From the past few years, Veganism is gaining its popularity. Several people now know the importance of choosing a vegan lifestyle. You will also find a range of cruelty-free products in stores. This article explains about when veganism started and what its objective is.
Veganism definition
Veganism is a moral philosophy that robustly follows the policies of the Vegan Society that everyone should adopt in their lifestyle practices. Its primary purpose is to end all forms of exploitation and cruelty done by humans on animals for clothing, food, or any other activities. This is not merely the concept of selecting a plant-based diet but also the use of products manufactured from plant-based materials, free from animal testing. It also objects to visit places where animals are used for entertainment.
If you are curious to know when veganism started, then go through this explanation.
A Brief History Of The Vegan Movement
In the middle of the 20th century, there was a group of people in the UK who wanted to build a distinguished society of non-dairy vegetarians. They named it ‘The Vegetarian Society’. But unfortunately, people rejected this society because of being isolated and become more divisive at the end and lost its main motive by overpowering the interest of making a separate society.
After that, Donald Watson took forward the idea of Vegetarians and resulted in the formation of the first Vegan Society in November 1944, initially consisting of 25 members only.
Watson first introduced the word Vegan in its journal called The Vegan News – a quarterly magazine of the non-dairy vegetarians. In that newsletter, Watson included the word ‘Vegan’ and also said that everyone should adopt this.
In 1948, a Vegan society was established by Dr. Catherine Nimmo and Rubin Abramowitz in California, which successfully ran till 1960. Records also show the assistance of vegan communities in the 1950s in India and Germany, but were not able to do a long-lasting performance.
During this period, IVU (International Vegetarian Society) was joined by the British group, and in 1947, Donald Watson gave a speech on ‘Veganism’ at IVU World Vegetarian Congress. All those people who attended this became a part of the vegetarian movement.
Initially, in the first few years, there was a discussion about the broader meaning of this new word ‘vegan.’ Primarily it was only related to food material and diet, but after that, specific rules were made and followed by the Vegan society in 1951. The definition of the word ‘Vegan’ hiked further from mere ‘non-dairy.’
Now the objective of the Vegan Society stops at the concern of the exploitation of animals by humans, and the concept of Veganism is introduced where a man should not exploit animals to fulfill his needs.
They took this concept forward and pledged to conduct their efforts to end the inhumane use of animals for work, hunting, food, and other activities which mercilessly use animals for their benefits.
However, it was doubtful whether the California group accepted this as they prefer to be a distinguished group of dietary vegans’ in the USA, they called themselves ‘ethical vegans.’ But the British Vegan Society, and Americans, did not adopt this separation and told that ‘ethical vegan’ is only an integral part of the definition ‘Veganism.’ But it is worthless to argue against the meaning and usage of this newly introduced word.
Now a significant establishment came that was the formation of the American Vegan society in 1960. This foundation followed the concept of the same definition given by the British Vegan Society.
In 1981, the first International Vegan Festival was carried out in Denmark. In the next two years, this festival was celebrated in many European countries and also in California, India, Australia, and Brazil.
The definition of this word stretched revolutionary in 30 years, and there are many vegan societies across the world.
Since 1994, 1st November has been celebrated as World Vegan Day in recognition of the invention of the word ‘ vegan’ by Donald Watson.
How Veganism is different from Vegetarian?
Veganism is different from going veggie in any aspect like diets, philosophies, and choices. Moreover, generally, people opt veganism as a philosophy, but there are many reasons to go vegetarian, for example, health problems and their financial conditions.
Also, some people claim that they are vegetarian but start having animal products after some time in their lives. Some people say that they are strict vegetarians but freely eat eggs in their diet.
‘Vegetarian’ does not follow the concept of avoiding products prepared from animal-based ingredients. They may use materials like wool, leather, silk, etc.
On the other hand, vegans avoid the use of animal-based products, also they are strictly against the practice of testing the products on animals to measure the product’s reaction to humans.
Conclusion
To save our prosperous animal kingdom from exploitation and inhuman activities executed on them, everyone should come forward and start preferring the use of the product, which is vegan cruelty-free. Animals do have feelings and emotions like us; they also have the right to freedom.
