Your Campaigns, Policy and Research Vegan Society team works to bring us closer to a world where no animals are used or harmed by people. We engage with policy makers about laws, policies and practices – from schools to hospitals, farms to factories to restaurants, in workplaces and Parliaments – that need to change for a vegan-friendly world.
One way in which we do that is to submit persuasive, evidence-based responses to official consultations by the UK Government and other bodies. These consultations are often intended to seek expert opinion on changes in policy, such as proposed new laws. Our fully referenced submissions draw on decades of expertise and the most relevant current research in issues related to plant-based diets and food, from nutritional benefits to the legal rights of vegans.
Click on the arrows below to see a selection of our recent consultation responses. Click on the title to see the full submission.
2025 Environmental Audit Committee: The Environment in Focus
Given that food systems have recently been identified as the “single largest cause of planetary boundary transgression” by the highly authoritative EAT-Lancet report, The Vegan Society urges the Environmental Audit Committee to investigate the role of dietary change in environmental protection. Specifically, the Committee should ensure that the development of the government’s food strategy has sufficient focus on environmental sustainability, so that other objectives, such as economic growth, do not drive damaging environmental outcomes.
2025 World Health Organisation: WHO Guideline Development Group for ultra-processed foods
The Vegan Society advises caution when considering the broad regulation of ‘ultra-processed foods’, noting that further evidence is needed to establish whether there is a direct link between processing techniques and long-term health risks. The WHO should instead focus on the nutrient content and ingredient sources of food, and recognise that many processing methods can enhance the nutritional content and accessibility of adequate food for many people. It should also explicitly acknowledge the benefits of processed plant-based proteins with good nutritional profiles. The narrative must move away from the concept of ‘ultra processing’ towards ensuring that affordable, culturally appropriate, fortified foods are accessible to all.
2025: Healthy Eating in Schools (Wales)
It is important that the school food standards include a legal requirement for one or more plant-based meals to be offered every day. This not only helps schools deliver a legally compliant and inclusive service for vegan learners, ensuring they have a greater range of nutritious and appropriate options, but also enables all learners to benefit from the nutritional impact of increased uptake of fruit, vegetables, plant protein, and fibre. In addition, we are calling for tighter limits on meat, red meat, and fish meat to promote health, sustainability and well-being, in line with international dietary guidelines.
2025: EAC The Seventh Carbon Budget
The Vegan Society supports the Seventh Carbon Budget, particularly its recommended agri-food policy measures. The Government must provide the support necessary to reduce UK demand for and production of animal products, in line with the Climate Change Committee’s 2025 recommendations, and transition to a healthy, plant-based agri-food system, delivering many co-benefits for the environment and public health.
2025 Inquiry into efficient Nitrogen Use
Agriculture is a major source of nitrogen pollution in the UK. Dietary change towards plant-based diets is needed to secure a reduction in farmed animal numbers and mitigate nitrogen pollution from the food system. A shift to a plant-based food system can reduce nitrogen pollution in England and across the UK.
2025 Land Use Consultation
In order to achieve food security, sustainable food production and make space for nature and infrastructure, a transition towards more plant-based foods is needed. This will free up space from current unsustainable use supporting the industrial-scale farming of animals, to be transformed to land uses which benefit public health, the environment and animal welfare.
2024 EU Call for Evidence: Protecting waters from pollution caused by nitrates from agricultural sources
The Vegan Society argues that the EU’s 1991 Nitrates Directive has not delivered its intended outcomes, is not consistent with current EU policy, and is not fit for purpose. Although the Directive explicitly aimed to address nitrate pollution from livestock effluent and fertiliser use, industrial farming and agrochemical inputs remain two of the largest human-caused sources of contamination. To address this, EU policy must rapidly shift towards plant-based protein production, urgently reducing the number of farmed animals and expanding EU legume cultivation, which would simultaneously support broader environmental and public health targets.
2024 House of Lords: Inquiry into Food, Diet and Obesity
To achieve its goal of improving health outcomes for children and adults, The Vegan Society attests that the government must facilitate a transition to a plant-based food system. This means ensuring secure access to sustainable, healthy, culturally appropriate plant-based foods for all, with a particular focus on multiply marginalised communities. Such a shift would not only support individuals to benefit from the well-evidenced health advantages of plant-based diets, but also generate wider savings for the NHS. The Society also challenges the overarching focus on unhelpful concepts of BMI and ‘obesity’, instead advocating for a focus on overall ‘health’ rather than size.
2024 Phase 1 of 10 Year Health Plan for England
The 10 Year Health Plan for England should include dedicated action to increase the uptake of healthy plant-based foods and diets, and significantly reduce the current unhealthy and unsustainable overconsumption of meat, dairy and egg products. Therefore, we are calling for a comprehensive strategy to improve diet and nutrition.
2024 SACN/COT Plant-based (ALT) Milk
The Vegan Society supports the conclusions of the joint draft report from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) and the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT). It welcomes the conclusion that fortified, unsweetened soya, almond or oat drinks are acceptable alternatives to cows’ milk and should be offered as an alternative where cows’ milk would usually be consumed, with soya being preferred due to the higher protein content.
