Does Veganuary actually change anything?
Below is a graph of how Veganuary sign-ups have increased since their first campaign in 2014. While their first campaign had 3,300 sign-ups, their 2021 campaign had over 580,000.
Not bad considering the campaign was originally created by just two vegans back in late 2013, who decided that they weren’t doing enough to force their veganism down everyone’s throats and so created the concept of Veganuary, where people would pledge to eat a plant-based diet for the month of January.
But why is Veganuary popular and why does it matter?
Outside of the fact that Veganuary gives people the opportunity to tell everyone that they’re now vegan and be awkward at meals and get-togethers, when we look at the primary motivations for why people are taking part in the campaign we can see one of the main strengths of Veganuary: it gives people the opportunity to evaluate how they feel about topics such as animal exploitation and the climate crisis and their role in perpetuating these issues.
In fact, out of all the surveyed participants who took part in the 2021 campaign, 46 per cent said their Number One motivation was animals; 22 per cent said it was personal health, and 21 per cent said it was the environment.
We are recognising more and more that 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 per cent of total annual carbon emissions. Scientists have warned us that the emissions from agriculture alone will make it impossible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, let alone the two degrees target - 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 per cent 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 and habitat erosion.
We have come to understand the personal health consequences associated with animal products, such as an increased risk of heart disease, certain forms of cancer and type two diabetes and the global health consequences such as infectious diseases and pandemics.
Veganuary has increased awareness about these issues, and during Veganuary 2021, more than 1,500 media stories were published globally about the campaign.
On top of this, Veganuary 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 Veganuary alongside 259 new vegan menus - meaning that Veganuary 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 more people to go vegan throughout the entire year.
It’s worth mentioning that the animal agriculture industries have made attempts to push back against the success of Veganuary, with Februdairy being the most well known. But, they’ve had some branding and optics issues such as with the disastrous #MilkPintChallenge.
This ultimately led to the Scottish NFU president, Andrew McCornick, calling Februdairy ‘counterproductive’. Not the impact that dairy farmers were hoping for then.
But let’s get back to Veganuary because fundamentally one of the most important aspects of the month-long campaign is that it has helped to normalise veganism, driving people to confront the truth behind animal farming. Ultimately, Veganuary matters because it stops people from being able to hide behind the comfort of willful ignorance and social conformity.
As comedian David Mitchell said when writing about vegans in The Guardian: “The thing that’s annoying about there suddenly being 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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