A vegan café has thrown out its management after they were discovered storing packs of meat in its freezers.
Pogo Café, in Clapton, is run as a cooperative and staffed by volunteers, but earlier this month the vegans forced out their “freegan” co-workers, who they accused of “not being vegan enough to run a vegan café”.
“Freegans” (people who find free food in bins) in the Clarence Road café’s management team had salvaged the meat after freezers at a nearby supermarket broke down and large quantities of food were thrown away.
The café managers and other activists, who live in nearby squats, stored the food at the café, though they say it was labelled as “not for café use”.
At an emergency meeting of the cooperative and volunteers, the freegans complained that the management of the café was “impenetrable” and “cliquey”.
One vegan even alleged that the team were being paid by the government to infiltrate vegan spaces and plant meat.
The former management team said in a statement that they felt their hard work to keep Pogo open for the last couple of years has been entirely ignored.
“The implication that only vegans who are practicing animal rights activism should be allowed to run the café is exclusive and alienating”.
The team said that they were unhappy about leaving, but had been left with no other option.
“The café was very important to us, and leaving it is going to take a massive chunk out of our lives.”
On Tuesday the café’s new management released a revised mission statement:
“Pogo is a completely vegan café for the community. The open collective works to promote a philosophy of animal liberation and respect for the environment through delicious vegan food.”
Hi all, I'm a film making student and I've just been assigned the production of a short documentary on freegan lifestyles in london…I'm looking for interesting stories/people/communities does anyone have any tips?
I'm not disputing that some people go vegan and become ill but most people who go vegan don't. The only nutrient you can't get from a vegan diet is B12 and even that's easily available through fortified soy milk etc (or you can just take tablets). I've been vegan for about four years now and feel great on it. I'm not aware of any health problems from it and seem to have more energy than most people my age. The amazing athlete Carl Lewis reckons that his switch to being vegan in 1990 was an important factor in his 1991 success. If anyone's interested there's a list of successful vegans in the public eye on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vegans. Being vegan is a wonderful way to feel like you're doing your bit for the environment and animal welfare – it's a whole new way of engaging with the world and I've found it much more life-changing than when I moved to being vegetarian about 20 years ago.
20 years vegan and still going strong!
"NOUMENAL ANIMAL"[sic]
I too tried to be vegan and ate a very healthy vegan diet with nuts pulses fresh veggies etc but i ended up with severe ill health and was bedridden. Sorry but we are naturally designed to be omnivores. I was told by an acupuncturist that to become healthy I would have to eat some animal protein. I now eat plenty of fish and also chicken but cant bring myself to eat red meat. However, fish and chicken in my diet has definetly improved my energy levels and my health. Also protein from vegetable sources is very wind producing which cause me lots of pain from trapped gas. Some peoples metabolisms cant cope just being vegan or vegetarian.
Wow. This article is, as usual, based on no factual evidence, just what has been read on a blog and a website. Did anyone bother to go and talk to anyone involved and find out from them what happened? No?! Didn't think so.
Some of the people involved in "the takeover" have been freegan in the past or understand freegan politics, they just didn't think it was OK to have non-vegan food stored in the cafe. There were a few issues with the co-op as it was, but most people who "took-over" didn't want things to work out how they have, they just wanted to talk.
One person may have said something stupid about people being paid to infiltrate, but they were quickly dismissed by everyone else at the meeting – the old co-op and the new people running the cafe as it wasn't the opinion of anyone else.
Noone was accused of not being vegan enough to run the cafe – this may have been the way some of the old co-op saw what was being said – the only issue surrounding the food in the freezer was the fact that it could quite easily have been stored in the co-op's house just a street away! And not in a vegan space where noone was consulted about whether it was OK to have it there or not.
As an extra point – it was actually one of the people involved in "the takeover" who had told everyone about the freezers breaking at the nearby supermarket and that everyone should go and salvage the food! He even texted round the whole of the borough's squatter's network to tell them – so it's pretty obvious that he isn't against people salvaging this food in general!
