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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: 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...