All posts filed under: campaigns / activism

I won the lottery! Dinner with Sea Shepherd crew and Tom Waes on board Sam Simon, Antwerp

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Sea Shepherd is international marine wildlife conservation organization. They use direct action tactics to protect marine life, for example disturbing whale vessels and seizure and destruction of drift nets. One of their ships, the Sam Simon, embarked in Antwerp for a couple of days and was open for public visits. I visited the ship with a Dutch friend earlier in the week (review with many more pics of the Sam Simon will follow here). On that visit, I gave a donation to Sea Shepherd, and as such entered the lottery to win a dinner for two on Saturday evening on board the ship, with the crew and Tom Waes. As it is with lotteries, one never expects to win … But this time, I did! 🙂 I got a call on Saturday afternoon and of course I gladly accepted the dinner invitation for two. We had the opportunity to talk to the crew and some volunteers from Sea Shepherd Belgium. And we also met Tom Waes (Belgian actor, director and TV-presentor), who is an ambassador for Sea Shepherd and Captain Alex Cornelissen (CEO …

Animal activism with photos. An evening with Jo-Anne McArthur.

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On Saturday October 17th, Belgian vegan organisation BE Vegan organised and evening with Canadian photographer Jo-Anne McArthur. In the vegan or animal rights community, Jo-Anne McArthur is well known for her work on the project We Animals, which resulted in a book with the same title. We Animals is a series of portraits of animals in the human environment: animals used for food production, clothing, experiments and companionship. We Animals is not just meant to be a series of portraits, there’s also a moral message. Taken from the We Animals website: We Animals aims to break down the barriers that humans have built which allow us to treat non-human animals as objects and not as beings with moral significance. The objective is to photograph our interactions with animals in such a way that the viewer finds new significance in these ordinary, often unnoticed situations of use, abuse and sharing of spaces. The photos are meant to make us question what is normal, and show it from the perspective of the animal. Some of her photos were also featured in the exhibit ‘Het …

I spotted someone with this shopping bag in Brighton!

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We spent a couple of days in Brighton earlier this Summer. It’s a small but touristic town in the south east of England. We chose to go to Brighton, as we read there are so many options to eat out for vegans. And there surely are! It was great. I will be posting reviews of the restaurants we visited later! On our stroll through the city center, we spotted a lady with this shopping bag from Veganz (German vegan organisation/supermarket). Pigs are awesome Cows are cool Please don’t eat them ’cause they rule! Great! I just impulsively went up to here, told her that I loved the bag and asked if I could take a photograph. Must have been very odd that a complete stranger suddenly comes up to you to ask to photograph your bag 😉 But I thought it was very cool to spot this and see likeminded people 🙂 We had a very short chat. She had bought the bag in Berlin, but if I remember correctly she was from the UK herself. Anyway, thank you …

Impressions from the photo exhibit ‘The Forgotten Animal’ in Bruges

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Anyone who’s going from the station in Bruges to ‘t Zand in the coming week cannot miss this. There are about a dozen big bords with a photo on each side of a ‘forgotten’ animal in the food industry, with next to each photo a description of the fate of the animal. The photo exhibit is originally made by the Dutch organisations Varkens in Nood (Pigs in distress) and Dier en Recht (Animal & Law) and we already saw it in Amsterdam in 2013 (see our impression on our Dutch blog here). At that point, we wrote ‘Would this be possible on the Burg in Bruges or next to the Saint-Baafscathedral in Ghent?’. And now the exhibition is actually in Belgium, and in Bruges even! Fantastic! 🙂 The exhibit uses the same images as the ones that were used in the Netherlands, but the texts are adapted to the Belgian context. The Forgotten Animal is brought to Bruges by a cooperation of different organisations*, and can be seen for a week in the Albertpark.  

