Humane is the new black

BY ANNA MCGRATH AND GEORGIA CLARK

It was hardly a mainstream gathering. A congregation of multicolored, tattooed hipsters, flocked to the Vegan Day Out over the weekend. The event, which was held at the Cruelty Free Shop in Glebe, promoted all things humane and encouraged Sydneysiders to make a difference with their consumer choices

Vegetarianism, which was once a deliberation of the philosophers, is now a trend on the rise. According to Roy Morgan Research, more than 10% of the population of Australia are following the lifestyle. Neridah Llewellyn attended the event over the weekend. She says that making the choice to go vegan can reap many benefits.

“Be the change that you want to see in the world. I think veganism is an easy way to do that. You can’t make a difference to everything, but I can at least make a difference with what I’m eating,” she said.

Ms Llewellyn’s decision to go vegan was her way of minimising cruelty, and taking a stand against animal farming.

“From an animal rights perspective, I don’t want to harm something more vulnerable than me if I don’t have to,” she said.

Dan Seidel is the store manager at the Cruelty Free Shop. He says that increased awareness around corporate conduct is informing more ethical consumer choices.

“More and more people are starting to think about it… the way their food’s manufacture, the way it’s processed. And if you think about that more and more then you discover more and more problems with how modern food and animal products are produced,” he said.

Mr Seidel says that supermarket food is so heavily processed and packaged that it “doesn’t even resemble food anymore.”

But he says that veganism has the added benefit of raising consumer awareness around the ingredients that suppliers are putting into products.

“That’s another kind of nice consequence of becoming vegan… I had to spend a lot of time reading labels and I would realise that there were ingredients in there that I didn’t even know what they were.

“Even not from a vegan point of view but from the point of view of putting that crap in your body,” he said.

Taylor and Jackie, who attended the event to promote humane lifestyle choices, said that in terms of contributing to animal cruelty, ignorance is bliss.

“Before I would just not watch the videos and sort of just ignore that it’s all happening and eventually it just got to a point where I felt so horrible about myself because I know what’s going on but I’m not doing anything about it.

“You’re just one person… what can one person do… but you do it anyway,” they said.