A vegan for 35 years: Why choose to be a vegan?

 ” I always felt it was wrong to kill animals when it was unnecessary.”

Jay Lord

During the two hours Northern Animal Welfare Co-operative (NAWC) spent promoting vegetarianism, only four people were interested in vegetarianism and were willing to learn more about it.

On February 22, the NAWC launched a “Why vegan” campaign at Grey’s monument in Newcastle, with organizer Jay Lord leading four members and an elaborate brochure devoted to the effort to get people to eat less meat.

Jay Lord, a vegan for 35 years, founded Northern Animal Welfare Co-operative (NAWC), has been vegan since he was 19 and is now campaigning for animal rights.

“I don’t understand why we love these animals and keep them as pets, but we still have chicken and beef and bloody animals on the table at home.”

Jay Lord

He also said: “Many countries have adopted the western diet, so the incidence of diabetes and heart disease has decreased. But if you’ve adopted all the habits (vegetarianism), the country was probably far more healthier before you took started eating beef burgers and McDonald’s and all this sort of thing, so I think for your health for the animals and for the planet, most important is not using any animals and animal products.”

According to a new report about food shopping, now have one every eight britons are vegetarian or vegan, and 21% of people claim to have flexibility, occasionally eat meat, add vegetable based diet, this means that a third of British consumers intentionally reduce the amount of meat they eat, or completely remove meat from the diet.

Yet observation suggests that this is not the case at Newcastle. Interest in vegetarianism is not what the report suggests. Most people who choose a vegetarian lifestyle are middle-aged or elderly, and few young people are interested in it. Even Jay says that NWAC has been subjected to some anti-vegetarian abuse while promoting vegetarianism.

About 60 percent of vegans and 40 percent of vegetarians (who eat eggs, fish, shrimp and dairy) said they had adopted such a lifestyle in the past five years, with 55 percent citing concern for animals, 45 percent for health reasons and 38 percent for protecting the environment.

Jay has been vegan for 35 years, and it wasn’t until three or four years ago that he really began to understand the influence of vegetarianism, not only in protecting animals, but also in protecting the environment. Last month, he quit his job and began to devote himself to NAWC promotion. He hopes to make more people realize that vegan is not only a way of life, but also a way of giving back to the earth.