it's january again which means one thing
veganuary is back there are even 75
companies including sky and volkswagen
who are taking part in the beginnery
workplace challenge this year but why is
vganry popular does it even matter and
does it actually change anything
this is a graph of how veganry sign ups
have increased since their first
campaign in 2014. while their first
campaign had 3 300 signups their 2021
campaign had over
580 000 and when we look at the primary
motivations for why people are taking
part in the campaign we can see one of
the many strengths of the january it
gives people the opportunity to evaluate
how they feel about topics such as
animal exploitation and the climate
crisis as well as their roles in
perpetuating these issues in fact out of
all the surveyed participants who took
part in the 2021 campaign 46
said their number one motivation for
participating was animals 22 percent
said it was personal health and 21
said it was the environment we are
recognizing more and more the animals
are sentient individuals who are no
different morally to the dogs and cats
that we love in our homes in essence the
facade created by the animal farming
industries is slipping with people
becoming more aware that the legal
standards do not actually protect
animals and that there is no humane or
compassionate way to exploit and
needlessly slaughter an animal we are
coming to understand the huge
environmental cost of animal farming
such as the fact it produces at least
14.5 percent of total annual emissions
and scientists have warned us that the
emissions from agriculture alone will
make it impossible to stay below 1.5
degrees celsius and maybe even 2 degrees
meaning that if we want to avoid the
worst of the climate crisis we have to
change our agricultural system animal
farming also uses 83 of all global
agricultural land is the number one
driver of rainforest deforestation and
is a leading cause of water pollution
soil erosion ocean dead zones habitat
erosion and the list goes on we've come
to understand the personal health
consequences associated with animal
products as well such as an increased
risk of heart disease certain forms of
cancer and type 2 diabetes and the
global health consequences such as
infectious diseases and pandemics the
ganuri has increased awareness about
these issues and during the 2021 v
january campaign more than 1
500 media stories were published
globally about it
on top of this the gunnery has made
veganism more accessible by working with
food companies to bring out more vegan
options in 2021
566 new vegan products were launched for
the january alongside 259
new vegan menus meaning that veganui
creates a self-perpetuating cycle
whereby they encourage people to go
vegan which causes companies to respond
by creating more vegan options which
makes veganism more accessible thereby
encouraging even more people to go vegan
throughout the entire year now it's
worth mentioning that the animal
agriculture industries have made
attempts to push back against the
success of the ganuri with februdairy
being the most well-known however whilst
we gannery has succeeded in creating an
effective brand identity februdairy has
struggled with one of the big drives
from the campaign consisting of dairy
farmers attempting to chug a pint of
milk as fast as they can february this
ultimately led to the scottish national
farmers union president andrew mccornick
calling february dairy counterproductive
but let's get back to the january
because fundamentally one of the most
important aspects of the gannery is that
it's helped to normalize veganism and
this normalization forces people to
confront the truth behind animal farming
ultimately veganry matters because it
stops people from being able to hide
behind the comfort of willful ignorance
and social conformity as comedian david
mitchell once stated in relation to
vegans the thing that's annoying about
there's suddenly been lots of them is
the nagging suspicion that they might be
right when there were hardly any vegans
i hardly ever had to think about that
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