VEGA's views on the cruelty involved in farming animals for food can be seen in its submission to the Food Ethics Council in May 2000: Ethics of Animal Use in Food Production.

Dr Alan Long, VEGA’s Honorary Research Adviser, launched the Green Plan for farming food, health and the land in 1976. This tackled challenges and solutions for changing agricultural policy.

Under the “let-live-and-live” and “grow food, not feed” Green Plan policies, subsidies would be directed away from the live/deadstock industry into support for environmental care and for human and animal welfare.

Take a look at our Dairy Farming and Sheep Farming pages for more details of our current campaigning in these areas.

VEGA is calling for the following reforms:

• Raise VAT on animal-derived foods.
• All farmers and animal handlers to be trained and licensed.
• Farmers, like other food manufacturers, to insure themselves and indemnify “third parties” against the perils in their activities.
• Subsidies be directed to countryside enhancement, rural improvements and human and animal welfare.
• Livestock markets and auctions and dealers be banned: buyers go to the stock and not vice versa.
• Unilateral surveillance and control of imports.

Costs to consumers – Steep, cheap meat, milk, and eggs take hell out of health, environment and taxes.

VEGA NEWS 9 (February 2001) focussed on evils in the sheep industry. Since then VEGA has sustained its general campaign with statements to the FSA and protests at its public meetings, press releases, and other publicity through the media, emphasizing the above testimony.

The 2001 epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease and closure of the countryside emphasized the futility of short-term botch-ups with ill-aimed subsidies.

High-cost meat, milk, eggs, and fish will drive down production and demand, and drive customers and consumers to enjoyment of the healthier options of a vegetarian diet with long-term value a better return than cut-throat price.

See our recent VEGA NEWS articles on animal welfare issues: Are Vets Doctored?, Laying Off Eggs, and Cull or Cure.

Dairy-free Labels
Veganizing Ingredients
Animal Welfare
Sheep Farming
Poultry Farming
The Chillingham herd