Hooray Veggies!

Welcome! This blog is for vegans, vegetarians, and pesceteraians in Charleston SC. Since it can be rather difficult/isolating to be a vegetarian in the great state of South Carolina, I thought it would be fun to set up a group to get together, have fun, eat, drink, laugh, and share recipes.

I don’t have it all worked out yet but some ideas are:

1. Meet to try out various Charleston-area restaurants that serve up yummy veggie/vegan victuals

2. Get together for potlucks or picnics

3. Start an organic community garden (loads of work but lots of fun)

4. Volunteer locally to help animals in need

5. Set up veggie info tables at colleges, grocery stores, and farmer markets

6. Organize petition drives and letter writing campaigns for area restaurants that serve things like foie gras and kobe beef and to promote legislative awareness and action (think Prop 2 … hey even in SC, things are possible)

6. Have movie nights or a book club (Ideas: Dominion, Omnivore’s Dilemma, Animals in Translation, Skinny Bitch)

7. Your idea here!

Basically, vegetarians and vegans tend to share a similar set of values, especially if we choose not to eat meat at least in part for ethical reasons. So it makes sense to get together to share food and concerns and conversation. By ourselves, things can feel overwhelming, but as a group, things can feel possible and fun.

Plus it’ll just be rad to hang out!

So feel free to add comments anytime you want … and if you want a username, lemme know.

South Carolina’s #1 “Commodity”

According to the SC Department of Agriculture, our state’s #1 “commodity” is broilers. (Broilers is a depressingly euphemistic name for chickens who are raised for meat rather than eggs. That’s what they do with the male chicks — they broil them.)

Due to excessive feeding and artificial lighting, broilers achieve their “desired body weight in 4 to 8 weeks” and they are killed after one or two months of life. Most never go outside or see the sun.

Incidentally, free range eggs are VASTLY superior to cage free eggs. “Cage free” simply means the hens live in a giant warehouse free-for-all. They have to fight for food and water and often die because they can’t reach these communal resources. Publix (at least the one on Folly Road) does not carry free range eggs which is completely lame.

Last year, SC raised 235 million “broilers” and sold them for 45 cents a pound (live weight). Lexington County raised the most, followed by Aiken, Oconee, Saluda, and Orangeburg. We are number 12 in the nation for “broiler production.”

Our “Top Twelve Commodities” are:

1. Broilers
2. Greenhouse/Floriculture/Nursery
3. Turkeys
4. Other Crops
5. Cattle and Calves
6. Other Livestock
7. Corn
8. Eggs
9. Soybeans
10. Cotton/Cottonseed
11. Tobacco
12. Milk

Other Livestock = Hogs, farm chickens, other poultry, sheep and wool, goats and goats’ milk, aquaculture, honey and beeswax, horses, lambs, and “miscellaneous”

Other Crops = Peanuts, hay, oats, wheat, sorghum, peaches, pecans, apples, other fruits and nuts, tea, minor seed crops, and miscellaneous field crops