2024 National Good Food Nutrition Plan (Scotland)
Scotland has a global duty to provide leadership towards the plant-based solutions needed to tackle the ongoing global food security, biodiversity, climate change and public health crises. Benefits of a plant-based food system transition in Scotland need to be appropriately highlighted.
2021 Agriculture (Wales) Bill
We call upon the Welsh Government to take urgent, decisive and comprehensive action. Wales should proactively give land managers all the support which they need to transition toward healthy, sustainable, climate-resilient plant-based methods.
2021 Healthy Food Healthy Planet
We need to be transparent with people about how plant-based food systems can help us achieve all our sustainable diet goals. Relying upon farming of animals to meet nutritional needs of 8 billion people is not sustainable by any measure.
2019 England National Food Strategy
We support a new ‘field to fork’ Food Strategy for England. There are proven ways to radically improve every part of our food system. We challenge the Government to:
- Ensure safe, healthy food for all, that is affordable for everyone;
- Restore and enhance the natural environment for everyone, including free-living nonhuman beings;
- Guarantee extensive support for people moving toward plant-based methods.
2019 Scotland Good Food Nation
The Good Food Nation (Scotland) legislation can achieve access to healthy, nutritious food, environmental sustainability and the avoidance of public health crises. A joined-up approach from government and public bodies is vital.
2019 Labour Party Sustainable Food Policy
People expect Government to lead on solutions, where our food system is causing problems. Now we have Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions targets, and as our eating patterns and attitudes change, the time for radical action on sustainable, healthy food is now.
2018 DEFRA England Health and Harmony: the future for food, farming and the environment in a Green Brexit
The UK as a whole needs to make new, broad, strong commitments to a transition toward a sustainable society, supplied by crop agriculture.
2018 Wales Brexit and our land: securing the future of Welsh farming
Wales needs a future for life and land that challenges current economic dogma, and truly integrates land use with our broader ambitions in the Wellbeing of Future Generations and Environment Acts.
2025 Department for Education: Further Education initial teacher training and development
To foster fully inclusive learning environments and ensure that Further Education providers meet their professional requirements, including having ‘due regard’ for protected characteristics, diversity and inclusion training for all teachers must explicitly include veganism as a protected philosophical belief and embed the principles of the Equality Act 2010. In addition, The Vegan Society is calling for all education to be vegan-inclusive, with teachers receiving appropriate training to support this. All dietetics and healthcare professionals should also be taught modules on sustainable diets with explicit coverage of plant-based nutrition and the affordability, accessibility, and cultural adaptability of such diets.
2025: Scottish Climate Change Duties – draft statutory guidance for public bodies
To effectively support public bodies in fulfilling their climate change duties, Statutory Guidance must clearly set out the implications of the requirement under The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, in equalities and human rights terms, “to act in the most sustainable way” as part of a “just transition” to a climate-stable world.
As part of this, Guidance must address the agri-food sector more comprehensively and explicitly, recognising its environmental impact and the urgent need to transition away from industrial livestock farming. It should explicitly signpost public bodies to plant-based procurement resources and support a mandatory environmental food labelling system. Finally, due consideration must be extended to all greenhouse gases, particularly methane, to inform climate mitigation.
2025: NHS Scotland ‘Once for Scotland’ managing health at work policies
The new workforce policy must ensure that NHS Scotland meets its responsibility to foster a positive work environment that eliminates any unlawful discrimination and less favourable treatment of vegans. The policy should ensure that staff at all levels are aware that veganism is a protected belief under the UK Equalities Act 2010, and that they are acting upon their responsibilities to respect and cater to the needs of vegans.
2025 Health Education and Improvement Wales: Shaping our education strategy
The Vegan Society attests that healthcare training must be reviewed to ensure that it fully includes, teaches, and assesses veganism and the rights of vegans, as a protected belief under Welsh law. To address the significant knowledge gaps identified among health professionals, all courses must incorporate modules on sustainable diets and explicitly cover plant-based nutrition, enabling dietitians and other practitioners to confidently and accurately advise and care for vegans.
2025 Improving the way Ofsted inspects education
To genuinely support inclusive education, the proposed reporting system must require schools to demonstrate how they are proactively identifying and addressing the needs of all learners, including vegans.
The Vegan Society calls on Ofsted to support true inclusion by being mindful of the needs of vegan learners when they assess inclusion leadership, policy and practice.
2024 Modernisation Committee: Reforms to House of Commons procedures, standards, and working practices
The Modernisation Committee must ensure that all elected representatives, policymakers, and staff in the House of Commons understand that veganism is a protected belief under the UK Equalities Act 2010, and that they fully uphold their responsibilities to respect and cater for the needs of vegans in the workplace. The Committee should also support the Administration Committee in advancing more inclusive practices by making sustainable, healthy, plant-based food options more accessible across the parliamentary estate.
