this is only a postponement – we’ll be back!”

An End to Circus Animals Our Animal-free Circus Campaign hit Łódź with a colourful mural painted in Piotrkowska, the city’s best known street, by artist Zuzanna Milewska. The campaign will also include public transport stops.

There are still 108 animals held and abused in Polish circuses, including lions, seals and porcupines and Viva! Poland has been urging for a ban on them for years. However, circus owners and performers move across national borders, making control difficult.

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Rehoming for Dogs and Cats In the past, we’ve reported on Viva! Poland’s magnificent Korabiewicach animal sanctuary outside Warsaw but here is the other half of the story – finding loving and secure homes for the animals.

The model Adopciaki rehoming programme has been running since September 2015 and offers support to both foster and permanent homes and involves two strategic partnerships. Coape Polska provides a behavioural network while Purina Polska partially sponsors the service. It means that food, a behavioural consultancy and vouchers for veterinary care can be offered to foster carers and, to some extent, new owners also.

Since the start of the programme up to the end of September 2020, 3,444 dogs and cats have been successfully rehomed with a return rate below one per cent. We have become members of the EU Dog & Cat Alliance, which is lobbying Brussels for a unification of European legislation for companion animal welfare. A current concern is to end the illegal trading of and smuggling puppies. We also work closely with Dogs Trust Worldwide.

. . . s i r e n n i w And the A MODERN HORR OR S T ORY Since we launched our groundbreaking documentary back in June, there has been one word on everyone’s lips: HOGWOOD. We have received many powerful responses to the film, with both vegans and non-vegans expressing how much the documentary has influenced them. It has gained international recognition from film reviewers, has been rated five stars on one of the biggest streaming platforms, Amazon Prime, and has won multiple awards for exceptional documentary film-making.

Kicking off the awards season, HOGWOOD scooped the Wild Animal Award at the prestigious British Documentary Film Festival.

The award celebrates creative and engaging animal documentaries and HOGWOOD certainly made a strong impression on the judges; “Your documentary handled an incredibly disturbing topic very well and it’s certainly changed a few of our staff’s food shopping habits because of it.”

HOGWOOD went on to win the Best Documentary Short at the London Independent Film Awards and made the official selection for the International Vegan Film Festival.

And there will be more to come!

Reviews from film critics “HOGWOOD is an unflinching documentary which uncovers the shocking conditions under which animals are subjected to in the factory pig farming industry. Gellatley’s commendable determination and hands-on approach are a credit to the film’s acclaim. Director Tony Wardle’s film covers and explores each argument as best it can in its short running time.”

“HOGWOOD: A Modern Horror Story in most respects does live up to its title. The images captured on the farm are horrid, as is the fact that Viva! is not allowed on the property when the authorities show up to investigate. What Viva! discovers is disgusting, and their calls for accountability and change are admirable. Wardle does a bang-up job of laying out all the important players, and the runtime moves quickly.”

“Documentaries like HOGWOOD are raising awareness of the dangers and giving people an insight into the risks such as the transmission of disease from livestock to humans. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when considering the global scale of the problem and the detrimental impact large-scale production is having on animal welfare and the planet’s dwindling natural reserves.”

And has been praised by some famous faces: LEWIS HAMILTON, FORMULA ONE RACING CHAMPION “Please watch this. We need to find compassion in our hearts to see what we are doing to this world”

PETER EGAN, ACTOR AND ACTIVIST “I truly believe HOGWOOD can change the hearts and minds of all who watch it”

PETER SINGER, PHILOSOPHER “If you eat meat, you should really watch HOGWOOD, which will show you in 30 minutes the realities of farming today”

HOGWOOD is now available to stream in over 60 countries and we have added audio descriptions for the blind and visually impaired – all part of our mission to make HOGWOOD as accessible as possible. Better yet, the documentary is included with Amazon Prime subscriptions. So, if you already pay for Amazon Prime, you can watch the film for free.

Watch now on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play Movies.

viva.org.uk 31

Partner of the Month November is World Vegan Month and a time for celebration for Ecotricity as they are the only energy supplier in the world who are certified by both The Vegan Society and Viva! for supplying 100 per cent animal-free energy. They have nominated Viva! as their partner of the month for November.

Animal by-products are used in both anaerobic digestion and biomass energy production – both of which contain by-products of animal farming – dead stock, slaughterhouse waste, fish parts and animal slurry.

By switching to Ecotricity, none of your electricity bill will support factory farming or animal abuse. And even better, if you quote VIVA! when you switch, we’ll get a £60 donation to help us continue our valuable work.

Vegan news, vIews and IntervIews

listen now: viva.org.uk/ podcast Please visit ecotricity.co.uk/viva to switch today 32

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Covid. Brexit.

Oh, and by the way, Earth is dying…

D

Tony Wardle reckons there’s a lot of truth in the old saying ‘there’s none so deaf as those that don’t want to hear’

on’t know about you but I’m absolutely crosseyed with boredom over the relentless news coverage of coronavirus. For eight months we’ve been subjected to blanket reporting and every possible wrinkle has been prodded, delved into and dissected – and most of it is speculation.

It’s only a question of time before the six o’clock news opens with: “Exclusive! Today, we bring you a report from someone who has NEVER BEFORE been interviewed about Covid-19”.

So many newscasts have been self-indulgent, reactive, shallow, breathless, superficial marathons of repetitive opinion designed to fill the time slot and not one editor has seen fit to look at pandemics generally, the science behind them and set out a clear path of how to avoid them in the future – or even how people can slash their risk of being seriously affected by this one. As far as I can see, Viva! is the only organisation to do that (see page 17).

There has been other news but it has been tacked

onto the end of more Covid coverage: “Oh, and by the way. There’s been a peace meeting in Afghanistan, California is burning and Diana Rigg has died!” Is anyone capable of drawing together the latest science to help us understand what’s wrong with the world and what we ought to be doing to save ourselves? It seems not because believe me, there’s been an avalanche of the stuff and its cumulative warning is – well – terrifying.

Let’s start with those fires in California and Oregon.

Between them, these states have over 50 million acres of forest and the fires are widespread. There are two possible reasons. The first could be the near decade of drought and increasing temperatures caused by global warming – that’s the scientific view.

