Actions co-inciding with the UN Conference on World Food Security and Climate Change got off to an early start, with Sunday seeing the first of an outbreak of vegan food give-aways, in Manchester, with a spot of guerrilla gardening; the rash spread on Monday with GM labs occupied. The Ready Steady Skip website tried to soothe, but on the day, the action contagion spread…
Climate change and animal rights activists joined together in Nottingham today to give away free vegan food, plants & skipped vegetables.
Passer-bys were enticed to our stall by the offers of free chips, vegan pasties and tomato plants. We handed out leaflets about climate change & food and had lots of chats with people about the world food crisis & our solutions of eating a local, organic & vegan diet. An amazing number of people already grew there own food & lots more were encouraged to give it a go. We had a really positive response from the public and people seemed genuinely interested in the information leaflets we handed out.
The next free vegan food giveaway in Nottingham is going to be on the 4th July.
A handful of us then visited Fresh & Ecoworks community garden based at St Ann’s allotments. We had a tour of the amazing gardens & saw a brilliant example of local, organic food being produced in the city. See
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2006/08/348168.html
and
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/10/382929.html
We toddled off home in the rain, chilli plants in hand, inspired to grow our own.
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Food & Climate Change Action – London
For the Food & Climate Change day of action, Whitechapel Food Not Bombs and Brixton Reclaim Your Food teamed up to serve free vegan food in front of a Mac Donald’s in Camberwell.
The groups had a stall right in front of a Mac Donald in Camberwell for two hours, serving out freshly skipped, lovingly cooked free vegan food to passers by, and engaging people in conversation about the link between the food they eat and climate change. For good measure, the group was accompanied by a bicycle sound system, to liven up the atmosphere.
All in all, over a hundred servings were given out, countless more people saw the stall and were given leaflets highlighting some of the links between food and climate change on the following topics : waste ; veganism ; organic food ; locally produced food.
The menu included a spicy mash, a curry, a pumpkin soup, a salad, some guacamole, some stuffed aubergines, some veggies burgers, an apple cake, a fruit salad and more.
Unsurprisingly, the Mac Donald’s managers weren’t too happy about people giving out free food in front of their window shop – but the police seemed to decide otherwise. The groups were asked to remove a banner from the Mac Donald window shop, but were otherwise permitted to stay there as long as there wasn’t too much obstruction.
londonfnb@lists.riseup.net
http://www.londonfnb.org
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25 protesters organised by Biofuelwatch and Food Not Fuel, London came together for a protest outside Newham town hall in East Ham on Saturday to raise public awareness of the planning application for the UK’s first biofuel-fired power plant to be built, in Beckton. Banners and placards quoted many statistics such as the number of people going hungry because of agrofuels and the number of people who could be fed with one tank of biofuel. Over 500 signatures objecting to the plant were collected…it appears that Beckton, one of the most polluted London boroughs, is prepared to fight back.
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In London, vegan campaigners we took to the streets of Chancery Lane to
treat the city workers to some vegan food samples. The response was good,
with a range of interested people coming to taste the food. We gave away
hundreds of recipe booklets, and leaflets for this year’s London Vegan
Festival.
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Bristol Protest Over Tesco’s Biofuels Claim
Biofuels far from the panacea to petrol prices and climate change, have added to the global food price hike by taking land previously occupied by food crops. A study by the University of Minnesota found that growing biofuel on converted rainforests, peat lands, savannas or grasslands created up to 420 times more carbon dioxide than it saved.
Wheat Prices have doubled in the UK over the past year, and consumers and retailers have so far managed to absorb this. But elsewhere in the world, people are going without wheat (and other staples) and bakers are going out of business.
To illustrate this issue, a dozens bakers (rather than a bakers dozen!) will be following up Bristol Rising Tides demo in April of this year to illustrate the true cost of Agro-fuels. They will be at Tesco, Eastville between 4.30pm and 7pm
Ms Bread of Bristol Rising Tide said:
“The question is do we want do feed our cars or feed ourselves?”
Tesco has made false claims about the source of the fuel sold at its service stations, according to an investigation that found that the chain sold the most environmentally damaging types of biodiesel -Palm Oil – whilst claiming that it ‘s biofuel was sourced from relatively sustainable UK-planted rape seed oil.[2]
Mr A.Baker of Bristol Rising Tide said:
“Its now clear that we leave big business to deal with climate change, this is the kind of thing that will happen – a bloody disaster”
At this years Climate Camp (3rd – 10th August) there will be a national day of action against Agrofuels.
[1] Bristol Rising Tide is part of the International Rising Tide for Climate Justice network
www.risingtide.org.uk
[2] The Times,April 14, 2008 “Tesco green fuel ‘adds to climate change”
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Waiting for (social) Change!
4/06/2008
Today in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow a group of waiters invited passers-by to ‘Taste the waste’ and sample their free food. The menu was made up entirely out of skipped goods from supermarket bins and included such delights as: homemade vegan frequent flyer banana cake, skipped chip, rescued roast veg. and binned beans. This was part of the call to action on Food and Climate Change by the Network for Climate Action (http://networkforclimateaction.org.uk).
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Liverpool hosted a free vegan food fair at its social centre ‘Next to
Nowhere’. Around 50 people attended and loads of food and information was given out. The event allowed for a lot of informal discussion, with a social area created for this purpose. People were delighted to hear that they can come back for vegan food every Saturday afternoon 1-5pm.
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Pigs say: If you care about climate change, eat less meat, milk and eggs
On Tuesday June 3rd, a group of pigs made a small action for a more vegan Amsterdam. They handed out vegan snacks to encourage people not to buy that ham for dinner. It may look like the pigs acted out of self-interest, but today their message was that meat production is a major cause of climate change. While the UN is conferring in Rome on World Food Security and Climate change, the pigs put a focus on that average Europeans have a diet of disaster. Raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.
Quite some people in front of the Albert Heijn on Jodenbreestraat were happy to taste the organic, vegan falafel and chocolate cake and many said they are vegetarians already. People were surprised to hear that producing one kilo of cheese cause as much greenhouse gas emissions as driving a car for 60 km. A Brazilian woman had witnessed the expanding soy fields used for feeding animal industry.
“Consumers can make a huge improvement by avoiding animal products and imports, and by supporting local, organic farmers instead. But humans need to organise themselves fast against the dominant culture if they want to save themselves from climate chaos” the piggies stated after all the food had been handed out.
Tonight, Wednesday June 4 from 19 there will be a film night in Plantage Doklaan 12, with organic vegan food and ideas on how to combat climate change. (See programme on the website)
Website: http://www.howtocookaplanet.net