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 situation is different from 20 years ago and even 10 years ago.  Time has come for general businesses who want to make profits to participate. In addition to profits, they also gain the value of being able to fulfill their social responsibilities, and the so-called socially good, win-win relationships are being created.

The vegetarian map being built by the Animal Rights Center since the early 2000s (renewed from saisyoku.com to Hachidory.com and changed from vegetarian information to vegan information) is growing in the number of businesses to the point that we volunteers alone can’t handle all.  There are currently 437 vegan-friendly restaurants that we have visited on our list.

In 2018, major newspapers covered veganism one after another. Since 2019, being vegan is becoming more normal, and reports and special features are no longer unusual.  Vegans can now shop for many things in the supermarkets.

What got us to realize that we have shifted from social movement to being incorporated into the economy was learning about the following event.

JETRO Gunma has launched GUNMA VEGAN PROJECT to promote vegan accommodation in hotels and to utilize Gunma ingredients for vegan food.  “Vegan menu joint development / tasting party and overseas vegan seminar in Gunma (for restaurant, ryokan, and hotel associates in the prefecture)” “Gunma prefecture food introduction event for vegan menu in Gunma (for producers and food manufacturers)”

We very happily welcome this development.  When staying over for a night, changing even one meal to a vegan meal will save animals a lot.

We hope that business owners and stakeholders will correctly understand the true purpose, meaning, and the kindness and compassion behind veganism and develop it further.  In particular, this is not necessarily for vegan people, but we hope that people in Japan will have more opportunities to come in contact with plant-based proteins and animal-free fashion.  We are grateful to those who have been vegan for 50 years, those who have been trying to spread veganism for 30 years, and of course everyone who fought together, and we will continue to support the movement to spread vegan products as before and strive to outreach to people.
Aiming to realize a society where as many animals as possible will be saved as soon as possible.