Or there’s Mr Trump’s view – these largely Democratic states are lazy, indolent good-for-nothings that simply can’t be bothered to rake their forest floors. With 78,000 square miles to go at, more than half the size of England, that should provide plenty of work experience. 

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I’m not sure that Trump even knows where the Antarctic is but there’s trouble there, too, according to the journal Science. There-quarters of the continent is made up of floating ice sheets that protect the landbound glaciers and at the moment they’re looking utterly beautiful, covered in thousands of brilliant, sparklingly-blue lakes. The effect is far from beautiful, however, as the lakes’ darker colour soaks up solar heat and melts the surface ice while sinking through it to create warm, underground rivers that have a similar effect on the bottom of the ice.

This ice melt has the propensity to raise sea levels across the globe. By how much? The science journals Nature and Scientific American both raise cautionary fingers, saying that 400,000 years ago (and, yes, they can tell things like this through ice core ‘diaries’ and the like) a chunk of ice the size of Arizona collapsed into the ocean and raised sea levels by three metres – at a time when global warming was less severe than it is now.

Not to be outdone, the Arctic at the other pole has broken its annual melting record, too. Sea ice expands with winter and melts with summer but this year, the ice was disappearing at a rate of 56,400 square miles a day compared with its typical rate of 33,000 square miles. It is melting faster than it can refreeze (National Snow and Ice Data Centre). Satellites have never seen so little ice in July.

The Siberian Arctic coast has been hit hardest with unusually hot and sunny conditions parked over it, with ground temperatures hitting a staggering 37.7ºC at the town of Verkhoyansk; that’s hot for my back garden let alone Siberia. NASA’s Grace satellite has recorded that every corner of the Greenland ice sheet is melting and that the numbers ‘are enormous’. Worse than that, glaciers are melting across the entire planet and ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s and 400,000 people will be at risk from sea level rises by the end of the century – and that’s just from the Arctic.

400,000 people will be at risk from sea level rises by the end of the century

To add to the woes, yet more wildfires are raging both inside and outside the Arctic circle but this time across vast tracts of Alaska, Canada and Greenland as well as Siberia, which alone has over 100. They’re not unknown in the summer but again it’s the scale, intensity, spread and persistence that screams out loud that something is seriously wrong. To make matters worse, as the Arctic melts, millions of tonnes of methane and carbon are released into the atmosphere. And from our government? Nothing!

Also hitting the headlines has been immigration.

Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has no sympathy with those escaping conflict or destitution despite her own parents having been granted asylum in the UK from Uganda.

It’s no surprise that the majority of asylum seekers are from countries where we have flexed our military muscles over recent years – invading Afganistan, Kuwait and Iraq, bombing Libya and Syria and actively supporting Saudi Arabia’s appalling war against Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East. Are we interfering there for humanitarian reasons? Don’t kid yourself, we’re there because the Middle East is home to 50 per cent of the world’s oil reserves and 40 per cent of its natural gas deposits and both are cheaply and easily accessible. While the world is collapsing from over consumption, we’re determined to keep on producing the stuff for them to consume.

We are there so we can continue to cosy up to one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, Saudi, sell it shed loads of high-tech armaments and ensure our preferential status for oil supplies. This bit of foreign policy making elevates cynicism to celestial levels. Saudi is not only sickeningly oppressive, its vicious branch of Islam – Wahhabism – provided the ideological compass for ISIS while senior Saudis helped to fund it. We bombard ISIS while still toadying to Saudi: “Here’s your air to ground missiles and please can we have a bit more oil?” We silence our ears, blind our eyes to the human tragedies and environmental collapse that accompany our hypocrisy.

I’m not political point scoring but issuing a very serious warning. The UK and US invasion of Iraq saw 250,000 Iraqi refugees flock to Syria at the very point when the worst drought in its history resulted in catastrophic crop failures. Some 1.5 million farmers and peasants flooded into the already overcrowded cities and, according to the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this fed directly into

Continued on page 38

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www.allaboutgreens.co.uk

viva.org.uk 35

… n h o J Dear

An unexpected and telling encounter with a stranger

BY ANON

wo years ago, I was working on an undercover investigation, creating powerful videos from hour after hour of sickening farm footage and trying to obtain an exclusive media story. With no action from industry bodies or the supermarkets involved, we had hit a brick wall with this campaign. I felt frustrated and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of animal suffering in our world that this farm typified.

The tipping point came with receipt of a hostile letter from a TV journalist who had been following the investigation and had interviewed the farm owner, who not only defended his actions but had implied that the investigators were harassing him. The irony of a programme which claimed to expose the truth but which reinforced the lies was not lost on me.

Going home that night, I was exasperated and filled with anger, most of it directed against the farm owner. I yelled, I cried, I ranted and felt overwhelmed by helplessness. The next day I awoke and my view of the world was stark – it was a terrible place, filled with terrible people. I saw everything in black and white; people saved animals or they killed them; people were either good or evil; people were either on my side or in

T

my way and there was no room for nuance or excuses.

I realised that my resentment had been building for years and I was unhappy – exhausted by my own negativity. Those close to me were worried and encouraged me to seek help and so I reached out to my GP who referred me to a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) mindfulness course.

Going to my first session, I felt apprehensive. Sitting in a circle of strangers, closing my eyes, lying on the floor and focusing on my breath and body felt awkward. It was new and uncomfortable and, to make matters worse, I wasn’t very good at it! My mind would wander and I had flashbacks to the investigation footage and the farm owner and I was filled with hate.

Eventually, however, with time, I began to control these disturbing thoughts.

I began looking forward to my weekly class and enjoyed getting to know the group. I particularly clicked with a man I’ll call John. We were from very different backgrounds, different age groups and had different reasons to be there.

John was struggling with angry outbursts, exacerbated by his job. He owned a family-run business, worked closely with his brothers and family tensions contributed to his stress. To make matters worse, it was a busy time of year, he was working long hours and would come home tired and emotionally haggard. I could see how physically tense he was and in the first session, he sat with fists clenched, shoulders hunched, staring at the floor.

Despite our differences we found common ground Despite our differences we found common ground and partnered each other every week. Over time, we became more open and trusting, confiding in each other and admitting things that we had never before acknowledged even to ourselves. John took the course seriously, worked hard at it and began to change – he became warmer, more honest, open and receptive. He just seemed like a lighter person and I was happy for him – I wanted him to succeed.

