No one at Raystede has done us the honour of replying to our pleas but they have talked behind our backs. They have told a local newspaper journalist that Raystede is “an animal welfare charity, not an animal rights charity”. They have changed the wording on the cafe page of their website, claiming that they have “extensive vegetarian and vegan options” and “any meat and dairy comes from high welfare farming systems”. And they have re-written their founder's bio on the About page to include the assertion that she was in fact not veggie or vegan because she sometimes ate fish. All this in an effort to justify continuing to fund unnecessary animal suffering. I never met her but I think I know what Miss Raymonde-Hawkins would have said to that. In Mercy On Us!, published in 1967, she wrote:
“It is somewhat the act of the ostrich to be willing to do, by proxy, what one has not the courage to do oneself in the slaughterhouse. … The slaughterhouse is an unpopular subject for discussion, and the more fond the meat-eater is of his steak and two vegetables, the less he seems to like discussing the market and the slaughterhouse. …
“It was early in the activities of Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare that we started what we called our “CALF CAMPAIGN”. At the time we published a leaflet known as our “Veal Pie” leaflet. Our motive was to draw attention to the need for legislation on behalf of very young calves. ... if a calf was born early on Sunday morning and the market was Monday, that calf assuredly found its way into the market if it were an un-needed bull calf. The reason being that farmers did not wish him to use, even for one week, milk which they wished to sell.
“Raystede consistently desires to be logical in all its undertakings, and I felt that while the work of Raystede at this time was touching on the current needs of domestic animals, yet it was desirable that we should investigate this problem with a view to ensuring all-time future benefit for all animals. I reviewed the sufferings of animals generally. I asked myself, “What is the greatest number of unprotected sufferers in the animal kingdom?” There are some who would say the most urgent need is to stop stag-hunting. While I agree, yet I realise that there are only a few stags suffering, however dismally, annually. Others would protest that fox-hunting is the most vicious and cruel experience that any animal suffers, yet withal, I was bound to realise that the number of foxes that suffer is not so very great. Performing animals? How we would like to blot that off our so called civilised entertainment, but even including zoos and all the misery of captivity, really only a few hundred animals suffer. I decided that it was our markets and slaughterhouses, handling daily, as they do, thousands of animals up and down the country, that needed the searchlight of our attention focussed upon them, and in particular, upon the young calves, which experience the greatest form of suffering in the greatest numbers.”
And remember – this was 1967. She was way ahead of her time.
Does Raystede labelling her a pescatarian undermine our campaign? Of course not. People get misled by medical professionals even today about what should be included in a healthy diet but thanks to the internet we now have access to more accurate information. In the days before the internet was prevalent, people could be forgiven for believing what they were told about fish being necessary for good nutrition. And we can forgive them for thinking that eating wild-caught fish was a more natural and humane option than enslaving animals on farms. There is no doubt in my mind that if Miss Raymonde-Hawkins was alive today she would not be pescatarian. Her soul was vegan and she, “like all decent-minded people, believed that no animal should be caused to suffer at all for any reason” and it is shameful that Raystede personnel disparage her for their own ends.
Sadly, as we have noted many times, the principles on which Raystede was founded are no longer being upheld. They run it like a business and follow the money first and the principles second, if at all. Perhaps we would not have been surprised by this if we had realised that the chairman of the board of trustees was a farmer.
Mr Jonathan Vine-Hall, owns a 450 acre grass farm, producing bales of hay for the equine market, and some of his income is derived from “winter sheep keep”, ie he lets out his fields for grazing. In October 2016, fearing a drop in farm subsidies after the LEAVE vote, Mr Vine-Hall designed a plan to increase revenue from his Estate. Part of his plan was to buy his own herd of sheep to graze his fields. Starting with 250 ewes he intended to increase his herd to 500 ewes by the third year of his extension plan. He applied for planning permission for a barn to be “utilised seasonally to accommodate complicated cases of lambing (whilst the majority of lambing will be done 'in field' in the spring).” I wonder what he planned to do with the male offspring.
The man has a vested interest in sheep farming! Of course he's not going to agree to make Raystede vegan, he's making money out of meat-eaters! This is a genuine conflict of interest and Mr Vine-Hall should never have been permitted to become a Raystede trustee. Now he's Chairman of the Board!
Please write to Raystede and tell them to stop allowing this conflict of interest which prevents them from running the charity on its founding principles. Miss Raymonde-Hawkins' principles. Tell them that reading Miss Raymonde-Hawkins' books should be mandatory for all staff, volunteers and trustees so that they cannot be led astray again.
Thank you so much for you continued support.
Email Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare: info@raystede.org
If you want to share how you're helping the campaign, or ask me a question, or if you work for Raystede and would like to be an anonymous whistleblower, please feel free to contact me via the campaign website.
Thank you so much.