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The year 2022 in review: great variety

liever hier

The corona lockdown period feels like a long time ago and Amsterdam horeca came back to life. Like last year, this year we also gained 15 new vegan places in town (including second locations or existing omnivore restaurants switching to vegan)! And all so different from eachother, shows that veganism is really for everyone these days.

The Amsterdam Happy Cow page currently shows a total of 531 vegan and vegan-friendly addresses, of which 72 are vegan. Just to say, only three years ago that number of vegan addresses at Happy Cow was 39 so it almost doubled since then! Read more

People’s kitchen AND seven course vegan dinner at this Sloterdijk community space

testtafel de sering

De Sering started in 2019 as a community kitchen in a building at Middenweg, originating out of a group of Extinction Rebellion activists. Besides the food here they also hosted lectures, movie screenings etc. After a while they attracted more and more people, including students and people living in the neighbourhood.

In order to be able to finance it all they started with Testtafel. A more fancy dining concept generating a bit more income. Originally they meant to organise just a few dinner nights, but it quickly grew so successful that they continued with it. After being housed at various temporary locations, they now found a stable home within theater space De Sloot, located in Westpoort. Here they opened spring 2022. Read more

The animals around us: taking care of Amsterdam’s city pigeons

pigeon rescue amsterdam

Being the most common bird in Amsterdam, probably you’ve seen pigeons walking around with great difficulty, as some toes or even the whole foot is missing. I never thought much about it and assumed that this individual had an unlucky accident. But they are not isolated cases and it’s actually very common among city pigeons. It’s caused by little strings, threads or human hair from the city streets which get wrapped around the toes and feet, eventually can lead to those body parts dying off. This is known as stringfoot.

In Amsterdam a group of people is determined to help them and are checking on pigeons on a regular basis. Many pigeons can be helped by just catching them and cutting the strings with a small scissors. I’m talking to animal rights activist Billie Savage, who initiated the project. Read more

The year 2021 in review: record amount of new vegan restaurants!

margo's amsterdam

We started the year with closed restaurants, we’re ending the year with closed restaurants. BUT despite corona this year a record amount of new vegan places opened!! Eleven new restaurants. On top of that, four existing restaurants decided to skip all animal products and go fully vegan, so that makes fifteen in total!

The Amsterdam Happy Cow page is currently listing 468 vegan and vegan-friendly adresses, 63 of them fully vegan. And Lonely Planet now included info on vegan restaurants in their latest Amsterdam guidebook, adding “Long at the forefront of vegetarian cuisine, Amsterdam led the way with vegan dining and has numerous restaurants citywide.” Read more

Weekly anti-fur protests this winter

Yes fur farming is by now finally illegal in the Netherlands, which is a huge victory. But selling fur is still allowed, just have a look in the streets and you will notice quite a lot of people wearing jackets with fur collars. A group of local animal rights activists decided something needs to be done about it! The rest of the winter they will be doing actions in front of shops selling fur – to put pressure on the stores and to reach out to people passing by in the street. I catch up with activist Tim during one of these. Read more

National Animal Rights Day 2021 – the photos

Started as National Animal Rights Day in the US in 2011, grew into in fact an international event. With the aim of both to commemorate the non-human animal victims, as well as to celebrate the progress being made for animal rights.

This year was the first time this manifestation took place in the Netherlands, on Sunday June 6. At busy Dam square, a great amount of speakers talked about the conditions in which animals are suffering in various industries. The motto of National Animal Rights Day is ‘Our planet. Theirs too’ – we are sharing this Earth with the other animals and have to acknowledge their rights as well. Read more

Official Animal Rights March 2019 – the photos

Photos of yesterday’s Official Animal Rights March Amsterdam! Afterwards we had a short conversation with organizers Linda Guijt and Amadesha Assie:

Linda: “We read on Facebook about the march in London and thought, hey we should have this one here as well. Then we just took the initiative and organised it last year ourselves.”

Amadesha: “We thought it was a success and wanted to keep on doing it. We got noticed and people heard the message. We chose to put ‘End Speciesism’ on the banner, because a lot of people don’t know that word. So that when people think ‘Oh what’s that?’, that finally they will get the idea that it is really a form of discrimination, that we think there are humans and animals, and animals are worth less, even though humans are also animals. Read more

Vegan students unite!

vegan student association amsterdam

Inspired by similar student associations in cities like Gent and recently Groningen, a group of students in Amsterdam decided to establish the Vegan Student Association Amsterdam!

According to their mission statement, it was founded with the aim of “increasing the visibility of the vegan movement and start a conversation about animal rights, building at the same time a network of like-minded students. We offer support to anyone interested in approaching the vegan lifestyle.”

Their first event will be Sunday next week, a vegan picnic at Vondelpark on Sunday June 2nd! More info here.

Follow them on Facebook or Instagram.

One Dam Day 2019 – the photos

one dam day

Today at Dam Square, 24 h non-stop vegan outreach by about a thousand vegan activists from Anonymous for the Voiceless!

Activists position themselves in a square shape, the ‘Cube of Truth’, showing footage of animals in the industry. Other activists have conversations with curious bypassers, motivating them to try out a vegan diet.

The action named ‘One Dam Day’ continues throughout the night until tomorrow at noon. Read more