Whether it’s scientists and food producers racing to get lab-grown meat on the shelves or big conglomerates like Unilever investing in plant-based animal product alternatives, the plant-based movement has been growing exponentially for the past couple of years.

In light of our The Future of Meat event, I talked to Pablo Moleman, Co-Founder of The Netherlands branch of prominent international food-awareness organisation Proveg, about the present and future of the plant-based food movement.

Kinder World: I’ve noticed that in a lot of your communications at Proveg you use the term plant-based instead of vegan, is this a strategic move to ease people into the idea?

Pablo Moleman: Almost all of our communication at Proveg is context-specific, so it’s not that we never use the word vegan but it really depends on the audience. Our communication is based on five perspectives: pro-health, pro-environment, pro-animals, pro-justice, and pro-taste. So we try to find common ground with everyone to move towards a more plant-based world.

I feel like within the ending animal farming movement the main focus is often on animal ethics and the word vegan seems to represent that side of the whole advocacy, do you think solely focusing on animal ethics can be trivialising the movement and pushing people away from it?

It could, yes. At least I would say that we are losing out on the opportunity of reaching a larger audience with our message. Some people might not be ready to hear the animal ethics message but they might be open to moving towards a plant-based diet for other reasons. We should be inclusive and try to get them involved as far as they can manage.