We start the show by presenting some information on the animal rescue efforts in Japan after last week’s disastrous earthquake and tsunami, and highlight some of the charitable groups that that you can contribute to who are specifically aimed towards helping the Japanese animals. Here are the groups mentioned, with links to their websites:
- Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue & Support website and Facebook page
- World Vets website and Facebook page
- Nippon SPCA website and Facebook page
- Dog Bless You – Search and Rescue Dogs website and Facebook page
Meatout 2011
Happy Meatout week! Meatout is an international observance helping individuals evolve to a wholesome, compassionate diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and to take the next step by eating lower on the food chain and cutting out the meat, and thus cruelty to animals. Meatout is organized by the U.S. national, non-profit public interest organization Farm Animal Rights Movement. It has grown explosively since its inception in 1985 to become the world’s largest annual grassroots diet education campaign, featuring 50 states in the U.S. and dozens of other countries. On or around March 20th every year, individuals and different groups join efforts to hold events in their home cities to educate the public on the benefits to both humans and animals of a plant-based diet.
For a list of what different events are going on around the world and in your state or country, please check out the Meatout website. This site also features information on how to hold your own outreach events, easy vegan food recipes, and other resources.
If you are holding your own Meatout or other vegan outreach event, check out the “Why Vegan?” booklets (also available in French and Spanish), and other educational literature at the Vegan Outreach website here, which you can access for free!
For those who wish to learn how to transition to a plant-based diet, you can get free vegetarian/vegan starter guides from several different non-profit organizations. These are some of the starter guides that we recommend:
- Mercy for Animals Veg Starter Kit
- Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine Vegetarian Starter Kit (also available in Spanish)
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Vegetarian Starter Kit
Finally, check out www.meatoutmondays.org for a free weekly e-newsletter that features yummy and easy-to-make animal product-free recipes, as well as tips and encouragement to inspire you to go veg.
Isa Chandra Moskowitz, “Appetite for Reduction” and vegan food activism
For our feature interview, we have best-selling vegan cookbook author and activist Isa Chandra Moskowitz on the show. If you’re familiar at all with popular animal cruelty-free recipe books, you’ll perhaps know Isa from such volumes she has written as “Vegan with a Vengeance”, “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World”, “Veganomicon”, and “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar”. Isa has wowed us here already at Animal Voices with the release of her new book “Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast & Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes”, which she discusses on this show. She is also the founder of the popular website community, the Post Punk Kitchen, where she shares her food wisdom with thousands of followers who are interested in compassionate and cruelty-free eating and living.
In addition to presenting a passion for great plant-based cooking, Isa takes vegan food to the next level in the form of culinary activism for the animals. Perhaps the most convincing way to a person’s heart is via the enticement and taste of delicious food, and this is an area in which Isa reigns well with experience. She talks to us about reaching peoples’ compassion with food, and a current charitable vegan food endeavour that will go towards benefitting those hit in the recent Japan earthquake.
Here is a video of Isa’s presentation at the Let Live Animal Rights Conference last year on culinary food activism:
Download this episode. (starts 2 mins. 19 secs. in)
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