Seeing John benefit so much from the course encouraged me to work harder and I, in turn, became less angry and anxious. Although occasionally the farm owner and the investigation images would cloud my mind and I would feel that hot anger begin to rise again, I learned to focus on my breath and body and acknowledged that these thoughts didn’t control me.

In the last session of the course, we spoke about kindness. We had to close our eyes and repeat some phrases in our mind – “May I be safe and free from

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suffering. May I be happy and healthy. May I have ease of being”. We were encouraged to imagine a circle of kindness around us and then extend this kindness to everyone in the room, then everyone in the street, then everyone in the city. The circle was to expand bigger and bigger until it became all-consuming. I sat there in that room and wished it for myself. I wished it for John, I wished it for everyone in the room, and I took a few quiet moments to wish it for the animals too.

Afterwards, we were asked to reflect on each other’s progress and recount our observations aloud. I told John that I thought he was a good man who cared deeply about his family. I told him I admired his determination and was proud to see how he had grown. John told me that he thought I was a passionate person who cared deeply about my work. He could tell that I wanted to make a positive impact on the world and thought that I would.

As we said our goodbyes and wished each other well, we talked about our plans for Christmas, which was just a few days away.

“It’s a busy time for me” John said, “you know, being a butcher.”

It felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I couldn’t believe that the kind, honest man standing in front of me, the person that I had got to know so well, was a butcher. He was directly involved in an industry which I despised. He profited from the slaughter of animals and spent each day butchering their bodies. And then it occurred to me – all I’d told him was that I worked in the charity sector but hadn’t mentioned campaigning for animals, I hadn’t mentioned veganism. He was a butcher and I was a vegan campaigner and we had inadvertently become friends. And then he was gone.

Over Christmas, I practiced my mindfulness and the challenge was to choose someone I had difficulties with and wish them well. I didn’t have to feel warmth or friendship towards them but just show positive intentions. It had to be the person who had triggered this whole journey, the person I had felt anger towards, who I most certainly did not wish well – the farm owner. As I imagined him in my mind, tears pricked my eyes and I saw flashes of those poor animals suffering. I recalled the frustration, the despair, the hatred and anger I’d felt – and then I thought about John and the serendipitous friendship we had formed. And I let it go.

I wished John well. I wished the farm owner well. But most of all, I wished myself well.

There is no good and evil, there is only people – and people are complicated and people can change. The farm owner, like me and like John, is a person with his own hopes and fears, his own desires to be happy. It is not my place to judge people, to decide that they are fundamentally evil and shun them from society. They were most likely conditioned from birth to see animals as food and to treat them like objects. This belief is widespread and so intricately entwined with our societal norms that many people struggle to relate to farmed animals – a far cry from my own liberal vegetarian upbringing and the strong vegan community I now surround myself with.

Although I do not agree with, nor condone the actions and behaviour of the farm owner. And although I will continue to dedicate my life to ending animal

It is not the farm owner himself that I despise agriculture, it is not the farm owner himself that I despise but the industry and the cruelty that he represents.

My anger would not save those animals, my despair would not create a vegan world and my hatred did not make me a happier person. So I let it go. And I encourage you to do the same.

viva.org.uk 37

Continued from page 34 the popular uprising against President Asad, from which everything else flowed. More than six million people have now fled Syria and this is a harbinger – mass migrations of desperate people are set to become commonplace all over the globe.

Yes, climate change is the most urgent of several overwhelmingly urgent environmental catastrophes – yes catastrophes – and livestock for meat and dairy are the second largest source of greenhouse gases. But their impact on almost every other aspect of environmental collapse is much greater – they are the primary cause or a leading cause of almost all of them, including being the main cause of species extinction.

The journal Nature recently published a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying that eschewing all animal products was three times more effective at reducing global warming than eating just moderate amounts of meat. And yet this ‘moderate’ message is the one that’s bouncing around the halls of the influential global bodies and big environmental groups and it’s simply not enough.

The IPCC then says “We don’t want to tell people what to eat but it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat.” Why aren’t they telling people what to eat? This mealy-mouthed approach is part of the problem when you consider what’s happening to the world. According to research in the Environmental Sciences journal, there is no doubt that we have entered the sixth mass extinction – the Anthropocene – and this is what’s happening.

Around 25 per cent of animals and plants are now threatened, with a rapid decline in insect populations.

A million species now face extinction within decades, a rate of destruction tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years.

“We have documented a really unprecedented decline in biodiversity and nature, this is completely different to anything we’ve seen in human history in terms of the rate of decline and the scale of the threat,” says Dr Kate Brauman, University of Minnesota.

Soils are being degraded as never before, which has reduced the productivity of Earth’s land surfaces by 23 per cent. Plastic pollution has increased ten-fold since 1980 and every year we dump up to 400 million tonnes of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes into the world’s waterways and oceans. Compared to the start of the 20th century, just five per cent of trawler-

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Eating a vegan diet could be the “single biggest way” to reduce your environmental impact caught fish populations remain. Just as depressing is the fact that between 1980 and 2000, one million hectares of tropical forest was lost – an area the size of China – most of it to create grazing for cattle and to grow animal fodder. And from our government? Nothing!

Apart from the odd news report when a study is published, most of our newspapers have actively opposed ‘scare-mongering’ about these issues because their billionaire owners know that remedying them will require a massive transition from consumption to conservation and that will devastate their global investments.

For this reason, Extinction Rebellion mounted a blockade of the Daily Mail’s Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper print works to expose their and the government’s refusal to act on the environmental catastrophes that are unfolding.

Again, Home Secretary Priti Patel leapt upon her moral hobby horse to brand Extinction Rebellion “criminals” who threaten the UK’s way of life. She clearly has a blind spot about her own morality of promoting tobacco and alcohol when she worked for the PR company, Weber Shandwick. Or when she was forced to resign as International Development Secretary for holding 12 secret meetings with Israeli ministers in an attempt to get a chunk of the international development budget transferred to the Israeli army – one of the most powerful in the world – and then lying about it.

I doubt she or anyone else in the cabinet has any interest in a new report from New York University, published in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals, Nature Sustainability. It found that going vegan would free up to seven million square kilometres and remove 16 years of CO² from the atmosphere – equivalent to all the fossil fuel burnt during that period.

