In 1996, three vegans, David Stringer and Jane and David Graham, veterans of the peace, anti-nuclear movements, and sometime guests at HM Prisons, decided to start the Vegan Organic Network, an organisation specifically directed to changing the current situation in agriculture, where most food that is available has been grown either using animal by-products (applying blood and bone after animals have been processed in the slaughter house) or using synthetic fertilisers.
This practice undermined the very ethic of nonviolence that informed their philosophy and actions and is basic to vegans. VON sees vegan organics not as a single issue campaign, but as an integrated international movement with an alternative view of market economics, of cooperation, and a drive to land reform and redistribution.
VON has developed its own Stockfree Organic Standards, finalised in October 2004 in consultation with the Soil Association, to enable growers to become certified using these standards.
It is also seeking to establish a Demonstration, Education and Research Centre, and to encourage vegan-organic cultivation on a small scale as well as farm-scale growing.
The Vegan Organic Network welcomes subscriptions from all who are concerned with ethical cultivation and social justice. You need not be vegan or directly involved with food production to join. Subscribers receive the twice-yearly magazine Growing Green International and interim update bulletins. Support donations welcome. All work is voluntary.