VEGNEWS.COM^ VegNews 45
really going on here.”
But it’s not just the young and Facebook-
obsessed who are changing. “My 60-year-
old aunt sent me a message last week and
told me she’s trying to go vegan,” Cardoso
says. “That’s something that I would never
have dreamed of happening 15 years ago.”
The progress doesn’t stop there. The
Vegetarian Society of Brazil—a nonprofit
that promotes vegetarian food through
campaigns and events—has operated for
16 years and launched the world’s largest
Meatless Monday campaign (providing 67
million vegetarian meals in 2018 alone);
started an annual vegetarian food festival;
and even created an official vegan label
in 2013 that certifies food, cosmetics, and
clothing as vegan.
There are also tremendous
opportunities for change through
legislation. Brazil’s federal constitution
expressly prohibits cruelty to animals, and
one law even imposes criminal liability on
environmental crimes, including animal
have many different identities, so we have
to talk to the people from those different
communities.”BRAZIL 2050
While meat consumption and production
are on the rise in Brazil, there’s hope that
they will flatten and begin to fall. Sixty
million Brazilians currently purchase
vegetarian products, and citizens poll
higher-than-average concern about
animal welfare. Also, skepticism of the
meat industry itself is growing, thanks to
scandals like the one that recently led to
the arrests of meat industry executives for
purposefully changing the expiration dates
on meat products.
The future of plant-based meat
and cultured meat—real meat made
from animal cells without the need for
slaughter—is also promising. While many
plant-based products are still much more
expensive in Brazil than in the US, Gustavo
Guadagnini, managing director for
The Good Food Institute in Brazil—
an international nonprofit that supports
companies producing plant-based and
cultured versions of animal products—says
investors in the country are enthusiastic
about funding these slaughter-free
innovations.
Less money is available in the country
for research, but Brazil can rely on
technologies developed in other countries.
Once these products are on the market and
price-competitive, Guadagnini is confident
Brazilians will buy them. In fact, a new
vegan egg and the Futuro Burger—a plant-Rachel Krantz (@rachelkrantz)
is a senior writer at Mercy For Animals
and a founding editor of Bustle.
Bruna Tomasuolo is Director of
Communications at Mercy For Animals Brazil.“The culture is
constantly evolving.
I think people are veryopen to understanding
veganism as a social
justice movement.”based patty said to be on par with
the Beyond Burger—both recently
debuted in the country.
The Good Food Institute shows
companies that the emerging slaughter-
free market poses an opportunity, not
a threat. And corporations are hinting
at early signs of agreement. This year,
Nestlé invested in Brazilian vegan cheese
company NoMoo, and in 2017, Unilever
acquired the largely vegan snack and goods
company Mãe Terra.
“As a culture, we’re also very open to
health trends,” Guadagnini explained.
“We have more openness to knowing new
products and solutions. So there is nothing
in Brazilian consumer habits that would
say that we wouldn’t change the same way
that the rest of the world is changing or that
we wouldn’t catch up to what’s happening.
It’s just the opposite.”
While non-profit organizations are
cautiously watching Brazil’s new president,
for now they are hopeful that their work
will continue to see the rapid success of the
past five years. “I think that Brazil is going
to be leading the movement for plant-based
foods and for public policies, and I think
we’re going to see a lot of examples on how
to take veganism to the next level,” says
Mocellin. “If Brazil changes, we can really
push the rest of the continent to change
together.”abuse. Efforts to create ballot initiatives like
the ones that have banned cages for farmed
animals in the US are met by constitutional
barriers, but Cardoso noted that activists
can use other tactics. For example, they
can push for passage of animal-welfare
standards, a legal definition of “cage-free,”
enforceable regulation of the cage-free
egg label, and a live export ban to spare
animals the harrowing and excruciating
trips to slaughter overseas.
It’s important to note that vegan
products are much more accessible in big
cities like São Paulo than in rural areas,
where a staple like dairy-free milk may be
difficult to find. “You have places just an
hour or two outside the city where there
is no information regarding veganism or
healthy foods,” Mocellin said. “We don’t
have just one identity in the country; we