After his sell-out talk at the University in October, Ed Winters, otherwise known as Earthling Ed writes about what a fully vegan world might look like and what we may need to do to get there…

What will a fully vegan world look like?

University of Sussex
Nov 1 · 3 min read

We see it in the news, we hear it on the radio, we come across it on social media: Our food choices have a high impact on the planet and cause immense suffering to billions of living beings; we cannot keep hiding from the truth anymore! But knowing is one thing and acting is another…

We cannot solely be consumers anymore, we must become food citizens. And thankfully, like me, many people are taking action. Globally, engaged individuals are giving educational talks and organizing outreach events and animal rights marches.

Even the food and farming sectors are coming up with countless innovative technologies all with the aim of decreasing animal suffering and to cut GHG (GreenHouse Gas) emissions. With all this change transforming global food systems, will we ever live in a fully vegan world? How could we imagine such a world?

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But, unfortunately, there is no new news:

Per-capita animal product consumption is increasing around the globe as the world population grows, but in order to keep up with the demand of animal products without compromising the environment, we need drastic changes in our food systems.

Many politicians, institutions, and organizations have brought up the urgency of tackling this challenge, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describing a plant-based diet as a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change.

However, this isn’t so simple. According to the Dutch minister of Agriculture Carola Schouten, the appropriate level of animal welfare is to be, “decided by the market”.

The issue here is that citizens are distanced from agriculture; they do not see first-hand the environmental impact agricultural practices have, and studies have shown that their consumption choices do not reflect what they consider appropriate treatment for farmed animals. So the consequence of this is that the current policy regarding this topic is that of silent debate. Public debate must occur to generate transparency in this industry.

Fortunately, we do not have to give up the pleasure of taste to save lives and protect the environment. Advances in food technology can aid us in making this transition to more environmentally-friendly diets much easier, and many global visionaries like Bill Gates, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Asia, are backing companies making alternatives to animal-derived products. Even huge meat companies, like Tyson Foods and Cargill have invested in clean meat. And PHW Group, the largest producer of chicken in Germany, invested in the Israeli clean meat startup SuperMeat.

Certainly, habits are hard to change, and simply showing slaughterhouse footage on Facebook won’t make people go vegan overnight. However, the alternative protein space is making great food to please our palates, so we don’t have to give up the foods we love to change the food system and fight climate change.

Sounds all quite convoluted to you? You wouldn’t be wrong. But this is the reason I do what I do.

Last month I was at the University of Sussex delivering a talk to hundreds of students, which aimed to tackle the complexities of this topic and make us aware of the fact that we cannot solely be consumers anymore. I believe that we have to become food citizens, aware of the origin of our foods and willing to try new, delicious foods for the better of the world.

We can all contribute in one way or another to the animal rights and food disruption movement and hopefully, I inspired some of those who were there to find their own place within this movement.

University of Sussex

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The University of Sussex was the first of the new wave of UK universities founded in the 1960s and we now have world-leading research across all our schools.

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