Nowadays I try to only buy raw ingredients, and make all my meals myself. Yes, even loaves of bread – haven’t bought one of those for months now! I’m not vegan, but most of my meals are.

I’d also like to see it compulsory that things with eggs in them (eg. cake, quiche) have to state what type of farm the eggs come from. Because we all know it’s probably battery farmed, so those organic free-range eggs in your basket don’t count for anything when you stack them up alongside that cake.

Blissful ignorance of the source allows people to buy these items without knowing about it, which is of course what the manufacturers and battery farmers want you to do, because they don’t actually care about animal welfare, especially not when it gets in the way of profit!

Where did I say Vedic is Veggi? or is that just a passing comment youre making.
The video is well made and makes sense. Its posted by a Hindu religious group which shoudnt be a suprise to anyone. It could easily be posted on U tube and probably is.
if they want to use Vedas as the basis of their argument then so be it.
The Vedas are the holiest of Hindu books.

There’s nothing vedic about being vegetarian. It is true that the highest proportion of vegetarians can be found among people who identify themselves as Hindu. But this has nothing to do with the vedas or any vedic injunction etc. The vedas are not dogma, and not the “sacred books” of the Hindus. The case for being vegetarian needs no reference to any religious tradition. The Brihhadaranyaka Upanisad suggests that if a woman wants to have a smart daughter she should eat beef! You can find plenty of verses in the Mahabharata of rishis relishing venison.

http://www.clubs.psu.edu/up/vedicsociety/vegetarianism/

Make poverty history. Become a veggi.

I know more Muslim vegetarians than I know Sikh vegetarians.

There is already legislation to make sure that products that contain nuts etc have to declare as such for allergies. All we need is a good legal case here where a veggie sues a bit company for mislabelling and *bang*, we’ll have proper labelling.

Sometimes I wish I was a lawyer. Though, only sometimes.

I think that in principle it is better to organise society so people can follow their own consciences as long as it does not harm anyone else. And so if it isn’t a big deal to label things to help part of society with their ethical decisions, then we should go for it. In this case such a label would help lots of religious groups who aren’t necessarily vegetarian as well.

So what about the slippery slope to every kind of label for every kind of consumer fad? Where do we make a cut-off which isn’t arbitrary? I guess we can’t, but we should do as much as we can. The Food Standards Agency tries to promote the health traffic lights, it could incorporate a V for Vegetarian and do it in another colour for Vegan, an H for Halal, K for Kosher, G for Genetically engineered, O for Organic etc, and it could be a reasonably small list which only people looking out for them would notice.

Otherwise we are left with consumerism without consumer sovereignty which I think is a bit of cheek.

a. There are more Muslim vegetarians than you think (I know a few Muslim vegans, in fact)

b. In lieu of halal food, Muslims are very careful to check for animal content in other foods they eat. The recent Mars bars controversy meant that those would not have been suitable for Muslims to eat. In fact, I’d say that the (practicing) Muslim diet is halal and vegetarian (meaning no non-halal animal products) in equal measure.

Agreed, but this is a step towards that. Evolution is the way forward, not violent revolution! Now where did I put those effigies….

Hmm. Isn’t this very quickly going to lead to one of those cases where some poor local butcher is fined because he failed to label his sirloin steaks as “not suitable”. Which in turn will lead to distracting headlines about “political correctness/Europe/Muslims gone mad”…

Why not campaign for a badge, logo or similar which makes it clear what the meat status of the food is? These have been very helpful to the consumer, and beneficial to the producers and retailers, when it comes to things like recycling, CFCs, Fair Trade, and most recently Energy Efficiency.

Sunray, have they specified that they are Muslim? Could it be possible that some of them just happen to have a “Muslim” name?

Why the hell does the petition wanna know my address?

Where in the UK do you need to live to not know what’s in your food?