Cage-free and egg-free mayonnaise spreading

Mayonnaise is one of the most competitive products regarding animal welfare. Mayonnaise is said to be a “semi-solid dressing made mainly of cooking oil, vinegar, and eggs”, and eggs have been widely used. Eggs are not really necessary; the same flavor, taste, and texture are possible without eggs. Therefore, many egg-free mayonnaise are sold at low prices. For companies to go cage free, they don’t really need to procure expensive cage-free mayonnaise at this time; they can just use egg-free ones. A wide variety of mayonnaise is sold. Recently, the variety of mayonnaise with cage-free eggs are increasing. What we’d like to commend the most is the private brand “Bioral…

小泉環境大臣 串田議員
Challenge to Make Lifestyle Sustainable

The committee members discussed a bill to revise the current act on climate change at the Environment Committee on April 27th 2021. In the committee, Mr. Kushida from Kanagawa commented that not only do we need stipulations about greenhouse gas emission, but we also need a measure for absorption. He also pointed out Japan’s impact on gas emission and destruction, not just domestically but also on a global scale.  This is quite an important viewpoint when we discuss our goal to become carbon neutral. And yet, our legislation fails to present this angle. The government presented the goal based on the elimination of CO2 emission from our production activity, which…

【Petition】Fast Food Companies! Please shift from chicken to alternative meats!

We’ve launched a petition to reduce the suffering of (broiler) chickens who are made into “Japanese chicken”. https://www.change.org/savechickens As a result of severe selective breeding for weight gain, 1/4 of the broilers are said to live under chronic pain 1/3 of their lives. Because they grow so fast, even if they aren’t slaughtered for meat, they are said to not live long. The chickens, who get killed only 40-50 days after birth, spend their entire lives inside. With their growing weights, the poultry shack becomes increasingly crowded, and their bodies get dirtier without being able to sandbathe. Like human children, young chickens love new interesting things. If they were to…

Supermarket Survey: Plant-based Protein

The investor initiative FAIRR, which sheds light on the risks of animal-based protein (total invested asset balance of more than 2000 trillion yen), recommends the transition to plant-based protein, but the first important step in responding to this is that consumers can easily obtain new plant-based protein = veggie meats and soy milk products.  Since Japan is a country with many tofu products, it’s possible that people have traditionally high plant-based protein intake.  However, to reduce animal-based protein, penetration of products such as veggie meats and soy milk yogurt is indispensable.  If these continue to be available only through mail order, penetration will be difficult. Thus, we surveyed how much…

When vegans leave the social movement. Veganism expanding.

Animal Rights Center since its founding 31 years ago had set spreading of vegetarianism as one of its main objectives, and now we are working on eggs and dairy products, so the objective has changed to spreading of veganism. The contents of the Articles of Incorporation created in 1999 include “promotion and proposal work related to development and sales system creation for products that the consumers can choose and purchase, and vegan foods that consider the preservation of animals and the ecosystem”. 31 years since then, the early days of veganism are over, and it’s clear that the time has passed when activists with complete disregard to profits must play the active role. The…

What does “vegan” actually mean?

The word “vegan” seems to appear more and more recently even in Japan, but what does “vegan” really mean?  Many people seem to misunderstand, so it would be good to understand its real meaning as this word becomes more commonly used.   Indeed, if you check on Google Trends, the search interests in both “ヴィーガン” and “ビーガン” seem to be increasing exponentially *1.   The word “vegan” was originally invented in England.  In Japanese, many people write “ビーガン”, but “ヴィーガン” is technically more correct, if you want to be exact.  (In Google search, too, “ヴィーガン” has twice as many results as “ビーガン”, so it might be good to try for consistency.)…

Clean meat & (plant-based) alternative meat — Toward the age of “meat” without animal sacrifice

Why “cultured meat” and “alternative meat” — animal sacrifice The graph below shows the estimated number of animals sacrificed around the world for meat, eggs, and dairy from 1961 to 2017. Source: FAOSTAT* Laying Eggs hen and Meat chicken use the left-most 1000Head axis, while Meat pig, Meat cattle, and Milk whole fresh cow use the inner axis. Here are the numbers of animals sacrificed in 2017.  They amount to over 10 times the world population. Egg-laying hens   7.838 billion birds Broiler chickens 66.567 billion birds Pigs    1.486 billion heads Beef cattle                344.149 million heads Dairy cows        …

https://www.livekindly.com/largest-meat-producer-us-vegan-protein/
World’s Meat Companies Work on Producing Plant-based Meats

World’s 2nd largest meat producer Tyson Foods announced that it will debut their own plant-based protein alternatives this summer.  Tyson Foods had previously invested in the plant-based meat company Beyond Meat, but in April this year Tyson sold its stake, intending to produce its own alternative products.  According to research, the US meat-substitute retail market could reach $2.5 billion by 2023. (*1)   Many other companies are engaged in this space, especially in Europe and North America. Canada’s largest meat product manufacturer Maple Leaf Foods bought the well-known plant-based brands Lightlife and Field Roast in 2017, and in October 2018 established a new plant-based food branch Greanleaf Foods (*2).  In April this…