This, of course, follows the report from Oxford University’s DTP Environment Centre that stated eating a vegan diet could be the “single biggest way” to reduce your environmental impact on Earth. Researchers found that cutting out meat and dairy products could reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73 per cent.

So, we know the facts – what about the action? Hello!

Is there anyone listening?

V-Biz

The latest businesses to join our Supporters’ Discount Scheme or to carry a Viva! Vegan Symbol. Join Viva! to get these great discounts at viva.org.uk/join To claim your discounts at shops, take along your Supporters’ card

Viva! Supporter’s Discount Here viva.org.uk

Jungle Culture This offers gorgeous organic coconut bowls, bamboo cutlery and bamboo razors and straws. All are made from sustainable materials and innovatively crafted by leading British designers and Asian artisans.

Jungle Culture was created to remedy the damage that disposable items have on our environment as currently 500 million plastic straws are still discarded each year! Jungle Culture champions fair treatment for their workers, high-quality production standards and 100 per cent organic manufacturing. Nothing puts a strain on the planet and every sale benefits local communities. jungleculture.eco 20% DISCOUNT WITH CODE

Friendly Turtle Friendly Turtle is a lovely online shop full of zero-waste and plastic-free goodies!

I guarantee it’ll be your new one-stop shop for ethical and eco-friendly essentials. Their sustainable alternatives include coffee cups, lunchboxes, water bottles, toiletries, skincare and more. All of these products are made with natural ingredients and most are organically grown. Their products are never tested on animals and 95 per cent of them are vegan – just watch out for a couple containing beeswax! friendlyturtle.com 10% DISCOUNT WITH CODE ‘MYVEGANCOUPON’

Viva! is proud to work with like-minded people to promote a cruelty-free lifestyle and bring you the latest info on vegan products and services – plus amazing discounts

Olivado

Since launching in 2000, the Olivado journey has gone from humble beginnings in a small New Zealand town to having their oils enjoyed by thousands of budding chefs around the world.

Olivado are the pioneers of the cold-pressed extraction method for extra virgin avocado oil, which they claim results in the healthiest, tastiest and purest avocado oil on the market. They also sell cold-pressed extra virgin macadamia nut oil, extra virgin coconut oil, extra virgin sesame oil and many more – all with their own unique set of nutritional benefits. All of Olivado’s products are produced to the highest quality and made sustainably, with a caring commitment to farmers and the planet. olivado.com 15% DISCOUNT WITH CODE ‘VIVA!15!’

Supernature Each Supernature product is lovingly made with only four or five organic ingredients. The award-winning snack range is all vegan friendly and contains no gluten, no refined sugar and no hidden nasties!

Supernature really value every ingredient which goes into their products as all are properly cultivated and carefully selected to produce the tastiest chocolate snacks around! Get your hands on Peanut Butter Cups, Hazelnut Clusters, Chocolate Covered Hazelnuts and Raspberry Chocolate Raisins. supernature.com 15% DISCOUNT WITH CODE ‘VIVA10’

Want to partner with Viva! to offer your vegan products and services to new audiences? See viva.org.uk/resources/businesses or email business@viva.org.uk viva.org.uk 39

lifestyle

e s e e h C Vtheegcoaminng of age Emily Coster wields her cheese knife to slice into some super surprises

People say the hardest part about being vegan is giving up cheese but vegan cheese has come a long way since then and now tastes incredible! There are so many varieties these days that choosing delicious cruelty-free cheeses is a doddle!

I’ve chosen a few of my favourites, which you can enjoy all year round but especially around Christmas time!

I Am Nut Ok: Producer’s Choice Sample Set The I Am Nut Ok team set out to make a mouth-watering and addictive vegan cheese range – and they’ve succeeded. Using inventive visual and flavour combinations, it satisfies the taste buds in a way any delicious food should. The team have created Bluffalo Notzzarella, Rigotta – Vegan Ricotta in garlic oil, Nerominded – black truffle and one of my favourites, Smokeydokey – smoky and spicy cream cheeses with comical names to get around the food industry’s restrictions on using recognised cheese names.

This bundle contains six different items from their range and is a great way to sample I Am Nut Ok’s products – as well as a great gift to a loved one. RRP £35.00 iamnutok.com

Food by Sumear: Cheese Tasting Box Sumear specialises in hard vegan and long-aged cheeses! He creates authentic vegan cheese using his experience and techniques as an ex-dairy cheesemaker. Sumear creates the cultures from scratch and understands the science of cheese making, resulting in the most delectable, wellrounded flavoured cheeses! All are free from soya, miso and even from nutritional yeast. The selection box changes every month so it’s worth keeping an eye out to make sure you get your favourite flavour. The box contains four cheeses, perfect for a taste trial. £32.00 foodbysumear.co.uk

Tyne Chease: Selection Box Tyne Chease is handmade in the North East of England using techniques inspired by traditional methods. The entire range is authentically cultured and matured and is delicious! Their chease is perfect to pair with the finest wines and could be the feature of any cheeseboard you present to your friends and family. In this selection box you will receive ten mini cheases, including: Original, Dill, Garlic, Ethiopian Spice, Truffle, Chives, Za’atar Spice, Sundried Tomato, Pink Peppercorn and Smoked. A great way to try the options and it is presented in a cute box – perfect for a present this Christmas.

RRP £18.95 tynechease.com

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Violife: Epic Christmas Platter Back again in time for the holidays, the Violife dairy-free platter – this time with two different options. Choose from a Blu Wedge, Cranberry After Dinner and Mature Cheddar flavour block platter; or the Epic Christmas platter containing Mature, Smoked and Garlic & Chilli flavour cheeses.

Violife is an award-winning, delicious vegan alternative to dairy cheese, being dairyand lactose-free and contains no GMOs, gluten, nuts, soya, preservatives or cholesterol.

These essential Christmas platters are the perfect treat to round off a plant-based Christmas feast! Serve with cheeseboard classics such as grapes and crackers and no one will be any the wiser.

You can buy the Violife Christmas Dairy-Free Platter from most supermarkets for £5.50 violifefoods.com

Bath Culture House: Cultured Soft Cashew Chease Selection Box Hand made in Somerset, these vegan cheeses are made using a natural fermentation process. Bath Culture House also make kombucha, kimchi and sauerkraut – all perfect for pairing with their cheases.

Sold all over the UK, they really are worth tasting for one reason – they’re scrumptious!

