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Eat your vegetables (20 photos)

Vegetarian dishes and animal rights were on the menu during Vegfest Guelph 2018 at Riverside Park

Animal free food, clothing and other products were just part of the attraction this year as vegetarians, vegans and their pets gathered in Riverside Park for the fifth annual Vegfest Guelph.

“It is a very, very big movement right now,” said Vegfest Guelph committee member and event organizer Derek Farrell. “We are hoping for 5,000 to 10,000 people throughout the day. As you look around you see lots of people walking through so, I think we are doing pretty good.”

It was the fifth year for Vegfest Guelph but the first year it was held in Riverside Park.

“We were at Goldie Mill before where we had vendors inside and out,” said Farrell.

“This is strictly outside. I think we had 68 vendors show up today and previous years we had less than that.”

The majority of vendors were selling products such as food, cosmetics and clothing but others such as Animal Alliance, Toronto Pig Save, GSETA, Sea Shepherd and PETA were there to raise concerns about the environment and the way animals are treated to satisfy our hunger and fashion tastes.

“Lots of people are very intrigued about it,” said Farrell. “There are a lot of new vendors promoting very good products because people are just making things better. It is taking over and a lot of new people are interested not only for the animals sake but for our health and the environment.”

Keynote speaker Gary Francione spoke about the health advantages to adopting a vegan diet and the environmental impact of the meat industry.

“The reality is the single best thing you can do if you care about global warming is to go vegan,” said Francione. “We worry about composting and we worry about recycling and things like that but we don’t worry about the one thing we can all do. You can do it right now. It is to stop eating, drinking, wearing and using our fellow creatures.”

Francione is an animal rights activist, a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich England. His Abolitionist theory criticizes the way we treat animals as human property to justify a violent system that kills 70 billion land animals and one trillion sea creatures each year to feed our growing human population.

He said the environmental impact is secondary to the moral issue and drew parallels to our perception of the Holocaust.

“Who would have said the Holocaust was really bad because they were transporting people in trains and killing them and cremating them and it left a horrible carbon footprint?” asked Francione. “Ya, it may have had a carbon footprint but the reason why the Holocaust was problematic was because it represented a violation of fundamental rights. It was morally wrong. It was morally obscene. It was morally unjustifiable.”

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Troy Bridgeman

About the Author: Troy Bridgeman

Troy Bridgeman is a multi-media journalist that has lived and worked in the Guelph community his whole life. He has covered news and events in the city for more than two decades.
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