One of the lesser known aspects of perestroika has been a blossoming of vegetarianism in former Iron Curtain countries. The 300 delegates attending the four-day European Vegetarian Union Congress which opens at Chester College on Sunday include speakers from Poland and the USSR.
The conference has been organised by the Vegetarian Society, which has 18,000 British members, and estimates that vegetarians aged 11 and over have doubled in numbers here to 3.6 million in the past 12 months.
Juliet Gellatley, the society's campaigns director, has no illusions about the task lying across the Channel. Despite the fledgeling interest in eastern Europe, the diners of more southern climes continue to gnaw their way through mountains of meat. "I would guess", she says, "that the UK would top a Euro-league of vegetarians, followed by Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium."
Tiny groups of vegetarians in Italy, Spain and Portugal have formed national organisations to take on the task of persuading their compatriots to give up meat, but Greece seems like a lost cause. "In Britain vegetarianism goes back a long way," Ms Gellatley says. "Our society was founded 150 years ago. We have found the biggest number of vegetarians here to be concentrated around London and the northwest of England, which is where we have our headquarters. There are far fewer in Scotland and Wales."
In May, the society's Feeding You The Facts campaign was launched with a fanfare of press advertising and leaflets. The aim is to convince people that eschewing meat is not just desirable for the mutual health of humans and animals. Other aspects, such as the destruction of rain forests for cattle grazing, and water pollution from factory farming, are stressed.
Ms Gellatley tours the country, speaking to schoolchildren and on radio and television. "On a typical day I might visit a school and spend the morning talking to 200 teenagers.
"I show them our video Food Without Fear, and tell them about slaughter methods. It goes down well with young people, who think they may be the last generation who can save the planet."
The society claims that as well as the 3.6 million who are total vegetarians, there are now more than eight million Britons who avoid red meat altogether, and a further eight million who eat it only once a month.
Youth is leading the way, and Ms Gellatley denies that this leads to friction with harassed mothers facing the extra workload of special cooking. "We polled some teenagers this year and only 5 per cent said it created problems at home," she says.
Is the Chester conference the way forward? "The world will have to become more vegetarian," Ms Gellatley says, "because it will be increasingly impracticable to support a system based on large-scale consumption of animals quite apart from moral considerations."
Ms Gellatley is encouraged by the interest being shown from former Soviet bloc states. "Our speakers from Poland and the USSR will be telling how vegetarianism was banned under communism. Campaigning could not take place and promotional literature was censored, although people often did not eat meat because it was unobtainable. Governments subsidised meat production at the expense of fruit and vegetables.
"Now life has become easier for vegetarian sympathisers. It is gaining ground among young people in Poland, for instance."
