The annual Animal Rights Conference is the world’s largest and longest-running animal rights gathering, hailing back to 1981. It is the only conference open to all points of view on achieving animal liberation. This year it was held on Aug 3 – 6 at the Hilton Hotel in Virginia, USA. FFL Director, Paul Rodney Turner, and his wife Juliana were representing Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary and Food for Life Global. Kosa Eli, the author of The Peaceable Forest was also there promoting her new book about Jaguars and saving the rainforest, and so too was Rangadevi dasi from Govinda’s Catering offering vegan cakes and desserts. Turner was invited to be on a panel titled: “Engaging Through Religion” (Engaging various religious denominations in animal advocacy). “I have been speaking at this conference since 1999 and typically I would give a talk on solutions to world hunger and a report on the work of Food for Life projects around the world,” he explained. “However, this panel topic was not suitable for that so I decided to lay out all the cards on the table for this panel.” The first speaker was, Jeffrey Cohan, the Executive Director of Jewish Veg, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to encourage and help Jews to transition to veganism. The 2nd speaker was Stephen R. Kaufman, MD, the chair of the Christian Vegetarian Association and vice-chair of the Medical Research Modernization Committee. His books include Guided by the Faith of Christ: Seeking to Stop Violence and Scapegoating. His articles include “Animal Research is Wasteful and Misleading” published in Scientific American with coauthor Dr. Neal Barnard. Next was Turner who explained how Krishna is praised as the transcendental cowherd boy and “Makhan Chor,” the butter thief. “There is no question that Krishna holds a supreme position in Hinduism,” he explained to the […]