Students at the University of Virginia are planning to ask dining officials to expand vegan options in the school’s dining halls.
The students have been working with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ student wing to collect signatures for a petition asking for the change, and are planning to deliver the document to dining officials soon. Vegans abstain from not only meat, but also from animal products and byproducts — milk and eggs, for example.
Dining officials haven’t yet seen the petition, so they couldn’t comment on it directly.
Nicole Jackson, who is marketing manager for UVa dining for ARAMARK, the company that contracts to provide the services, emphasized that the dining halls offer a variety of vegan selections.
She wrote in an email that officials have made changes in the past as a result of student requests, but have not yet seen any increased demand for vegan items.
Ashley Chappo, a fourth-year from Princeton, N.J., is one of the students organizing the drive. She said that on the petition’s first day, nearly 500 people signed. Since then, more signatures have been gathered but not counted, she said.
Chappo, who was a vegetarian from age 13 but switched to a vegan diet at the start of this school year, was working last week to set a time to deliver the petition to dining administrators.
She tied demand for vegan dining options to students’ concerns about the way animals are raised and killed to produce meat and other products in this country, and said such options have been garnering support across the country.
“Vegans recognize that animals in the dairy and egg industries are treated with immeasurable cruelty, just like animals grown primarily for meat,” she wrote in an email.
Ryan Huling, who manages college campaigns for peta2, the student wing, pointed to soy chicken fajitas at the University of Maryland and sweet-and-sour seitan (a gluten-based meat substitute) at American University in Washington.
“These are the kinds of dishes that are really entering the mainstream on college campuses these days,” Huling said.
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