Our local vegan crew in Chester County, Pennsylvania, known as CARE, founded an annual vegan barbecue back in 1991. On Saturday 12 August, the legend continues! Here is this year’s poster.

One of the big highlights is the food we offer, including the famous Chester County mushrooms, local corn and other late summer delights from Pete’s Produce, and samplings from local businesses including SuTao vegan cafe, where CARE volunteers regularly meet.

The real cage-free deal: The food at CARE’s Vegan Festival is local, beautiful, and delicious.

If any of readers are around the area, join us on Saturday 12 August at Hoopes Park in West Chester from noon until 4 pm. Let me know if you’d like to have an exhibit for your group, vegan business, or animal-advocacy project.

The Chester County Vegan Festival.

Because this is a local event, there will be plenty of time and space to just hang out with the presenters and exhibitors. Confirmed speakers at this year’s annual Chester County Vegan Festival are author Vance Lehmkuhl, Lydia Grossov of From A to Vegan, the American Vegan Society‘s Freya Dinshah, Eric Nyman, founder of Wildflower Vegan Cafe, and Liqin Cao of United Poultry Concerns.

Click here for Liqin Cao’s view of the trouble with the backyard chicken trend.

Much respect to these activists, who have been in the movement for decades and provide us with excellent models or vegan integrity, consistency and kindness. I look forward to enjoying the Chester County Vegan Festival with them—and you, if you can make it.

Since 2014, This Event Is Called the “Chester County Vegan Festival”

For years this annual event was called the CARE VeggieFest. CARE’s mission involves more than a diet, though, and that’s where the name change to vegan comes in.

The word vegan reflects a dedication to live as a conscientious objector to animal use. It takes into account the importance of fair food distribution, our personal physical and mental health, and the health of communities, including the entire bio-community.

The first people calling themselves vegan did so in 1944. The word itself was thought up by Dorothy (Morgan) Watson, then adopted by a group of about two dozen like-minded people who noted it contained the first and last letters of the word vegetarian. The founders of The Vegan Society essentially declared their commitment to the Alpha and the Omega of the vegetarian movement, which was historically ethics-based, and, when taken to its logical conclusion, frees all animals, the finned and feathered, the egg-laying, lactating, and honey-making animals…

Vegan. The word’s call to principles represents the best we can offer people who like to eat their vegetables, and take their vegetarianism seriously.

We do have a policy for the event that speakers and exhibited items are expected not to suggest that any given method or equipment used in animal husbandry is better than any other.

Love and liberation,

Lee.