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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: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:41PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:41PM (#437769) Journal

    I have a problem with it. First, it's insane. Someone calculated that the total amount of tallow used in all of the £5 notes in circulation is about half of the amount that you get from one cow. No cows are being killed to make the notes, they're simply using an animal byproduct because it's cheap. The Rainbow Cafe contains quite a few things that contain a lot more tallow than the fivers - they even sell some things that contain tallow. They're just cashing in on the press attention.

    Second, the £5 is legal tender. If I buy something from them and they refuse to accept legal tender in return, then what happens? It's a bit murky (lots of common law rulings), but there's quite a bit of precedent to say that the goods are free. If they're happy with that, then fine, but I doubt that they are.

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  • (Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:08PM

    by ShadowSystems (6185) <ShadowSystemsNO@SPAMGmail.com> on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:08PM (#437845)

    *Standing ovation*
    THANK YOU!

    I was waiting for someone to point out that tiny little fact. Thank you for doing so.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:14PM (#437907)

    Legal tender only applies to the discharge of a debt, so if they require payment up front it is irrelevant.

    Even then (paying after consuming food, such that there is a debt), legal tender is actually only a legal defense during a court case, and to exercise it one has to pay the sum in to the court - as legal tender.

    So I leave others to work out the practical implications, which I'd suggest are quite obvious.

    diasan

  • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:34PM

    by Osamabobama (5842) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:34PM (#437923)

    Does 'animal cruelty' have a half-life? I imagine that, over time, all the cruelty that went into a five pound note will be amortized over thousands of transactions, leaving behind a well-worn, but guilt-free, note.

    What is vegan canon for archaeological sites? Are whale bone tools tainted by the fate of history's dead whales? What about lesser animals? (I understand that elephant ivory is forever tainted, for instance, but how about feathers?)

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    • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:01PM

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:01PM (#438029)

      > Does 'animal cruelty' have a half-life?

      It must have, but it is conveniently left unstated, because the five pound notes are _plastic_ - which is made from fossil fuel which is made from dead plants and dead animals.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:12PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:12PM (#438035) Journal

    Second, the £5 is legal tender. If I buy something from them and they refuse to accept legal tender in return, then what happens? It's a bit murky (lots of common law rulings), but there's quite a bit of precedent to say that the goods are free.

    Not quite. First, this issue is actually covered in TFA, and the owner basically has said if anyone tries to push the issue, she'll just donate the note to an animal shelter.

    But there are lots of misconceptions surrounding legal tender. "Legal tender" has a very specific and technical legal meaning [royalmint.com]. No one in the UK is required to accept "legal tender" [wikipedia.org] for any transaction that hasn't yet taken place.

    Legal tender only comes into play when a DEBT exists. Once a debt exists and someone sues you in court, they MUST generally accept any legal tender for payment of that debt.

    If you go to a store and say, "I want to buy X" and they say, "Sure, you can have X if you give me three goats," then you can't say, "But I don't have goats! You must accept my 'legal tender' that is equivalent to the price of three goats." Well, you can say it, but they still have no legal obligation to give you X. You have no right to leave the store with X.

    However, if someone provides a service for you, and you are now in their DEBT, then they are obligated to accept payment in legal tender to satisfy that DEBT. If they request payment in goats up-front, though, and you refuse, they can't be required to accept "legal tender" instead. You won't get your service.

    Basically, normal everyday transactions are still effectively "contracts" even if handled informally and verbally. You can write up a complex contract of sale that involves delivery of various goods and services in exchange for other goods and services, with no cash involved. Most stores don't go that route, because... well, using a monetary standard is convenient for all sorts of reasons.

    To get back to the case at hand -- if the restaurant requests payment up-front for their food or service, then there's likely no legal question that they can simply refuse service to you if you only offer a 5-pound note. If, on the other hand, they provide you the service FIRST, the law gets more murky. If they had a sign up prominently which said, "No 5-pound notes accepted!" they might make a legal argument that you were forewarned, BUT the whole point of "legal tender" is generally that if they sue you in court they have to accept any "legal tender" offered as a payment of debt. So they'd probably have little legal recourse if they provided the service before asking for payment. They could sue you, but then they'd have to take the 5-pound note anyway.

    My guess is that if they had any problems with a LOT of customers who tried any shenanigans, they'd just make a "pay up-front" policy, which would likely give them a legal excuse to refuse anyone who wanted to pay in denominations they didn't like. But since their customer base is probably likely to subscribe to their perspective on this anyway, it seems doubtful they're going to get a significant uprising in customers over the issue.