On this day in vegan history · October 1, 1977
North America Gets Its Own Vegetarian Day
A young society born to host one conference in the Maine woods decided a single congress wasn't enough and gave the whole continent an annual reason to skip meat.
The facts
- Date established
- October 1, 1977
- Founding organization
- North American Vegetarian Society
- International endorsement
- International Vegetarian Union, 1978
- First NAVS president
- H. Jay Dinshah, 1974 to 1979
The North American Vegetarian Society had been founded in 1974 for a narrow, practical reason: it needed to exist so it could host the International Vegetarian Union's 1975 World Vegetarian Congress in Orono, Maine, with H. Jay Dinshah serving as the new society's first president. Two years later, on October 1, 1977, NAVS turned that momentum into something permanent, declaring the date World Vegetarian Day. The International Vegetarian Union endorsed the observance the following year, in 1978, turning a North American initiative into a global one. The date now opens Vegetarian Awareness Month, a stretch that runs through the whole of October and closes on November 1 with World Vegan Day.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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To promote the joy, compassion and life-enhancing possibilities of vegetarianism.
Stated purpose of World Vegetarian Day
Source: Wikipedia -
It was initially founded in 1974 to organize the International Vegetarian Union's 1975 World Vegetarian Congress in Orono, Maine, which has been called the most significant event of the vegetarian movement in the United States in the 20th century.
On the founding of the North American Vegetarian Society
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
A single Maine conference could have been a one-off. Instead it left behind an organization that gave the movement a recurring date, and that date is still the one that opens a full month of advocacy every year.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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