Here are two extracts from recent issues:

It is over fifty years since I first decided to become a vegetarian. The poet Shelley was the spark that kindled a fire that had been laid in my mind over several years. About that time I recall reading Bernard Shaw telling somewhere how he had become convinced that killing animals for food was wrong, but that he was unable to put his belief into practice until vegetarian restaurants appeared in London a few years later. I couldn't understand how anyone could decide against killing for food, and yet in effect still do it. I changed diet the moment I was convinced, as youth will — for I was then only a few years younger than the Shelley who had convinced me. Age looks more carefully before it leaps.

It was a few years before I became aware of veganism. By then I had already learnt something of the social cost of being vegetarian – the odd one out who was naturally left outside the circle – and although I agreed with the logic, I merely inclined to a vegan diet, without fully adopting it. There were far fewer vegan foods available at the time, and more diet problems for a vegan; I rationalised my practice in recognising the added social and marital difficulties of a vegan diet, and of bringing up a family vegan instead of just vegetarian. It seemed to me too that I could work more effectively for a vegetarian world if I did not get too far ahead of those I wanted to follow me, nor of those other vegetarian society members I worked with. (I edited a vegetarian magazine at Brighton from 1956 to 1958.)

Today, with the great increase in the number of vegetarians in this country, the wider recognition of the logic of veganism, and all the vegetarian and vegan foods available, the situation has substantially changed. A vegan diet is easy for anyone with the will to adopt it, and the vegetarian-but-not-quite-vegan stance is arguably untenable. (And there are plenty of people ready to enter the argument.) Vegetarians are used to being told by their friends that they "eat very little meat." I do not feel comfortable telling vegans that I "eat very little cheese," but I have always been aware that I belong to the human race, as well as to the vegetarian part of it; and to refuse all compromise on principle always involves some isolation from others. For me the uncompromising principle has been to be vegetarian, and that compromise position has worked as well as I could have hoped through the years of family life. For me a less compromising stand might have put too much strain on essential personal relationships.

To descend from heady principle to practice in the kitchen: many vegetarian and vegan recipes of today are too exotic for my taste. Although I will try anything so long as it's vegetarian, I am generally pleased to go back to my traditional preferences, derived from the basic formula of meat-and-two-veg. Our dinner has typically been a protein savoury item with a larger selection of vegetables, conservatively cooked. (For many years we always used a pressure cooker.) So to conclude, here is one of the savouries I have most regularly been fed on for forty years. This is a typical recipe (it's not actually written down, just intuitive) so don't be afraid to try variations. Normally to be accompanied by three or four seasonal vegetables, and gravy (the vegetable water and yeast extract) if preferred.

½lb hazel nuts )
½lb broken cashew nuts ) Grind the nuts finely and add 1 teaspoon dried oregano.
1 large onion finely chopped, gently fried in olive oil
1 teaspoon yeast extract )
a dash of soy sauce )
1 tablespoon tomato purée ) Dissolve yeast extract in onion mixture; add soy, tomato, and salt.
salt to taste )
Add nut mixture. Mix to a moist consistency, adding water or vegetable stock as necessary.
Cook in greased baking dish for ½hour in a moderate oven.
(If you want units in grammes and centilitres please refer to conversion tables.)
You can get different flavours from similar roasts made using different nuts, say walnuts, or brazils, but they have never been so popular with us as the hazel-and-cashew. And then of course the same chef de cuisine makes mushroom roast, butter bean roast, lentil roast, chestnut roast . . .

from The Bristol Vegetarian #32 (October 2002)

Religious Vegetarianism is a fascinating collection of writings on vegetarianism as viewed from a number of different faith traditions; it is edited by two American Professors of Philosophy, who have also produced a companion volume Ethical Vegetarianism. Their sources span nearly 3000 years and include Ancient Greek (not strictly religious, but included because of its influence on later religions), Indian, Buddhist, Judaic, Christian and Islamic traditions.

When making their selections for the book the editors noted a problem in that the Indian and Buddhist sacred writings are full of overt discussions of vegetarianism, whereas the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are not. However, vegetarian members of these three faiths would argue that their sacred texts prescribe a non-violent diet as a path to a deeper compassion for all life – human as well as animal – implicitly rather than explicitly.

Interestingly the readings of the Pythagorean tradition and of these three faiths point to the conviction that human nature was originally non-violent and at peace with other animals in a Golden or Edenic era, and vegetarians of these faiths aspire to what might be seen as a coming of the Kingdom of God on earth at present by living their lives in a way consonant with that originally ordained by God (Genesis 1: 29-30); so for them a credal renunciation of violence is not enough — one's beliefs must be incorporated into everyday actions. This conviction then approaches more closely that of the Eastern religions, which focus on high ideals being aspired to in ‘this' life in order to attain oneness with the divine. In the Bhagavad-gita Krishna maintains that every living being has a soul, and advocates non-injury (ahimsa) to the souls of all life in order to save one's own soul.
Knowing and renouncing severally and singly the actions against living beings, in the regions above, below, and in the surface, everywhere and in all ways — a wise man neither gives pain to these bodies, nor assents to others in their doing so.

Carol Adams, in her contribution Feeding on Grace: Institutional Violence, Christianity, and Vegetarianism, speaks of her epiphany when, having witnessed her own much-loved horse lying dead in a field, she later sat down to eat a hamburger and realised the hypocrisy of her actions:
"One dead body had a name, a past that included my sense of his subjectivity, and was soon to be respectfully buried. The other dead body was invisible, objectified, nameless, except in its current state as hamburger, and was to be buried in my stomach."

Many readers of the ASWA Bulletin will already be familiar with the writings of Andrew Linzey. In their introduction to his contribution Vegetarianism as a Biblical Ideal taken from Animal Theology the editors summarise his approach, in which he has conceded the slaughter of animals for food in a few cases of "unhappy necessity."
Jesus's special affinity for the weak, powerless, and oppressed, as well as his teachings on non-violence, make it clear that where it is possible for the Christian to abstain from killing animals for food, he or she is called upon to do so.
I feel this book would be of interest to anyone who is already conversant with the literature of vegetarianism as well as to anyone coming to it for the first time, struggling as it does with the tensions of the enormous moral questions of the place of animals in relation to humans, and of our responsibilities towards them as part of Creation in their own right, rather than as a resource or raw material for human use.
Jill Greenway

from The Bristol Vegetarian #33 (March 2003)