A Congress day in Lindau

from EVU News, Issue 1, 1996

Several groups for vegetarian/vegan lifestyle or from animal protection originating from Germany, Austria and Switzerland came together in November 1995 in order to set up an action group and to unify their forces: The D-A-CH Action community of Lake Constance was born.! On the 2nd March a first event was organised by the regional section of Vegetarier-Bund Deutschlands (German Vegetarian Society) and the Schweizerische Vereinigung für Vegetarismus (Swiss Union for Vegetarianism): Congress-day in Lindau - Lake Constance.

In the morning there was a meeting of several groups with information desks (vegetarianism, veganism, animal protection, animal rights) from Germany and Austria in order to get to know each other and to build up a co-operation.

In the afternoon there were several lectures:

1. Charlotte Probst, an Austrian teacher presented her project called Animal protection at school

2. Medical results from the world wide studies on vegetarians. Listening to Dr. Hartinger there cannot be any doubt that vegetarian lifestyle is the only way to save our planet and mankind as Albert Einstein has said already many years ago: "Nothing will increase the chance for survival on earth like the step to the vegetarian lifestyle". His lecture will be published in one of the next issues of EVU News.

3. Dr. Walter Schmidt (Germany) spoke about BSE, its story , development and its connection with Creutzfeldt-Jakob-Disease. The very interesting lecture will be published in the next issue.

4. The author, philosopher and collaborator for ethical problems in 'animal peace' Dr. Helmut Kaplan (Austria - pictured right) spoke about the rights of animals in his talk May we eat animals?. Animals are not equal to humans, as humans are not equal among themselves, but where there are the same interests like the interest to eat and to live i.e. they all have the same rights, he said. Dr.Kaplan is preparing a fundamental book on animal rights: The movement of animal rights, philosophical bases - political aims. (He is looking for a sponsor.)
See: Vegetarian or Vegan and "Humans come first!" by Dr.Kaplan.

5. The Swiss photographer Jette Langhans showed her slide show Crescendo which has won the bronze medal in an European contest. It dealt with the exploitation of animals and nature and showed how such acting is falling back on mankind. The show was very impressive showing pictures from animal farms and laboratories and were too much for several people in the audience (more than 200).The sight of such terrible suffering of innocent creatures gives us the strength to go on fighting against these abuses.

6. Edith Zellweger spoke about animal protection in Switzerland. The Swiss population is proud to have the most progressive laws for animal protection, of all countries! But what about putting them into practice? She showed that theory and practice are two different things, that the laws were not respected, that the guardians of the laws are not doing what they are expected to do and are making too many compromises.

7. Reiner Degen (Germany) finally talked about agriculture, energy, environmental protection and alternatives for agriculture and economy.

- Sigrid De Leo