2024 England Curriculum and Assessment Review
Personal, Social, Health, and Economic Education (PSHE) should be a statutory and integrative subject, serving as a backbone for the entire curriculum. By embedding PSHE throughout core subjects like Maths, English, and Science, learning will be centred on empathy, ethical relationships with all living beings, respect for the natural world and an understanding of our interconnectedness within global ecosystems. This will ensure that every young person has the chance to build a deeper understanding of values like empathy, sustainability and inclusivity – skills that are essential for fostering a kinder, more conscious society.
2024 England Curriculum and Assessment Review
Personal, Social, Health, and Economic Education (PSHE) should be a statutory and integrative subject, serving as a backbone for the entire curriculum. By embedding PSHE throughout core subjects like Maths, English, and Science, learning will be centred on empathy, ethical relationships with all living beings, respect for the natural world and an understanding of our interconnectedness within global ecosystems. This will ensure that every young person has the chance to build a deeper understanding of values like empathy, sustainability and inclusivity – skills that are essential for fostering a kinder, more conscious society.
2021 Wales Curriculum: Religion, values & ethics
Veganism must be in in every religion, values and ethics syllabus, and taught to every student. Veganism upholds bodily autonomy, self-determination and allied rights for all, in accordance with our shared social ethic that it is wrong to cause harm unnecessarily.
2021 Design & delivery of mandatory Religion, Values & Ethics
Veganism opposes opinions such as holding non-human animals as property, and upholds rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination not limited by species. This aligns with the widely held ethical belief, that it is wrong to cause harm unnecessarily. Since sustainable, nutritious plant-based vegan diets are well understood, farming animals for food is an unnecessary harm. For the protection of public health, morals, and non-human animals, veganism should be included in every RVE syllabus.
2021 COVID Vaccination Certification
COVID-status certification proposals raises many ethical, legal, human rights and equalities issues. Any such practice must not infringe upon the rights of vegans (and others), and be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
2021 Mandatory vax frontline health / care (England)
Veganism is a protected philosophical belief (the Equality Act 2010). Any system of COVID19 and influenza vaccination exemptions for health and social care workers based upon belief, must give vegans equivalent exemptions to those with other relevant beliefs, transparently, consistently and in line with the law.
2021 CAP and BCAP consultation on rules on harm and protected characteristics
The Vegan Society supports the adoption of these rules for advertising and promotions. The Advertising Standards Authority is not sufficiently considering the Public Sector Equality Duty around veganism as an a qualifying non-religious belief in law.
2020 Update to nutritional standards for school food in Northern Ireland
We need to collaborate with parents and guardians, children and young people, caterers, funders and where appropriate, registered dietitians, to ensure that suitable vegan-friendly options are available on all menus.
2020 Unequal impact: Coronavirus (Covid-19)
By focusing on humans, we can develop effective COVID19 treatments and vaccines free of non-human animal use, in line with protected beliefs including veganism. We must take seriously future potential fatal viruses too, many of which may be zoonotic and related to human agricultural activities.
2025: UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy
The UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy framework must explicitly recognise the nutritional value, sustainability and appropriateness of properly fortified, unsweetened plant-based alternatives to mammal milks within well-planned diets. The Vegan Society also recommends removing the exemption for milk-based drinks with added sugar to support progress towards public health goals, alongside the lactose exemption to help create parity for plant-based milk substitute drinks. The framework should optimise, not reduce, fortification of these plant-based alternatives.
2024 UK Fairer Food Labelling
More information must be available to people about the origin of their food, and the processes involved, through accurate labelling, so that everyone can make informed decisions that align with their values. Wherever there are ingredients or processing aids used which are taken from any animals the country where those animals were farmed, hunted, caught or otherwise lived, as well as the country where they were killed (if different) should be specified.
2021 DEFRA Labelling for animal welfare
Our food systems need to be fully transparent, with mandatory labelling about how animals and environment are harmed e.g. Welfare denied; Sanctuary; or No animals were used.
2021 The Fur Market in Great Britain
We strongly object to the use of any animals within the fashion and textile industries. In July 2020, a YouGov poll revealed that 93% of respondents do not wear fur and 72% dsupported a complete ban on imports.
2024 UK National Procurement
Public procurement is a vital way for the UK Government to demonstrate national and global leadership by prioritising environmental sustainability and public health through a focus on sourcing plant-based food and offering it as the default option.
2021 Green Paper: Transforming public procurement
Well-managed plant-based solutions are vital for sustainable public procurement. This is in line with the shared ethic, that it is wrong to cause harm unnecessarily.
2021 School Food Stakeholders Survey
Our school food system should be healthy, environmentally sustainable, and equitable. This will empower communities to practice their existing beliefs: that it is wrong to do harm unnecessarily, and that school food should feature healthy, tasty, sustainable plant-based meals every day.
2020 Public Sector procurement of food
Plant-based public procurement is one of the most significant ways that the Government can positively impact food systems and rural communities. In particular, farmers must be fully and fairly paid to ensure tasty, healthy, sustainable, affordable, ethical local vegan-friendly food in our schools, hospitals, prisons, local government offices and other institutions.