Vegan baking for the Vegan Challenge

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I haven’t posted many entries on The Bruges Vegan lately, because I was busy posting a series a vegan baking recipes on our other blog veggieleven.be. In April 2015, I posted a vegan baking recipe daily, to match the Vegan Challenge (a campagne of the Dutch organisation NVV). So all in all 30 recipes for pies, cookies and muffins! We’ve been vegan for quite some years now, and I’ve baked many goodies in that time, so I thought it would be a good occasion to show newbie vegans or those trying a vegan lifestyle that baking pies, cupcakes and cookies without animal ingredients is … easy as pie! 🙂 Some of the recipes were already posted on the Bruges Vegan, and some other are favourites of mine or recipes which I consider to be good introductions into the world of vegan baking. You can see the overview of all recipes in this blogentry on veggieleven.be. Here are some more pictures.       I’ll be posting some of the vegan baking recipes here too in the upcoming months!

About smoking doctors and milk indoctrination

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Last week, several articles in Belgian and Dutch media reported about the positive effects of drinking (cow) milk. One of the main Belgian newspapers, De Standaard, had this headline ‘Professor debunks myth. Milk is required. Milk is good for you.’ (Prof ontkracht mythe, melk moet, melk doet je goed). These articles followed a press conference organised by the Belgian Confederation of the Dairy Industry, in which it wanted to invalidate several ‘myths’ about drinking milk. These ‘myths’ clearly referred to the statements of health organisations and animal rights organisations that milk is absolutely not necessary for humans. In recent times, scientific research has shown that milk is absolutely not necessary for healthy bones (on the contrary even, some studies lead to suggest that consumption of milk might enhance osteoporosis). We can get all nutrients found in cow’s milk, from plant based foods. Furthermore, a large part of the human population is even lactose intolerant. Humans do not need cow milk, just as they do not need camel milk, dog milk or elephant milk. Not to mention the negative impact of …

Meat is murder as a ‘meaty’ song for Radio 1

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At the start of the Campaign Days without Meat (Dagenzondervlees), in which participants engage to leave meat and fish of their plates as much as possible, Belgian Radio 1 sollicited meaty songs to air during their show Monschau. ‘To keep your diet in balance, Monschau is serving you lovely meaty songs’ it says on their website. Yes, really. We thought this was the perfect occasion to set Meat is murder, (The Smiths – with frontman Morrissey) in the spotlights and requested this song. ‘Meat is Murder’ is from 1985 (30 years old!), although onfortunately still very applicable to the present day situation. Love him or hate him (Morrissey), but it’s a classic. Apparently Radio 1 did play the song (although I wasn’t listening myself). In between the songs about sausages and pork ribs … Lyrics – Meat is murder  – The Smiths (1985) Heifer whines could be human cries Closer comes the screaming knife This beautiful creature must die This beautiful creature must die

Demo to close Boudewijn Seapark (dolphinarium), Bruges

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The annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, has received a lot of international media coverage. Hundreds of dolphins have been killed. It’s a massacre. The dolphins’ anguish is horrible. Watch this video from CNN Some dolphins are ‘spared’ and caught alive, to be sold in the entertainment business. Imprisoned for live. These highly intelligent sensitive animals are doomed to spend the rest of their lives in small swimming pools and perform tricks day after day after day…. Dolphins don’t fare well in captivity. Dolphinaria worldwide are also guilty for what is annualy happening in Taiji, Japan. Boycot dolphinaria. It has nothing to do with nature conservation and even less with love for animals. Unfortunately, Bruges has a dolphinarium: Boudewijn Seapark. We hope it will be closed soon. Animal rights organisation Bite Back is holding a demonstration for the closure of the dolphinarium in Bruges, this coming Sunday afternoon, January 26, 2014, at the entrance of Boudewijn Seapark. See the facebookpage of Bite Back for more details about the demo! LINKS Sea Shepherd, facts about the drive hunt …

#2 Restaurant het Stadhuis, Oostburg (Nl) ***

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Restaurant review #2 – Every year, in the beginning of October, there’s a Vegetarian restaurantweek in the Netherlands, a campaign from the Nederlandse Vegetariërsbond (Dutch Vegetarian Union). During that week, participating restaurants offer a vegetarian menu for 25 or 40 euro. We found three participating restaurants in Zeeland (the most southern province of the Netherlands), of which one on ‘our side’ of the water (the Scheldt)! Restaurant het Stadhuis in Oostburg, not too far from Bruges (29km).