All are soft cheeses made using nuts, perfect for spreading on biscuits or freshly baked breads!

The selection box includes four (120g) cheases: Smoked & Chipotle Chilli, Garlic & Herb, Sumac & Cumin and Activated Charcoal. £22.00 bathculturehouse.com

Applewood: Vegan Festive Selection Just in time for Christmas, Norseland, the brand behind Applewood Vegan cheese, are bringing out a vegan cheeseboard!

The selection features three brand new vegan cheeses, beside the awardwinning Applewood one. New flavours include Ilchester Melting Mature Cheddar Vegan, Ilchester Blue Vegan Cheese Alternative (with blue spirulina vein) and Mexicana Vegan Spicy Cheese.

The range is made with a coconut oil base and is fortified with vitamin B12 and calcium. The company claims the Vegan Cheeseboard tastes as good as the dairy cheese version but has fewer calories, less salt and less cruelty (actually, that last benefit was added by me).

RRP to be confirmed at a later date and will be available to buy from most supermarkets.

Kinda Co: The Kinda Care Package Kinda Co have made a bumper care package that includes their bestselling cheeses along with a handpicked selection of their other favourite products, made by fellow small businesses.

These cheeses, biscuits and other tasty treats from these female-founded food businesses are a great gift option for self-care indulgence as the package contains some beauties: Farmhouse Block, Garlic & Herb Block, Spirulina Blue Block, Nacho Dip, Faux Lox & Dill Creamy Spread, Ma Baker Buckwheat Crackers, Single Variety Co. Chilli Jam – choose your spice level: Jalapeño (hot) or Fireflame (mild) and Fix8 Triple Ginger Kombucha. £45.00 shopkindaco.com

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Flat out to stop

Flat House Leicester street action shows footage to shocked shoppers

BY WILL SORFLATEN, VIVA! CAMPAIGNER t happens all over Britain – horror taking place on the doorstep of huge populations and they know nothing about it. We were determined that the people of Leicester would know of the appalling suffering that was taking place at Flat House farm, just outside the city, near Lutterworth.

Our campaigns team had been unable to reach out to people in person for months and were itching to get back into one-to-one conversations, particularly because of the inexcusable cruelty that was happening at Flat House. We wanted to kill the notion that buying local

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E FLAT HOUS , M R A F RSHIRE LEICESTE FLAT HOUSE FARM, LEICESTERSHIRE

D E S O P X E EXPOSED EXPOS

FLAT HO USE FARM, LEICESTE RSH

pigs left to film, starving Daily Mail: ‘On at farm’ turn cannibal

was necessarily a good thing; that ‘local pork’ did not mean ‘kind pork’.

With our large-screen TV, dedicated Flat House farm leaflets and a fantastic turnout of volunteers, we set up in the city centre in collaboration with Leicester Animal Rights and Leicestershire Animal Save, two brilliant groups who do much for animals in their local area. We were also joined by Wendy Turner Webster, patron of Viva!, and her team who helped to make the day even more effective. Wendy could attest to the abject cruelty at the farm as she had been inside the place and viewed it for herself.

Local shoppers were disgusted by what

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they saw on our big TV screen and were shocked that it was happening just 12 miles from where they were standing. Many had already seen the saturation news coverage in local press, the Daily Mail and on BBC TV news but these news sources had left out the worst images as being too upsetting to show. When confronted with the reality, people were horrified.

Leaflets flew out in their hundreds and many people wanted to know more about our V7 vegan meal plan (see page 15) – our new app and website making it as easy for them to explore veganism as possible.

After an eight-month absence from street action, the day was full of conversations. And we had a second prong to our outreach with a video van touring the streets of Leicester for the whole day, showing the Flat House footage and providing links to our website. After the event, we received a gratifying email. A bus driver had spotted our video van while on his route and read about our investigation when he got home. “It’s wrong, it’s cruel and it’s not gonna be on my conscience. Love what Viva! is doing. Top work”. And so began his, and many other people’s, vegan journeys.

Covid-19 hasn’t stopped us – when we can’t talk to people in person we use social media and other digital outlets. And so it will continue. The Harborough Mail made sure that thousands more local people knew of our activities with a large news report.

You can view our new film, The Flat House Factory, at viva.org.uk/eff viva.org.uk 43

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Viva!’s media blitz for the animals

BY TONY WARDLE, EDITOR

Queen of the Podcasts Having watched Hogwood – a modern horror story on Amazon USA, and being greatly impacted by it (‘it was brilliant – compelling’), the hosts of New York based Our Henhouse did a long podcast interview with Juliet.

But that was only the start, with five others having been recorded

by Juliet, one with the College of Naturopathic Medicine on health and going vegan; the others on animals and mostly about Hogwood.

Social Media Reach As the circulations of almost every newspaper continue to decline, social media is exploding as a means of communication – and it’s free of the prejudiced hand of media barons such as Murdoch. We have used a mixture of Facebook and Instagram to get our message out there in targeted ads on the pandemic, Hogwood and our Vegan Recipe Club while two new superb short video ads have clocked up huge viewing figures – one entitled The Cost of Lockdown and the other, Confined in Lockdown.

You can view them for yourself on YouTube: l The Cost of Lockdown youtube.com/watch?v=qjzCtAiZ4wI l Confined in Lockdown youtube.com/watch?v=zI7WXO8-Qck

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Calvesley Farm – Eviction Pending

In the last issue of Viva!life we ran yet another exposé of suffering on a Red Tractor approved farm, this one being Calvesley farm. I didn’t have space at that late stage of production to run the media coverage that resulted and so here it is. The reason coverage is so important is that we know millions of people see it and it will persuade many of them to reconsider what they eat and drink. Our constant media exposés are driving the vegan revolution ever forward.

At Calvesley, Viva!’s Head of Investigations, Lex Rigby, met with Trading Standards and they took away with them all the unedited footage to ‘assist their investigation’. We have heard nothing further from them – but then we never do! However, the Yattendon Estate, on whose land the farm is a tenant, have launched legal proceedings in an attempt to evict them. At the moment, the farm is still operating as normal but the Estate have stated that closure of the farm is a priority.

The killer media coverage was in the Daily Mail where our graphic imagery was used and the editorial pulled no punches. Local press also gave the story big coverage – Newbury Today, Basingstoke Gazette, Oxford Mail, Wantage and Grove Herald and the Reading Chronical.

