Global Veganism
From its routes in different cultures thousands of years ago, veganism has shaped itself into a social justice movement and spread across the globe, with an estimated 80 million people worldwide now identifying as vegan, with many millions more eating a predominately plant-based diet. The last decade especially fuelled in part by the global success of Veganuary, has seen the beginnings of a seismic shift towards plant-based food systems, and an upsurge in an understanding of veganism as a social justice issue.
Due to variations in data, sample sizes and varying criteria it’s not easy to gauge a 100% accurate picture of how many people are vegan or how quickly veganism is growing, but countries such as India and Mexico are reporting up to 9% of the population eating vegan, whilst Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Italy lead the way in Europe for the most vegans. Canada is big on veganism, Japan and South Korea also above average. Veganism is pretty much everywhere but often in small pockets still and has a long way to go yet until it’s established as the primary diet and lifestyle option across the globe. Although significant rises in the number of vegans have been recorded world-wide, so has an increase in animal production & consumption in many countries. The UK has in fact seen a significant fall in animal product production and consumption, as has Germany, but both have continued to see a rise in imports, and although meat consumption in the UK has fallen by 14% decade on decade according to Govt figures , consumption is up across the globe.
Could we see a ‘Tipping point’ moment with veganism? A Tipping Point is a threshold, critical mass, boiling point moment that leads to sudden, dramatic, radical change, with the theory that if enough people decide to adopt a vegan way of life, this could create a whole change in society as the concept goes mainstream and millions more adopt the vegan way of life. The advent of climate change, increased evidence around the health benefits of plant based diets and the detrimental effects of animal consumption on human health, the demand for cheap accessible locally produced healthy food and the advent of technology and veganic growing techniques to enable this, alongside the increasing awareness of the scale of the injustice that animals face worldwide by the billion all means that veganism still has a realistic chance of becoming the default choice for billions. The presence of vested interests set on discrediting veganism and protecting animal agriculture can only be effective for so long – as more people discover the truth about animal agriculture and make lifestyle changes accordingly, so will the influence of big business and corporations wane.
What we need is a vegan revolution and return to community-based living, and that is something that we can all partake in. The importance of why we should be vegan and why we should be a part of our local, national and global vegan communities has never been more urgent.
