Being a vegetarian in Britain

Vegetarianism in the UK

"I launched out in search of a vegetarian restaurant [in London 1887], I would trot ten or twelve miles each day, go into a cheap restaurant and eat my fill of bread, but would never be satisfied. During these wanderings I once hit a vegetarian restaurant in Farringdon Street. The sight of it filled me with the same joy that a child feels on getting a thing after its own heart."
This is an extract from a speech delivered by Gandhi at a Social Meeting organised by the London Vegetarian Society on 20 November 1931.

We've come a long way since then. Being a vegetarian especially in London, but also in Britain in general, has now become very common, and life for vegetarians is easy, with restaurants, hotels, products catering exclusively for them or also for them.

Here are some statistics. There are about 3 million vegetarians in the UK: 5 % of the adult population. In the latest National Diet & Nutrition Survey, conducted on 2251 adults aged 19 to 64, 5% claimed to be vegetarian (7% women, 2% men). The reason for going vegetarian/vegan was: 51% moral or ethical, 29% health, 25% didn’t like the taste of meat. 11% of women aged 19 to 34 claimed to be vegetarian.
7 million people in the UK no longer eat meat.
In the last 10 years, the number of vegetarians in the UK has practically doubled.
2,000 people a week in the UK are joining the "veggie revolution" and dropping meat completely from their diets.
Food scares such as BSE and Foot and Mouth have led large numbers of people to rethink their diets, with 27 % of the population saying that they would consider giving up meat, and 12 % saying that they were vegetarian or meat-reducing.
In a poll of 1,051 university and college students in 2002, 8% of students claimed to be vegetarian. 11% women, 4% men. 20% of the vegetarians would not eat eggs.

The Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom is the oldest vegetarian organisation in the world. Many celebrities are vegetarian, including Stella McCartney who is the patron of the Vegetarian Society. She says: "Every week in the UK, many thousands of people are rejecting traditional meat-based meals in favour of something that's fresh, delicious, satisfying, healthy, kinder and good for the environment. Vegetarian food offers this and so much more … Welcome to the most delicious, most talked about, fastest growing food trend of the new millennium - vegetarianism."

Interestingly, Gandhi himself became a vegetarian by choice, as opposed to cultural tradition and upbringing, after having read Plea for Vegetarianism, a book by the British author Henry Salt, a true pioneer who also wrote Animals' Rights, one of the first books ever appeared on the subject. Here is the continuation of Gandhi's speech at the London Vegetarian Society meeting, quoted above:
"I saw among them Salt's Plea for Vegetarianism. This I purchased for a shilling and went straight to the dining room. This was my first hearty meal since my arrival in England. . . . From the date of reading this book, I may claim to have become a vegetarian by choice. I blessed the day on which I had taken the vow before my mother. I had all along abstained from meat in the interests of truth and of the vow I had taken, but had wished at the same time that every Indian should be a meat-eater, and had looked forward to being one myself freely and openly some day, and to enlisting others in the cause. The choice was now made in favour of vegetarianism, the spread of which henceforward became my mission."

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Restaurants, hotels, products, manufacturers

The UK Vegetarian Society's food labelling scheme, known as the Seedling Symbol, was established in 1969. Since then it has become the most widely recognised and trusted stamp of vegetarian approval anywhere in the world. The symbol can be found on a huge range of products, including retail food and drinks, catering supplies, household goods, cosmetics and toiletries.

What does it mean?
The seedling symbol has five strict criteria:

• Products have to be free of animal flesh, meat or bone stock, animal carcass fats, gelatine, aspic or any other products resulting from slaughter: in a word, free of slaughterhouse by-products.
• Products and ingredients must not have been tested on animals (cut off date 1986).
• Any eggs used must be free range.
• Products must be GMO free (exclude genetically modified organisms), as these will generally have been tested on animals.
• Products must also be free from cross contamination with non vegetarian products/ingredients in the production process.

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