VegeProject Spoke at International Summit in Malaysia

From October 8th to 10th, the international summit Asia Farm Animal Day (AFAD) was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. VegeProject Japan was invited to join as a speaker.

The AFAD summit was co-organized by the team of the AVA Summit (an international vegan summit in which we participated this past July) and Asia for Animals (AfA), a coalition of organizations working in the vegan and animal welfare movements.

This summit gathered 105 Asian and international organizations. With more than 20 seminars dealing with each organization’s field of expertise, this summit provided an opportunity for all organizations to share their activities, their knowledge and opportunities for collaboration.

VegeProject Japan’s talk: “Vegan Advocacy in Japan”

Our talk started with an outline of VegeProject’s activities, beginning 10 years ago as a student group led by Haruko Kawano to introduce vegan options at Kyoto University, and currently working together with institutions, companies and local governments.

We then spotlighted vegan products in Japan. Using various products that have acquired our vegan certification as examples, we highlighted the fact that Japanese manufacturers meet exceptionally high quality standards, sometimes even surpassing the quality of more heavily marketed and well-known Western brands.

Finally, and based on these examples, we stressed the need to back local Asian manufacturers. The vegan movements in each of these countries are not just localized versions of Western culture, and products, cuisine, and culture that leverage the strengths of each country can play a part in solving the global issues that vegan lifestyles try to tackle.

The presentation was followed by a Q&A session with in-depth discussions about the trends and visions of vegan and animal welfare movements in Asia, showing a high level of interest from the public. After the presentation, and throughout the summit, many attendees approached us showing particular enthusiasm for Japanese vegan products, as well as expressing interest in replicating VegeProject Japan’s activities in their own countries.

Our talk was part of a series of seminars under the title “Advocacy in Asia”, also featuring presentations from international organizations Sinergia Animal and Global Food Partners. These two organizations mainly introduced their activities related to cage-free chickens, and introduced their efforts towards the animal welfare movement, which is gaining importance around the world. The session was moderated by Maho Cavalier of The Humane League Japan.

Strengthening bonds with other Asian organizations

During the summit, we built valuable relations with representatives from Korea, China, India, Vietnam and many other countries including, without a doubt, host country Malaysia.

Through this event, we also learned that restaurants and hotels in Malaysia offer a wide variety of vegan options, and that there is growing interest in plant-based lifestyles in the country.

For example, event speaker Chef Dave gathered over 2 million, mainly Malaysian followers on his social media, where he shares vegan recipes. He is also working with the Malaysian government on a project to promote vegan cuisine in Malaysia in the context of tourism promotion. In addition, Faisal Mansor, director of ProVeg’s Malaysia branch, provided details on consumers and retailers’ interest in vegan products including, for example, a local store specialized in vegan manufactured products.

 

We express our deep gratitude to AVA Summit and AfA for inviting us, to the sponsors who made this event possible, and to everyone who engaged with VegeProject Japan during these three days. We will leverage these new connections to further support the growth of the Japanese vegan market, and to encourage the adoption of vegan options in Japan.