Get your facts straight before you write a story in the future. But then what can you expect from a newspaper?!
More importantly, let's put this behind us! Pogo is still open and promoting veganism and healthy living. Whatever your feelings on this situation, if we want to keep the cafe open, people still need to be customers. Even if you decide you don't like the people involved – they're not getting anything out of working there – they're all volunteers. Working for free. For you. The customer. Go along anyway.
For more actual advice and information about vegan and veggie diets, ask the vegetarian and vegan foundation – they're not an animal rights group, they're an organisation formed entirely to research and give people info and advice about veggie and vegan diets.
Hey. I have an idea – why not go and talk to the people at the cafe now and hear their side of the story?! Or do you believe everything you read in the newspapers and on the internet? I'm certainly going to go and find out what they have to say!
Or maybe we've just screwed up the countryside so wild animals are finding it hard to live there – ever wondered how the natural world survived so well before humans came along and changed it all? Ever wondered why there's so much more disease and illness since humans industrialised everything?
I am a person who has tried to be a vegan on two separate occasions (and I wasn't a eat-a-snickers-bar-and-claim-it-isn't-meat kind of vegan – I ate a HEALTHY vegan diet). On both occasions I got very, very sick (the first time my adrenals crashed and I got the Epstein Barr Virus – something that happens when your immune system is compromised). The second time my blood ferritin levels tanked, my adrenals crashed again, and my thyroid went hypo. I am a blood type "O" and although in my mind I wish that I could be a vegan and be healthy, I find that I feel SO MUCH better when I eat more protein – especially grass-fed beef. I can actually feel the difference if I go a few days without grass-fed beef then I have a day with a meal with grass-fed beef – I wake up the next day with more energy and I feel more "limber". If I go several days with out meat protein my muscles get stiff and I get VERY tired – if I keep it up without meat I become practically bedridden.
That crew are definitely very cliquey. Also some have very shoddy politics and their veganism is more a fashion statement than caring for animal welfare. Their purist attitude doesn't appear to understand the politics of being freegan. Also something of a vicious over-reaction, no? Their self righteousness spoils what would otherwise be very tasty vegan food in what was a decent cafe. Very intolerant and short-sighted to oust the freegans – a real shame for Pogo and its dwindling customers….not the greatest business plan to keep a much needed community space open. Cutting nose off to spite face anyone?
is that why grazing animals are having to be put [back] into areas -see Countryfile – because the vegetation is no longer bird and wild animal friendly?
Wildlife generally do better without turning their wild habitats into grazing land for domesticated animals.
PS Forgot to ask how are you going to manage wildlife habitats when no grazing animals are kept on them?
Blood group diet most certainly hasn't been discredited by anyone who really knows how it works.
Plenty of people also regained their lost health by following paleo diet including a close friend of mine who developed eye and heart problems after following a vegetarian diet for 20 years. Now off all medicines since eating a balanced diet more suitable for her blood group.
Carry on and deal with the eventual lack of taurine at your leisure, but don't try and pull others down with you.
The food may be delicious, but it certainly isn't healthy except for a few people with a subtype of A group blood.
No grazing animals means no habitat for wildlife as we know it now.
The food may be delicious, but it certainly isn't healthy except for a few people with a subtype of A group blood.
No grazing animals means no habitats for wildlife as we know it now.
The Blood Group diet has long been discredited – everyone can be healthy on balanced, varied vegan diets! Exercise your right to a moral choice.
And we don't need manure to grow plants, ever heard of vegan-organic growing? – it's quite straightforward, look it up if you are interested. Vegan's naturally use less space, less fuel and less water than meat eaters which is actually a good thing.
Come to to think of it, I doubt it's that healthy fishing meat out bins.
Freegans set up your own Cafe and stuff the Nutty Vegans
Might be delicious but certainly isn't healthy for most individuals unless possibly for some with blood group A.
Not good for planet either unless you want all food grown with aid of human excrement and no grazed land for all the other species that will be wiped out without it.