The Ecologist also did a big piece as did the London Economic, Plant Based News, Vegan food and Living and Totally Vegan Buzz.

Independent Op Ed

Supreme Interview I was interviewed for 30 minutes at our offices by Supreme Master TV on Hogwood and all things vegan. To Brits and their penchant for understatement, the name can raise an eyebrow. It is a spiritual organisation with an estimated two million followers across the world that was started by a Vietnamese woman called Ching Hai, who now operates out of Taiwan. She is known by her supporters as the Supreme Master. The organisation is probably better known for the hundreds of low-priced vegan restaurants she has inspired globally under the name Loving Hut. They carry the motto Be Vegan – Make Peace.

The interview will be transmitted on cable channels in many countries.

Again Juliet was in the frame when she wrote an op ed for the Independent – and, as you would expect, pulled no punches saying that the only solution to factory farming is to go vegan.

Hogwood Carry On We are still receiving numerous reviews, interviews and comments on our dramatic documentary, Hogwood – a modern horror story.

Head of Investigations, Lex Rigby did a superb piece on Farming Today while Peter Singer, the world-famous Australian moral philosopher and author of the seminal work, Animal Liberation, threw his weight behind the film.

Health – Write On Our health team of Dr Justine Butler and Veronika Charvátová continue to provide a string of articles for the vegan press on a variety of topics, from gut health to raising vegan children and from individual minerals and nutrients to herbs and antioxidants.

Look on our website at Viva!

Health for a virtual library of heath articles – and all of them entirely evidence based!

Hob Nobbing with the Big Wigs The Parliamentary Review carries glowing recommendations from industry leaders and politicians – from May to Blair, Clegg to Gove and my mentioning them in no way infers approval but… This occasional publication is sent to over 500,000 ‘leading business executives and policy makers’ and Viva! was in there with three full pages that spelt out clearly the work we do and why we do it. Hopefully a few well-groomed eyebrows will have been raised about the way animals are treated on UK farms.

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The animals we fail to see

BY KIM WILLIS

Over the course of a 20-year career documenting the often invisible lives of animals, Jo-Anne McArthur has necessarily cast a close eye over the landscape of animals in photojournalism.

Animal photographers work incredibly hard, often on difficult investigations globally, and Jo-Anne knew there was a growing collective of strong, political documentary work about hidden animals and that inspired her to collate these projects into one historic source. The outcome is a book called HIDDEN that brings together 38 contributing photographers who have recorded our conflict with non-human animals in pictures.

Working with co-creator Keith Wilson, the project was crowdfunded and the goal of $65,000 (£50,000) was raised in 72 hours earlier this year. HIDDEN will be available from Amazon from November 17, 2020, and from January 2021 will be exhibited in Berlin at f3 – Freiraum für Fotografie (Space for Photography), Waldemarstraße 17, 10179 Berlin. Other exhibitions of HIDDEN will be announced soon at weanimalsmedia.org.

“The photographs are of the animals we humans have a close relationship with, yet fail to see”, says Jo-Anne.

“The animals we eat and wear, use in research and entertainment.” The hope is that the collection of unflinching, poignant photographs will serve as a call to action. “The book is proof of what is happening and what should never happen again. But what I find most exciting about HIDDEN is not the book itself but that it’s a flag planted on animal photojournalism. This is what it is. This is what we do and it’s important. It’s a global conversation. It’s always heartbreaking to document but we photojournalists are doing what we do best: bearing witness so that others can see. Seeing is one step towards change.”

Kim Willis is a vegan journalist and you can follow her on Instagram @lunacyofink, or visit thisveganlife.co.uk 46

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Joan de la Malla’s image is of a macaque dressed up and performing a street show known locally as Topeng Monyet and was taken in Indonesia in 2017

Andrew Skowron’s image was taken on a fox farm in Goliszów, Poland, as part of an exposé carried out by the campaigning organisations, Otwarte Klatki and Ekostraz.

Around 60 neglected foxes and a couple of dogs were found in cages. The dogs and two foxes were rescued and the farm was shut down as a result of the exposé. Legal proceedings for animal cruelty are pending

Top far left: Konrad Lozinski’s image of broiler chickens was taken in Poland in 2019. After suffocating the weak or disabled ones, workers load broiler chicks on to trucks that will transport them to factory farms Top centre: Aitor Garmendia’s image of Tima the bear was taken in Spain in 2016 at the Circo Holiday. Tima has been exploited for numerous controversial television events and commercials Top right: Jo-Anne McArthur’s image of ducks and geese was taken in Taiwan in 2019. The birds were unloaded from transport trucks and corralled for slaughter. It was early morning so the kill floor wasn’t active but one bird can just be seen in the middle distance hanging from the overhead rack where she remained, alive and flapping, for a long time Left: Bridget Laudien’s image of giraffes was taken in New Jersey, US, in 2010. They are in their winter enclosure at the Bronx Zoo. Bridget has spent 12 years documenting animals in captivity in zoos and aquariums for an ongoing project entitled Lifers

Selene Magnolia’s image of a dead pig in a bin was taken in Denmark in 2019.

Photographed outside a pig farm, there are other dead pigs in the bins

Kelly Guerin’s image of pigs wading through septic flood waters was taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, US, in September 2018. Farms across North Carolina raise over nine million pigs a year but when the hurricane hit, millions of animals were left trapped in barns and sheds as the farmers evacuated. These pigs escaped and were found by Kelly and her team three days after Florence passed

To buy HIDDEN: weanimalsmedia.org/our-work/buy-books-and-prints Follow WeAnimals across social media @weanimals viva.org.uk 47

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Please help promote compassionate living

Vitamin D Supplements – yes or no?

DR JUSTINE BUTLER, SENIOR RESEARCHER & WRITER, VIVA! HEALTH

uring lockdown, Public Health England (PHE) said that everyone should consider taking 10 micrograms of vitamin D a day to help keep their bones and muscles healthy. The reason was because our skin produces vitamin D in response to sunlight and many people were staying inside and sunless most of the time. Previously, they had recommended a supplement during the winter months only. The truth is, we know that vitamin D has benefits beyond bone health and can protect against acute respiratory infections – which is why some scientists are now suggesting that it may reduce the risk of complications in people with Covid-19.

