IVU Report 2021

Despite not having our traditional event this year due to COVID19 we may say that 2021 was a good year for IVU. We manage to do several things, among the main ones:
 
1.     IVU did a complete renovation of its logo and colors, and its tagline, which now is "Promoting healthier, sustainable and ethical diets since 1908": 2.     To improve IVU work we created 3 Departments:

• Global Health – Director Dr Cynthia Shuck. In recognizing that animal farming systems represent an unacceptable level of threat to public health, the Global Health Department of the International Vegetarian Union advocates for a transition towards safer methods of food production as a strategy at the core of protecting the well-being of current and future generations.
  
  
• Medicine and Nutrition – Director Dr Eric Slywitch. The IVU Department of Medicine and Nutrition aims to:
         - Provide materials showing the nutritional viability of vegetarian and vegan diet for people of all ages, from infants, teens, adults, and old people, supported by indexed scientific literature.
     - Promote medical and nutritional conducts compatible with the vegetarian choice, offering security to the health professional and the population as a whole.

• Policy Initiatives – Director Rune-Christopher Dragsdahl. The IVU Department of Policy aims to help and facilitate international best practice sharing on how to pave the way for plant-based political initiatives around the world – ranging from e.g. climate, agriculture and business policies to official dietary guidelines and municipal school meal programs.

3.     TVA-IVU C40 Project, which is under IVU Department of Policy Initiatives.

The project aims to reach out to veg groups and organizations to support C40 cities - www.c40.org – in reducing animal food consumption. About 97 cities already signed this project. So "Given the importance of meat reduction as a climate change action, we're hoping we can start our outreach by getting city buy-in to start implementing Meatless Mondays in public places like schools." C40 is a network of 96 of the world’s largest and most influential cities – representing 700+ million people and one quarter of the global economy – that have committed to halving their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

According to TVA president Nital Jethalal: "In February 2021, IVU partnered with the TVA to help develop and lead a Veg Climate Network (VCN), a global network of plant-based organizations and allies interested in greater meat reduction and plant-based food initiatives in their cities.  The VCN mission statement: reducing climate change, one plate at a time.  Starting with organizations in C40 (www.c40.org) cities (where governments have commitments to cut emissions by half by 2030), we are raising awareness and looking to share best practices and resources with others.  The network is still in its infancy but already includes the European Vegetarian Association, Kenyan Vegan Society, Montreal Vegetarian Association, Hong Kong Vegans and Brazilian Vegetarian Society (SVB) and is connected via the Meatless Mondays Global Network, a platform that recently featured IVU Chair Marly Winckler and TVA president Nital Jethalal in a webinar around plant-based food adoption in cities. If you're interested in learning more or getting involved, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and subscribe at www.vegclimatenetwork.org."

4.     IVU Vegan Nutrition Guide – under the Department of Medicine and Nutrition. The IVU Vegan Nutrition Guide for Adults was elaborated with the aim of serving as a comprehensive and free support material for health professionals worldwide, in its scientific version, and for the general population, in its version for lay people. It addresses the nutritional care we should have when adopting a strict vegetarian (vegan) diet safely, based on more than 700 studies indexed in the international scientific literature. It contains a Nutritional Table of each key nutrient in the diet, presenting the richest foods of each food group. Dr Eric Slywitch, director of this Department is the author of the Guide, and we spent all the year around working in this project. The Guide has more than 600 pages and more than 700 indexed scientific articles. It also discusses supplementation and care in laboratory nutritional assessment. At its end it has more than 30 different menus, calculated according to its nutritional value (to demonstrate the safety of the diet), covering eating habits of the main continents. We count in this important project with the precious partnership of the Brazilian Vegetarian Society (SVB) to divulge and implement it. It will be launched in January 2022 in English and Portuguese and will be given for free.

 
5.     IVU gave support to the New Meat Forum and our director of Global Health, Dr Cynthia Schuck delivered a talk on the event. 
IVU endorsed the course "PLANT-BASED FOOD: HEALTH, CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY," organized by the Nourishing Tomorrow program of the International NGO Sinergia Animal. 

6.     Vegan Food Academy – IVU was a pioneer in publishing vegan recipes on the Internet. We have successfully accumulated thousands of recipes over the past few decades, creating an invaluable encyclopedia of timeless recipes, submitted to us from beloved members around the world. It's precisely because we pioneered this way of publishing vegan recipes, that its presentation methods have now become obsolete. Today's generations are accustomed to images and videography providing a certain element of convenience. Hence the requirement for a complete update. So, we created Vegan Food Academy, a vegan cooking school that aims to bring together recipes from all over the world, providing a platform to showcase and celebrate unique food cultures, ingredients, preparation techniques, spices, flavors, and colors. We gathered already near 300 recipes of various categories from different countries and certainly this is just the beginning.
   
To stimulate Whole Food Plant-Based recipes we created a certification for recipes under this category, Approved by Doctors and Dietitians:
7.     We have a bid from India to organize the 48th IVU Vegan Festival in 2023. We are eager to go back to India after our last event there in 2014, at Anna University, Chennai, with a leg previously in Dubai.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to all,

Marly Winckler - IVU chair