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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: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:13PM
Yeah, you *can* still make a weak argument that being able to sell the tallow makes the whole cow worth more. So that makes beef cheaper, which makes more people eat beef, which causes more cows to be raised and slaughtered...I do think that's a bit absurd, too small to have any real impact, but I can see the argument. If *everyone* was that concerned about these things that certainly would bring some change, so I can respect it from the viewpoint of "be the change you wish to see." On the other hand, if we're killing the cows anyway, I'd say it's better to make the most of it rather than just throwing parts away.
Yeah, and then you've gotta look at the effects of that increased costs...if a single butcher ends up working an hour of overtime because of the increased tax burden, is that worth it? Though I expect it would only be fractions of a penny per person...partly because I'd also consider it not just worthless but actually unethical to destroy and reprint existing bills using the new process. Since they don't use much tallow to begin with, unless they replace it with pure gold it shouldn't change the cost that much.
It does sound like this particular cafe wasn't intending to make a huge campaign out of this, so I can forgive the lack of research...but I'd expect to see a bit more effort from someone actually pushing for the complete removal of those notes. What's the profit margin on butchering a cow? How much of that profit comes from tallow? What else could be used for producing the notes, and how much would that cost? The activists should be able to put together a "bill of materials" for that as their estimate, then if it's reasonable the government can analyze and come up with their own estimate that includes actual labor costs. And THEN we can make an informed decision about how to proceed. Or maybe we skip the government analysis if there's a ready substitute at a similar cost -- might not be worth the cost of analysis. But the responsibility of the activist is not just to protest; they must also propose a legitimate solution. Sometimes "stop doing it" is its own solution, but this is not one of those cases.