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Other Involvements
Food Standards Agency
VEGA has submitted comments to the FSA on novel and functional
foods, developments in processing and labelling, and on the
composition of dietary supplements.
BSE Inquiry
VEGA has been involved in the BSE Inquiry where we are emphasising
farming and welfare issues as they relate to the UK and other
countries.
Genetic engineering and the irradiation
of food
VEGA has been monitoring these issues for the last decade
and advising government bodies, NGO's and manufacturers of
the need for objective education and review of the issues.
Manufacturers & vendors
VEGA pursues food producers and manufacturers of household
goods and pharmaceuticals to cater for strictly vegetarian
(vegan), "green", and animal welfarist customers.
Initiatives and labelling need to prove that objectionable
ingredients (such as egg white, casein, gelatin, lactose etc.),
additives (such as caramels, cochineal, shellac etc.), and
processing aids (such as finings and clarifying agents) have
been excluded or replaced.
VEGA is currently organizing a network of consumers campaigning
for more choice in vegan foods. See our Veganizing
Ingredients page for more details.
Antibiotics
VEGA and its precursors have campaigned since before the Swann
Report of 1969 on the overuse of "farmerceuticals"
as substitutes for good animal husbandry. The recourse to
intensive methods of factory farming for production of speciously
"cheap" food has dominated the industry.
Bovine Somatotropin (BST) and other
hormones
These and other production boosters or animal health products,
euphemised as digestive or performance enhancers or as metaphylaxis,
have been condemned vigorously by VEGA ("BST equals Bloody
Stupid Technology"). Some result from genetic engineering.
Flesh, organs, blood, and milk may be overloaded with steroid
and hormones and other physiologically active factors such
as insulin and growth hormones.
VEGA is investigating the longterm physiological consequences
to human consumers & to animals.
Agricultural Policy, Subsidies etc.
VEGA and its precursors have been tackling challenges and
solutions described in the Green Plan, launched in 1976, for
farming, food and health, and the land. VEGA perseveres in
representing vegetarianism as a powerful market factor. 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 improvement and human
and animal welfare.
Grace-and-favour organisations such
as the Meat and Livestock Commission must be disbanded
and food producers must, like any other industry, solve their
own problems without subventions from the taxpayer.
Vegetarian Shopping Basket
VEGA continues with DEFRA, the Dept. of Health and the
Food Standards Agency to monitor the nutrition and safety
(in assessments of residues of pesticides, pollutants, mycotoxins
etc.) of purchases likely to interest the veggie customer
and consumer. This surveillance extends to manufacturers and
vendors, and to the Departments of Trade and Industry and
of Education. |
