Dundee’s first ever vegan festival was a huge hit on Saturday, with 800 locals packing out the event.
The festival attracted 24 stalls from across Scotland, featuring a range of societies aiming to promote understanding of the lifestyle and plenty of options to try vegan food, from pies to plant-based meats.
A host of speakers also appeared, such as Claire Hider, who talked of the importance of maintaining a balanced diet, and Manuela Atzori, who discussed the environmental impact of killing animals.
The festival, held at Chambers East, was the brain-child of Barry Mackie-Conlon, a local animal rights activist and Jamie Kidd, who owns Cool Jerk Vegan Pies.
Barry said that he was compelled to set-up Dundee’s first vegan festival in order to continue the wave of growth that the vegan community has seen in recent times.
He said: “Its gone from hippy tree-huggers in the 80s to people breaking into labs and now it’s almost popular to be vegan.
“It’s an achievable lifestyle now for everybody and people on all incomes.
“There is some stuff that is more expensive but really, most of the produce is affordable.
“The festival is really about educating people and showing everyone what veganism is all about so that people can find out for themselves.”
One of the stalls at the event was run by staff from Dundee’s The Health Store on Commercial Street, which was first opened 46 years ago in 1970.
The store’s 81-year-old owner, Sandy Constable, said veganism is now more popular than it has ever been.
He said: “I think the catalyst for opening my store was that I wouldn’t actually allow my own children to eat the things I produced when I worked at the Rowntree factory.
“It became a bit of a crisis of conscience and I thought ‘why not open my own store to sell health foods?’
“I was the head of the Dundee Vegetarian Society in the 1970s and I’ve seen more and more people chose to go vegan or vegetarian since then.
“I think the main driving force behind the increase is the environmental impact but also the fact that over the years, trial and error in producing this type of food has improved the quality and taste so much.”
All £1477 taken in from on-the-door ticket sales has been donated to The Scottish Animal Behaviour & Rescue Centre (SABRC), which aims to build a bridge of understanding between human and ‘non-human’ animals.
