by Sigrid Bjarnason
Originally published in The Flying Shingle, Monday, January 27, 2014

Like many of us at the start of a new year, I’m full of hope, and for good reason. After pondering recent developments in the areas of animal welfare and food – two closely-related passions of mine – I realise there’s more than a few positive signs afoot.

Here, in no particular order, are some things that have recently caught my eye.

You know tastes are changing when:

• you invite 20 people to a vegan potluck and 15 of them actually show up, dish in hand
• a potluck featuring 15 vegan dishes is, by all accounts, marvellously delicious; enthusiastic swapping of recipes ensues
• guests are eager to meet and greet (not eat) Ernie, our resident turkey
• the local grocery store routinely stocks nutritional yeast, meatless sausages, and 14 (fourteen!) varieties of tofu
• there are seven raw food restaurants on Vancouver Island
• googling vegan holiday meal recipes gets millions of results
• there’s not just vegan dog kibble, but competing brands of vegan dog kibble
• a local Chapters has an entire section entitled Vegan Cookbooks
• it’s difficult to decide which farm animal advocacy group to give a donation to because there are so many deserving of it
• for the first time on our little island there is an Annual Remembrance Day service for animals who died in the human wars
• due to public pressure, Canada’s eight largest grocery chains all publicly agree to phase out sow gestation crates
• public figures, including Bryan Adams, Alanis Morissette, James Cameron, k.d. lang, Shania Twain, Georges Laraque, Bill Clinton, Woody Harrelson, George Stromboulopoulos, Vanessa Williams, Serena Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, Mike Tyson, Al Gore, and Brad Pitt … (whew), adopt a plant-based diet
• Bill Gates invests heavily in a company that makes faux eggs
• that food production company (Hampton Creek Foods) uses faux eggs for the express purpose of preventing billions of hens from suffering lives of misery
• outside a chicken slaughterhouse that has been operating in downtown Vancouver for 40 years, a group of people start a weekly vigil. Each week, dozens of drivers who pass by honk their compassion for chickens
• in the midst of the uproar about the slaying of sled-dogs, a mainstream journalist dares to wonder why there isn’t the same outcry against similarly brutal deaths of farm animals in slaughterhouses
• Rolling Stone publishes an article entitled Animal Cruelty Is The Price We Pay For Cheap Meat
• on Dec. 21 – four days before Xmas – the Vancouver Sun publishes an article about the horrors of eating animals
• “ag-gag” bills are proposed in several US statehouses that would criminalise people for filming in slaughterhouses and factory farms; due to public outrage, these efforts to shield the brutal status quo from public scrutiny are stopped in their tracks
• a Dutch political party – Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) – has amassed a total of 23 elected members spread amongst local water boards, city councils, provincial legislatures, and both Dutch Houses of Parliament
• and the best development of all? You know lots of people who would no more eat a pig than a puppy, and for the very same reason