Legal Niches

A Vegan Option on Every Menu

By jennifer

Wouldn’t it be nice if every restaurant had at least one vegan item labeled on the menu? No more asking the chef to make a “vegetable plate,” restaurant-speak for “plate of grilled vegetables that all taste alike and won’t fill you up.” Just one decent vegan entree that the chef likes enough to actually list on the menu.

I’ve been thinking about this fantasy of mine a lot recently, and I don’t think it’s such a pipe dream. In fact, I think this is something that local activists could productively work towards. It would be a concrete change that benefits the activists (and the animals) directly. I don’t imagine that it would draw a lot of ire from the general public — we wouldn’t be asking people to eat differently; we would just be asking to have something to eat for ourselves. The restaurants might get mad, but if Chicago can pass the foie gras ordinance that actually takes a “food” away from chefs, then other cities could surely pass a vegan-option ordinance that doesn’t prevent chefs from doing anything — it just asks them to have the creativity to come up with an entree that doesn’t use meat, eggs, or dairy. Not too hard.

I guess this would be done through local campaigns focused on city councils. A large group could probably make enough noise to make the vegan-option ordinance an issue among a local city council. It could be approached through lots of angles — climate change prevention; healthy eating choices; cultural diversity. Perhaps local religious groups could also be incorporated into the campaign, since vegan food tends to cover religious dietary restrictions as well.

Just a thought. Joel and I would like to get the DC-area animal activist group started after exams and the holiday break. Perhaps this is something that we might be interested in doing. I, for one, would love to go back to all those restaurants I visited over the summer — to each one that gave me a plate of grilled vegetables — and sit down to a real, honest-to-goodness vegan meal.

Full post as published by Animal Blawg on December 07, 2007 (boomark / email).