Covid-19 is not the great leveller as was suggested at the start of this pandemic. Older people have a much higher risk of suffering severe symptoms and death than younger people – the Office for National Statistics (ONS) says that almost 90 per cent of Covid-19-related deaths have been among people aged 65 and over. Men have a higher risk than women and black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people have a higher risk than white ethnic groups. People with obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease are also more likely to suffer severe symptoms. Vegans have a lower risk of all these diseases and a varied, vegan diet can help both prevent and reverse many of them in those who do have them.

One reason older people fare worse is that their immune function declines with age but – and here’s the interesting point – they are also more likely to suffer from vitamin D deficiency. One European study that looked at vitamin D in the elderly found surprisingly low levels in Spain and Italy. Could it be that in these sunny countries, elderly people prefer to remain in the shade? Higher levels of vitamin D were seen in Nordic countries but as a consequence of supplements and widespread fortification of foods. Spain and Italy were hit hard by Covid-19 while the Nordic region (except Sweden which did not impose a compulsory lockdown) experienced lower death rates. It’s hard to say what role, if any, vitamin D played – but scientists are watching.

D

The reason men are more affected than women may be because women have stronger immune systems as some immunity genes are located on the X chromosome, of which women have two. Men are also more like to suffer from obesity, high blood pressure and so on, even though you can prevent and reverse many of these problems with a healthy vegan diet.

According to the ONS (Office for National Statistics), black people in England and Wales are more than four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than white people. There are some socioeconomic factors at work here and Public Health England says that BAME communities are more likely to live in urban areas, overcrowded households, deprived areas and have jobs exposing them to a higher risk. The highest death rates, says the ONS, have occurred among the lowest-paid workers – construction workers, security guards, cleaners, nurses, care workers, bus drivers, shelf stackers and shopkeepers. However, the ONS says that this does not fully explain the disparity.

Vitamin D plays an important role in regulating the immune system In the UK, BAME people also have higher rates of vitamin D deficiency because the skin pigment melanin lowers the body’s ability to make it from sunshine. A 20082012 UK government survey found that one in five white adults had low vitamin D levels compared to more than a half of BAME people. Obese people also tend to have lower levels so the question is – could these facts be related?

Vitamin D plays an important role in regulating the immune system so it follows that it may well affect Covid-19 risk. Research suggests it may reduce survival and reproduction rates of the virus and lower the risk of the infamous ‘cytokine storm’ that has led to many deaths – when the body’s immune system goes awry and produces a storm of deadly proteins called cytokines. 

viva.org.uk 49

The virus also disrupts the activity of a protein called ACE2 in the lungs while vitamin D has the opposite effect. More research is needed to work out just how important is the relationship between vitamin D and Covid-19 but early work suggests it is important.

Another function of vitamin D is to help regulate levels of calcium and phosphate in our bodies, helping to keep our bones, teeth and muscles healthy. Older people who don’t get enough vitamin D may develop weaker muscles and be more prone to falls. It may also protect against depression, some cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease and other chronic diseases. Again, more research is needed but it is pretty important.

During the autumn and winter months, a daily supplement may be required, regardless of diet Vitamin D is found in only a few foods: fatty fish, liver and egg yolks but only if the chickens have been fed vitamin D. These foods also, of course, contain cholesterol, saturated fat and other undesirable substances. The best sources include vitamin D-fortified plant-based milks, vegetable margarines, vegan breakfast cereals and vitamin D mushrooms exposed to sunlight for long enough to trigger vitamin D production – it’s usually labelled on the packaging. Having said that, the average UK intake from food is just 2-4 micrograms a day, much lower than the 10 micrograms recommended.

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Here in the UK, from late March or early April to the end of September, we can get most of the vitamin D we need by exposing our arms, hands or lower legs to the ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation in sunlight. The weaker the sunlight, or the darker your skin, the more exposure you need but take care not to burn as excessive exposure is the main cause of skin cancer, including melanoma, the fastest-rising cancer in the UK. Sunblock and glass both block production of the vitamin and sunbeds are not recommended as they emit UVA radiation that causes skin cancer and does not contribute to vitamin D production.

The amount of UVB in sunlight varies greatly with the seasons, latitude and time of day. Between October and early March, sunlight in the UK is too weak for us to make sufficient vitamin D. It follows that during the autumn and winter months, a daily supplement may be required, regardless of diet. People who are housebound or in care homes, those who cover up or wear sunblock, and BAME people, may need a supplement all year round.

Vitamin D is essential for good bone health and extremely low levels are linked to rickets in children and osteoporosis in adults. There are two types of supplements – vitamins D2 and D3. D2 is always vegan whereas D3 is usually extracted from the lanolin in sheep’s wool but may also be obtained from algae or mushrooms. Taking too much can be harmful and the government reckons you shouldn’t take more than 100 micrograms a day.

Some doctors are recommending vitamin D supplementation for older people, especially those in care homes and those who are critically ill as a strategy for improving their chances of surviving Covid-19.

As winter approaches, it might be wise to invest in a good quality, vegan supplement to ensure you get your 10 micrograms a day.

Continued from page 9 “It sounds exciting but it was arduous, the Thunder did everything to shake us off. It headed into pack ice and we had to follow; if it saw a squall, it would steer straight for it; and sometimes it would just sit there, motionless, on a calm sea for as long as 10 days, clearly hoping we would run out of supplies – but we waited.”

“The chase covered some 10,500 kilometres and finally came to an end off West Africa, when the skipper of the Thunder realised the game was up and scuttled his boat but there was no escape. He and both chief and second engineers were arrested and charged in Sao Tome.

A different Sea Shepherd vessel navigated to where the Thunder had jettisoned her nets, found them and hauled them aboard, to prevent them continuing to catch and kill fish. They were 72km long – so much netting, so much weight that our vessel was in danger of capsizing”.

Lex also worked on campaigns to arrest illegal fishermen off the West African coast, working with the coastguards of individual countries. “These seas are a biodiversity hot spot: you see superpods of dolphin more than a thousand strong, huge populations of various shark species and a whole range of other aquatic life”.

”You cannot believe the scale of the fishing”

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It is this biodiversity that has attracted fishing fleets from all over but particularly Spain, France and China. Some West African countries have tried to control the exploitation by licencing boats and trying to control what they catch.

“You cannot believe the scale of the fishing – as many as 60 boats operating in a small area with nets of two kilometres, scooping up entire schools of fish and they do it several times a day, day after day.

