Vegan Cooking Show!!!!

If you haven't heard yet, Salisbury will soon have its own vegan cooking show on public access!!! Our wonderful vegan chef, Samantha will be the host, and each week we'll try to have a new guest on to talk about the benefits of a veg lifestyle. It will probably be a few more weeks before we can get it up and running, but we already have a few episodes lined up!

We're still throwing around ideas for a name.... maybe you can help. So far, all we've been able to come up with is "Veg Out." Don't get me wrong, it's a great name, but I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't advertize the veg part, as it might turn some people away before they even see it. Let us know what you think!!!

Samantha also runs a vegan cooking blog, with some AMAZING recipes in it!!! Check out her page: vegancooler.blogspot.com

Earth Day was a Success!

Hey Guys!
Thanks to everyone, who helped out or just stopped by! It was very fun : ) Except of course for the Egg-Dropping Contest...booo
Anyways, here are the pictures i took

P.S. Hope the meeting went well, sorry i could not make it...something came up ; )

~Karina~

Earth Day and Vegetarianism

Here's the basic rundown:

• Going vegetarian is the most effective thing you can do to help the planet. 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock alone!
• 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. goes directly to meat production.
• 70% of grains produced in the U.S. are fed to livestock - can you tell me why we have world hunger...?
• 2500 gallons of water are required to produce one pound of beef. That same amount of water can be used to produce 100 pounds of wheat.
• About 70% of rain forest destruction is due to land clearing for meat production.
• More than 260 million acres of U.S. forests have been cleared to make way for livestock.
  
• It takes 16 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef - the other 15 pounds of grain are basically wasted!

Take the Veg. Pledge! Go vegetarian, for yourself and the planet!!!

Egg Demo

Okay, so we did a demo against egg factories on Thursday. Here are some pictures... it seemed people really liked the chicken suit. More information will be posted in a day or two, I just wanted to get these up!

Perdue Cruelty

One of the VSA members visited today the Perdue Chicken Plant in Virginia. She says: "If you imagine hell, that is what the plant looks like." It was unsanitary; there were dead chicken bodies all over the place! Even scattered around on the ground. She also confirmed that the pictures we see of chicken on websites such as PETA - are true! That is exactly the case. Also, women who were on the plant tour were not taken to the place where they actually kill chicken ,apparently it is too much to handle.

Finally, she was told that the Virginia plant by itself kills more than 300,000 chickens every day!!!

~Karina~

PETA Podcasts

If you haven't heard, PETA has started a new section on its site for podcasts:
http://www.peta.org/actioncenter/podcast.asp

The description on their website says, "Presented by The PETA Files blogger Jack Shepherd, PETA's podcast is your source for exciting new developments in the world of PETA and animal rights as well as some classic moments from the PETA vaults. With each episode, Jack will introduce important speeches and debates about animal issues, excerpts from books by PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk and PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews, breaking stories about animal rights, and much more."

I strongly encourage everyone to listen to the post titled "Why Animal Rights?" from their president, Ingrid Newkirk.

Check it out!!!

T-shirts and food!

We had a wonderful time making our VSA t-shirts during the last potluck. Thanks to everyone who helped! They look amazing and I absolutely loooove the colors...

so if you havent ordered one yet, WHAT ARE U WAITING FOR? Send us an email with your size and we'll make one for you! We are asking for a $5 donation per shirt however, so that we can cover the costs.

So here are some pics from the meeting - we'll get pictures of the tshirts up soon!







We had lots of tasty food=)
Thanks again to our amazing members.




~Karina~

Time For Cake!!!!!!!

Okay, so we all love embarrassing photos, and we all love birthdays (well, most of us), so we thought we'd combine both of those in this post! It seems that two of our members have birthdays back to back. Michael's was yesterday, on April 9th and Karina celebrates her's today on the 10th! What are the odds? (don't answer that). Anyway, we thought we'd honor them by posting the two funniest pics we have of them from the past year!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GUYS!!!

Admitted Students Day

The VSA had a table at SU's first ever Admitted Students Day. Apparently this is a chance for those who have applied and been accepted to the university (but haven't yet decided) to come and check out the student organizations, talk with SGA folk, and get a few final rundowns on why the school is so.... uhhh.... great...

Karina and Christopher were there with the great help of Samantha, our newest member from Pittsburgh! Sam made up a wonderful board (part of which is shown in the picture) with great

multiple-choice facts. She also put together an awesome vegan basket with some soaps, creams, and some sugary sweets like sweedish fish (yes, they're vegan!). It was a great way to get people to check out more info about the club - reel them in with a raffle.

All in all we had a fairly good turn out.

We were told that about 300 people were registered to visit, which seemed a little extreme for Salisbury. It seems that most of the people weren't there to check out the clubs. There was some dance show or something like that, and the majority of the people showed up later and filed into the bleechers. But hey, we got some information out to a lot of people, so it's all good!

Special thanks to Karina and Samantha! You guys were a HUGE help. By the way, I should probably mention that Samantha has an AWESOME food blog called I'm Vegan, and Therefore Cooler Than You. If all goes well, we're hoping to have a public access cooking show with our own vegan chef! (Cross your fingers, Sam)

SU Flyer Article

http://www.salisbury.com/suflyer/story.asp?sid=1049

VSA protests circus at Civic Center
By Sarah Janoske
Staff Writer


The Vegetarian Student Association (VSA) took a stand against the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus over spring break as they protested all seven shows for the cruelty of their treatment of animals.

"Our main goal was to expose the cruelty that goes on for those animals. We weren’t trying to make people feel bad for going, we were just trying to let people know what was going on behind the scenes," said Christopher Wood, president of the VSA.

The first night of the circus performances, Thursday, March 20, there were eight students and four members of the Salisbury community participating in the protests outside of the Wicomico Civic Center. To help get their point across, the VSA handed out an information sheet with facts of "What Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Doesn’t Want You To Know" with pictures displaying the treatment of their elephants.

"We actually had two people turn away because they were just completely revolted. We had a fair amount of people come up and ask us more questions. I think the biggest problem was that they have killed 25 of their elephants in the past 15 years," said Wood.

These protests captured the attention of two local news stations, WBOC-16 and WMDT-47. On WBOC-16, Jason Gibson, the circus production manager, said, "Come on down for yourself and see how beautiful and vibrant our animals are. All of our animals here at Ringling Brothers Circus are loved, cherished, and cared for 24 hours a day."

"Of course the circus isn’t going to say they beat their animals, but I personally don’t believe that they care for them in the right way. We went and looked at the animals and took some pictures. None of them had food and water accessible, most couldn’t even move in their cages and are chained up for 96 percent of their natural lives," Wood said.

The Ringling Brothers Circus was also performing in Baltimore at the same time, and on March 20, two of their zebras got loose and ran through the streets of Baltimore.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture already has four open investigations against the circus, and the zebras being loose in the streets will have an impact on those cases.

"Our protests aren’t going to change the way the circus treats their animals. We were trying to target the public and make them question and go online and research and realize this is going on. We weren’t trying to take away from the fun of the circus, just open the eyes of the public. I really think people have no idea about it," said Wood.


Thanks so much, Sarah!!! This was a great article!

More info on the USDA investigations

Okay everyone... now we wait! We just heard back from the USDA on the Ringling Bros. Issue. It would appear they are going to conduct an investigation.

Click here for a copy of the letter they sent

We'll have to go through the Freedom of Information Act to get information on any findings (meaning they won't contact us when something happens, we need to contact them). We encourage everyone to write in in a month or so (we'll post a reminder) to really let them know there's interest. And don't worry, we'll post whatever information we find too!

Many thanks for everyone's help!!!