By Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Vegans choose not to eat any animal product — no meat, fish, dairy, eggs, honey or other animal-derived ingredients. They avoid fur, leather and wool products, and products which have been tested on animals, such as body care, cosmetics and household cleaning goods or products containing animal ingredients.
The Swedish ambassador told me that when he gave dinners at his home in Stockholm, if the diners were for people above 60, he would probably just get meat eaters but if they were for people under 40, he would, in any gathering of six people, get two vegetarians.
My ministry just concluded the fourth national organic fair. There were 450 stalls. It attracted many people every day. This time we had a vegan section and a vegan food court. It did extremely well, especially the vegan pizzas where the basic cheese was made of cashew. I took my office staff there for lunch and we loved the food.
Someone I know has started an online vegan shopping mall and it has 800 items on it already. He told me that he has no dearth of offers from people who would like to invest in his start-up. The problem he has is with finding staff who will promote this properly.
Since more and more people are turning vegan and vegetarian for health reasons, it makes sense to start a vegan business. I just met two entrepreneurs in Nagpur, young boys who have created delicious milk made from almonds and are now looking for someone to help them bring it to the market.
All over the world vegan businesses are starting up. From Linda McCartney, who is one of the world’s top designers and only does vegan clothes, to Sonal in Gurgaon, who runs a flourishing ice cream business that doesn’t use milk.
For some years I was on the board of an English monthly called The Vegan. It is a very chatty magazine — interviews with stars who have become vegan, vegan events taking place daily in the UK, vegan recipes and lots of ads from vegan companies. It is over 25 years old and is still making profit.
Michael Ofei has, on a site called The Minimalist Vegan, listed 38 business ideas which, he believes, will do well and change the appetite of the buyer towards ethical living. I too believe that if the choices were available, people would gravitate towards more ethical ones: garments that were ethically sourced and made, for instance, or delicious vegan sweets and ice creams. I bought a packet of freshly made vegan marshmallows last week and finished them in less than ten minutes!
While the demand for vegan products is now mainstream and rising, the problem is with the supply. We need to help shift the demand by increasing the supply. Here are some of Ofei’s ideas:
Vegan restaurant/cafe
Vegan pizzerias with home delivery options
Gelato Bar with dairy-free ice cream
Nut Cheese Deli
A food truck specialising in vegan burgers
A vegan alcoholic beverage retailer
Vegan bakery (few people know that breads have egg and milk in them, and are sometimes meat)
Having a vegan business is great activism. It makes it easier for others to live vegan. So many carnivorous people I know say that they would change their ways partially if they could get vegan products easily and effortlessly. Make the market evolve. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “Animals are my friends and I don’t eat my friends.”
It is not difficult to run a vegan business online. Food goodies include mock meat and dairy products, along with home cleaners, toiletries, cosmetics, skin care, food such as chocolate, jams, chutney, pet care, general grocery items and household items.
What are the items that should not be in vegan shops — T-shirts which are made of BT cotton (they should say ‘organic cotton’), vitamins and sweets which contain gelatine, palm oil as I said earlier, white sugar which is refined using bone, bone china, white paper or any white coloured product (bleach kills everything in the sea), chemical dyes of any kind (Rajasthan has lost most of its rivers due to these dyes. I went to see a river, near Udaipur, on my way to Sojat village which grows all the mehendi in India. The river was blood red and carcasses and the bones of animals and birds who had drunk from it, littered its banks).
I certainly don’t agree with vegan shops which sell silver, gold and semi precious or precious stones, even if they make them into cute little animals. All these are mined on forest land, and millions of animals lose their lives in the process. Why not have amazing glass jewellery instead. Silk, wool, leather, fur, suede, feathers, coral, beewax, pearls, anything made of bone — definite no-nos.
To run a credible vegan shop, one has to be very discerning and look at every ingredient of every item. It is difficult to find biscuits that do not have palm oil in them, for instance. But they do exist.
I have often said the heart is a door. When it opens, it opens for all. Most vegan shops go out of their way to see that that not only are the products made of sustainable material, but also that they use less water and are not made in sweatshops (paying low wages for long hours of work to poor people). Some go even further and source products from democratic countries only (where do they find these?).
(To join the animal welfare
movement contact [email protected], www.peopleforanimalsindia.org)