“There are numerous vessels operating without a licence or simply cheating. Skippers are supposed to log their bycatch, for example, and one, for a period of several days, had put in his log that four sharks had been accidentally caught. We had observed him and in just a single day he had caught and killed more than 110 sharks.”

After nearly seven years at sea, Lex decided it was time for a more normal life and came ashore to be Viva!’s Head of Investigations (normal???) but what times, what experiences.

“Most seafarers never experience collisions; witness ships sinking; carry out evasive manoeuvres to avoid propfouling lines or have to duck to avoid projectiles flung at them from harpoon ships; and they never need to hang over the side off the monkey deck to re-weld navigation lights damaged in violent collisions. Well, I’ve done it all.

“During my time as a Sea Shepherd crew member, I led Gabonese and Liberian boarding parties in patrolling their waters for illegal fishing and drove pods of pilot whales away from the Faroe Islands and back to the safety of open water, as well as participating in three Southern Ocean whale defence campaigns”.

Sea Shepherd’s anti-whaling campaigns resulted in the lives of over 6,000 whales being saved as Japan was incapable of meeting its declared quota of kills.

Eventually, it had had enough and abandoned whaling in the Southern Ocean entirely.

“The experiences I have had are vivid, unique and will live with me forever. I am extremely proud of my time at sea”.

And so you should be, Lex Rigby, and so you should!

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l Explore My Vegan Town and discover your new favourite places to eat, stay and shop! l PLUS search for vegan-friendly services, local groups and fun days out!

In collaboration with Viva! members, business friends and our expert team of eaters, shoppers and day-trippers, My Vegan Town is an amazing, free, vegan directory that brings the cruelty-free community together. Whether you’re looking for a vegan baker to whip up your wedding cake or you fancy going to a free-from foodie festival, our directory has it all.

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be a cruelty-free champion Share your experiences and encourage others to live kind by reviewing the veganfriendly things you love. It’s super-easy to do and it’s free!

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EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNTS For exclusive deals on amazing vegan places to eat, stay & shop, become a Viva! supporter by visiting viva.org.uk/join

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Head on Down to myvegantown.org.uk To be featured on MyVeganTown, please contact business@Viva.org.uk Beautiful animals electrocuted for their fur

How to Survive a Pandemic – Dr Greger Dr Michael Greger has had a very busy lockdown!

Coming quickly after his last book, How Not to Diet, his latest book breaks down all the essential information about pandemics – ideal for those who love getting their teeth into the science behind the issues. How To Survive a Pandemic opens by exploring the factors that have led to Covid-19 and compares it to other zoonotic diseases (diseases from animals) from recent years. Greger explores how prepared we were for Covid-19 and what steps we can take to be ready for the next pandemic – which is only a matter of time away! He also looks closely at how to avoid transmission. An absolutely essential read for everyone (including governments in our opinion)!

Plants Only Kitchen – Gaz Oakley Gaz Oakley’s third cookbook on our kitchen shelves has not disappointed! Plants Only Kitchen focuses on quick and simple meals for busy people, with an eye on protein-packed foods to keep you fuelled all day.

Prepare to be amazed with experimental food blends and taste sensations from all over the world, including Crispy Southern-Style Shrooms, BBQ ‘Meat’ Loaf and Seared Watermelon ‘Tuna’ Salad! We love the punchy layout and gorgeous photographs. Plants Only Kitchen is a perfect purchase for experimental chefs and anyone bored with their eating life.

The Moments – Natalie Winter Natalie Winter’s first novel, The Moments, is a beautifully written love story, full of charm and wit.

As an animal and environmental activist, Winter keeps animal rights as a constant but subtle theme throughout. The emotional story is uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time which we can relate to the struggles in life that we all face.

The character development is gorgeous and by the end you’ll love Matthew and Myrtle like old friends! Essential reading for all romantics – you won’t be able to put it down!

Quick & Easy – Deliciously Ella Over 100 new vegan recipes for us to gladly feast on which are super-quick to make.

Recipes take either 10 or 20 minutes and slightly longer ones can be made into big batches for freezing. As ever, Ella brings health and wellness to the forefront, emphasising the importance of a balanced vegan diet with lots of nutritional information throughout. Recipes, therefore, are wholefood based, with lots of fruits and vegetables packed in! The recipes aren’t just speedy, the book also has sustainability and affordability in mind.

There are plenty of go-to recipes and great lunchbox meals for school and office packed lunches! Our favourite recipes have to be the Super Creamy Turmeric Pasta, Crunchy Mexican Salad and, for dessert, the Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Balls!

Not as Nature Intended – Rich Hardy Rich Hardy is an award-winning investigative journalist whose bravery has brought us an important report into animal farming. Hardy has been an environmental and animal rights activist for 25 years and his years of experience inform this book will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading. Not as Nature Intended exposes the reality of animal suffering from undercover investigations and includes imaginative ways to expose animal suffering. No one enjoys to reading about suffering but these highly impactful accounts are a very important step towards change. It is incredibly moving and highly recommended!

All Viva! Vegan Book Club choices are available from vivashop.org.uk/books Tel: 0117 944 1000 (Mon-Fri, 9am to 5pm) viva.org.uk 53

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Veggie pen- and phone-pals scheme

At V for Life, many vegans and vegetarians have told us they would like to be in touch with more like-minded people – but that they would prefer to use traditional methods of communication.

So in response to these requests we launched a pen and phone pals scheme, especially for older vegans and vegetarians.

0161 257 0887 | vegetarianforlife.org.uk

Registered charity number 1120687

For further details and an application form, please call V for Life on 0161 257 0887 or email info@vegetarianforlife.org.uk

RE VOLT ING

You might check the menu for a vegan option. Maybe you only buy cruelty-free cosmetics. But have you checked the ingredients in your energy supply?

Millions of British homes are powered by electricity and gas made from animals or their by-products. They can come from factory farming, which means animal slurry and even body parts.

Join Ecotricity, the world’s only officially vegan energy company and make sure you’re not supporting the animal industry with your energy bills.

VIVA! WILL RECEIVE A £60 DONATION WHEN YOU SWITCH YOUR ELECTRICITY AND GAS 0808 123 0 123 (quote VIVA) ecotricity.co.uk/VIVA No animals were harmed in the making of this advert