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posted by on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the money-is-murder dept.

The Rainbow Vegetarian Café in Cambridge, England, has announced that it will not accept the new £5 polymer notes, introduced by the Bank of England in September. Last week the British vegan community discovered that the notes contain trace amounts of beef tallow, which is animal fat, and are therefore unacceptable by their cruelty-free standards. A heated online controversy has resulted, including a petition asking the Bank to remove tallow from the polymer.

The Rainbow Café's owner, Sharon Meijland, told The Telegraph that her stance was announced last Wednesday, at the end of a BBC radio interview on the unrelated topic of Christmas food.

"We sponsor the Vegan Fair and announced on Wednesday we would not be accepting the £5 notes because they are dubious ethically. We have been providing food for vegans for 30 years and have tried to be as ethical as we possibly can...This is not just a restaurant, it's a restaurant where tiny details like this are really important."

Is any of our money cruelty-free?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:40PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:40PM (#437767)

    How about gold coins where the gold is mined by slave labor children?

    Also those plants they're eating probably were not pasture raised and the slaughtering process for plants is violent, torn apart while the plants are still alive in some cases. Absolutely brutal and unacceptable. I've seen the farm where my beef is raised and the butcher at least had the decency to kill the thing before chopping it up. Clearly I am far holier than those unethical brits.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:43PM (#437772)

    > How about gold coins where the gold is mined by slave labor children?

    I'm pretty sure they don't take gold coins as payment either.
    Must you virtue signal every time there is a story about people you don't like?

  • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:46PM

    by Kromagv0 (1825) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:46PM (#437823) Homepage

    I've seen the farm where my beef is raised and the butcher at least had the decency to kill the thing before chopping it up.

    This probably means you are getting better meat than you otherwise would as well, unless you live next to a giant feedlot with cattle knee deep in their own filth.

    --
    T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:59PM (#437838)

      No the McDonald's is down the road, but I don't call them cattle, sheeple suffices.

  • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:40PM

    by Zz9zZ (1348) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:40PM (#437931)

    While this is definitely a trollish style of commentary I do think it brings up a very good point. There is a lot of suffering caused by manufacturing various items, and the suffering of people should be more important to us than the suffering of animals**. Yet many vegans will use their phones and wear child labor clothing. If they are going to be vocal about minuscule amounts of tallow in printed bills then they should be outraged at a LOT of other things. Yes, I realize the store is probably doing a publicity stunt, but the point still stands. I guess the answer to that conundrum is that it is easy to avoid animal products, ingredients are clearly labeled. Avoiding products produced unethically requires a lot more investigation, and we have a low threshold for inconvenience.

    **I'm also one of the weirdos that feels more for animals than people (usually), but I think that is a symptom of our society being so sick that we have a form of self species loathing whereas animals are basically innocents at our mercy.

    --
    ~Tilting at windmills~
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:30PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:30PM (#437965)

      While this is definitely a trollish style of commentary

      "-ish style" sure I guess if sarcasm turned up to 11 is trollish style. I wouldn't agree with that, but I wouldn't disagree too strongly either. For true trolling, I think you need an element of off topic-ness or at least concern trolling to really be trolling. Like if the actual story was about the tech behind "sous vide eggplant" menu item at their vegan restaurant and I rolled the above in, that would be totally trolly. I'm not sure if sous vide eggplant is biochemically possible, now I'm off topic trolling myself with daydreams... Well, it would be technically interesting if possible which I think not. I think you need the heat of carmelization reaction to make eggplant taste edible-ish. Probably.

      anyway,

      and the suffering of people should be more important to us than the suffering of animals

      a form of self species loathing

      That loathing is a common problem among progressives and nothings more progressive than being vegan and self loathing of ones own race or culture. Progressivism is the white people disease, in that you don't see, oh, I donno, Chinese for example, hyperventilating on social media over who's better at self flagellation over how awful their own race is and how awful their own country is (well, without a really good situational excuse, like Tienanmen Square or Mao or the crap they sell us at walmart or whatever)

      So I'm just saying that tactically you're not gonna get anywhere with someone proudly being holier than thou progressive by being vegan and not accepting contaminated banknotes because their hands are too clean compared to us losers with an argument that self loathing is no way to go thru life when self loathing is the core of their belief and values and social hierarchy system. I mean yeah I agree with you that tactically thats a reasonably good argument against people under normal conditions, but in an article about vegans so holier than thou they can't touch their countries filthy money, that's so not happening.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:23PM

        by Zz9zZ (1348) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:23PM (#438002)

        Heh, well I agreed with your original post to a point, but this one is going off the rails. Sure a minority of liberals have a rabid loathing of white males and conservatives, but I write them off the same as I write off the rabid creationists etc. protesting outside abortion clinics. The wild fringes will always be there on both sides.

        My gripe is the hypocrisy and in-your-face attitude of some people that make a huge deal out of something incredibly minor (such as this story). I think you're projecting your biased viewpoint of vegans / progressives way too much, the vast majority are not self loathing they just see actual problems in society. Its also not a holier than thou, its a brain aneurysm forming when conservative types refuse to acknowledge the very real issues we have in our society. Racism sure as hell is still real, but its getting better. Animal cruelty is totally real and hasn't changed much. Income inequality has been getting worse for a very long time and its causing a huge amount of societal problems that are going to really kick in during the next decade or two if we don't do something about it. Climate change is real and the world needs to take steps to mitigate the long term damage.

        All these points are supported by progressives / liberals and they are all very real problems. We can argue about solutions, but when you refuse to accept the hard evidence that these problems exist then you will run into the "holier than thou" attitude. This goes both ways, I see the same attitude in the conservative base on this site all the time except it comes off more as angry insults.

        The US has a ton of problems, but they are swept under the rug with a lot of bureaucracy, media disinterest, and blame shifting. Stop the mindset of us vs. them, whenever you point the finger at "them" realize that they can be equally pointing the finger right back. The struggle is we the people vs. the oppressors. Always has been, always will be. Any success can be rolled back, constant vigilance etc. etc. Right now we've been successfully divided by race and class issues.

        --
        ~Tilting at windmills~
  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:08PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:08PM (#438033) Journal

    Good point. Go fruitarian.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.