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?
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:40PM
So presumably they also don't allow Soap, Deliveries via car, people travelling on Bicycles, any music played with an instrument and also don't own computers or mobile phones?
It's even better than that!
FTA: One puzzling inconsistency is the fact that the Rainbow Café is vegetarian, not strictly vegan (although it does offer vegan menu items). This means that some animal products are still used on the premises, which makes Meijland’s stance a bit surprising.
I'm not necessarily on-board with all the vegan-hate going on in this thread but that's just funny.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @04:57PM
No, that just unmasks the charade for what it is: a shitty publicity stunt meant to get them more business from retards with more money than brains... I mean vegans.