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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, Informative) by darnkitten on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:30PM
I've been following this for about a week now.
The Bank of England is already looking for "potential solutions" [bbc.com] to the problem of using tallow, which is added to the plastic note to reduce static [bbc.co.uk].
Vegans and vegetarians aren't the only ones upset over this; there have also been protests from the Jain (summary article), Sikh, [bbc.com] and Hindu [bbc.co.uk] communities.
As to the Rainbow Cafe [bbc.com] in question--they say that they are willing to "try to find an alternative and accommodate [customers] in some way," if they come in with only new fivers, but note that they haven't had any problems from customers or from the local community, where they have operated for 30 years, since posting the notice that they would not be accepting the new notes.
From the article in the summary:
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @12:07AM
"Mrs Meijland said she could not believe the amount of online abuse the café had been getting since announcing the policy."
Maybe it is because they are insane?
http://www.rainbowcafe.co.uk/our-food/ [rainbowcafe.co.uk]
"All eggs used are free range"
They won't accept fiver's with tallow in them... but they *serve* food made with eggs. WTF.
" We recycle everything possible and work as a team effort, by choice everyone is Vegetarian or Vegan, and leftovers are taken home: and even plate scrapings are recycled to my large flock of chickens, "
lolwut... ?? I certainly hope they aren't feeding any of the food scraps from food they make with free range eggs... TO the chickens.
Talk about a blind spot.
(Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Wednesday December 07 2016, @09:41AM
The amount of animal fat accumulating on those notes from humans touching them is probably larger than the amount of tallow in them.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday December 07 2016, @06:27PM
True.
The perception, though, as I understand it, is that these bills are tainted (or rendered ritually unclean, if you like) by virtue of their manufacturing process. The surface contamination is removable (I know, traces remain after washing, etc., and how many of us actually wash after handling money), but the inherent corruption is not, and may even, in certain belief systems, be able to transfer its status to the handler.
Ethical considerations aside, removing a physical (and often inadvertent) soiling is generally fairly simple, but cleansing a stain on the soul is usually much more difficult, especially if one knowingly takes it on, as in this case.
Not only that, but just knowing that something is unclean/tainted can bring about a visceral reaction to it, even if, intellectually, you know that it makes little sense.
Oh, well; if humans were required to make sense, this would be a much different (and far less interesting) world...