Prop Two Opening Door to Promote Veganism

Prop 2 opening door to promote veganism
by Rod Smith
3/5/2009

http://www.feedstuffs.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=F4D1A9DFCD974EAD8CD5205E15C1CB42&nm=Breaking+News&type=news&mod=News&mid=A3D60400B4204079A76C4B1B129CB433&tier=3&nid=F3183B4DAADD4A12AC123FDF2AE29B25

California's passage last November of the ballot initiative on farm animal housing has opened the door for animal rights activists to begin promoting veganism as the lifestyle for California consumers, according to a coalition of activist groups that was announced today.

The coalition said it was establishing the "Operation Prop 2 Follow-Through Campaign," with an intention "to promote a vegan diet in California." The ballot initiative was listed as Proposition 2, or "Prop 2," on the ballot in California elections in November.

The coalition, led by the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), said it wanted to take advantage of the extent to which Prop 2 made people aware "of factory farm atrocities" and take that awareness to what would be the next level to provide animals complete protection from those atrocities by urging Californians to become vegans, which means not only not consuming beverages or food produced from animals but also not wearing anything produced from animals, such as leather or wool.

The coalition's list of atrocities is lengthy. View the complete announcement.

The group said it is seeking financial support, which is a function of industrial activism, and said such donations would go toward billboards, bus displays and "massive leafleting" in California's major cities and to sending letters to the editors and news releases to California media.

The group said donations would also fund a new web site, www.livevegan.org, that, as written, details "the atrocities and the many benefits of a vegan diet." Sources suggested that the "atrocities" referred to the perceived list of animal abuses and not vegan diets.

Besides FARM, the coalition members include In Defense of Animals, the Animal Protection & Rescue League, Mercy for Animals and Vegan Outreach. FARM, In Defense of Animals and Mercy for Animals, while attempting to force a lifestyle on California citizens, all are headquartered outside California.

Paul Shapiro, director of the farm animal program at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), an industrial activist group that advocates vegetarianism and one of the two major drivers of Prop 2, said FARM is a relatively small group that not only refused to endorse Prop 2 but actually campaigned against it by asking activist groups that had endorsed the ballot initiative "to revoke their endorsements," Shappiro said in a note a note to Feedstuffs.