About Us

WHO WE ARE

Vegan Society Today is an international think tank comprised of renowned vegan educators, authors, activists, and practitioners.

This website explains in detail how Watson's Vegan Society was captured in 1950 by animal rights activists who immediately re-defined the word "vegan," and how a disagreeable and sometimes ego-driven struggle played out over many years. The modern Vegan Society has gone to some lengths to sanitize its own history about its beginnings; we endeavor here to present a more honest summary -- based on published reports in the Society's own newsletter, which are now online and freely available.

Our organization, Vegan Society Today, encourages a return to Watson's original definition, motives, and approach, as detailed below. Our motivation is a results-oriented approach which we believe can maximize the appeal of veganism, enlarge it, and thus actually and significantly lessen animal suffering. By adopting a defintion like the one Donald Watson created, it becomes very difficult for the ego, judgement and the "vegan vs. vegan" dynamic to exist -- which seems to be the unfortunate hallmark of the "I'm more vegan than you" animal rights approach. We feel too much energy is wasted with vegans attacking other vegans rather than focusing on the message and on the animal abusers.

Nearly all the information reported on this page has been taken directly from Vegan Society newsletters of the first decades of the Society, all of which can be accessed online here: https://issuu.com/vegan_society Other sources are noted and linked in our articles.