It’s just over two weeks until Dublin Vegfest, on the weekend of 28th and 29th September, in Griffith College on the South Circular Road. For me, the most important aspect of my veganism is animal rights, and that cause is always well represented at VegFest.
I believe one of the greatest injustices in our world is how we treat nonhuman animals. Every year we kill over 50 billion farmed animals, and up to a trillion fish. These sentient beings suffer unjustly for our convenience, and our slaughter of them is an ongoing moral atrocity.
We used to attribute fundamental rights mainly to groups and to adult males, and even then only to adult males who were of the same race as us and who were not slaves. We are now increasingly seeing rights as being related to individual persons, regardless of their race or sex or ethnicity or age.
I believe that it is a natural extension of this pattern for us to extend our morality to our interaction with other animals. We should be as empathetic, compassionate, cooperative and fair with other animals as we are with ourselves. We should want to minimise suffering, and maximise wellbeing, among all conscious sentient beings.
That’s my priority, but Vegfest has something for everybody. It’s a two-day celebration of a vegan lifestyle. There will be vegan food, cruelty-free cosmetics and body care producers, and talks and performances by nutrition experts, bloggers, rights campaigners, and athletes.
Tickets are just €10 per day, and you can buy them at the VegFest website.