Welcome everyone
to the 4^th Southeast Asian Vegetarian Congress

I have been a vegetarian for about 30 years now. For most of those 30 years, I was a "quiet" vegetarian. Quiet vegetarians are people who quietly eat their vegetarian food, but do not tell others that they are vegetarian. If someone offers them some dead animal flesh to eat, quiet vegetarians say, "Thank you, but I am not very hungry today". Sometimes quiet vegetarians say that they do not eat other animals as a personal preference, just like some people prefer durians, while other people prefer mangoes.

However, what we eat is much more than a matter of personal preference. As you will hear and see at this Congress, what we eat has powerful consequences for the environment, for non-human animals, for our fellow humans and for ourselves.

This is why we all need to be "noisy" vegetarians. We need to explain to our friends, family, classmates, colleagues, neighbours and anyone else who will listen that eating less or no meat is perhaps the most important way we can help to make our world a better, happier place.

Thus, I urge all of you to actively participate in the many sessions at this Congress, so that you can learn as much as possible, so that after this Congress you can make lots and lots of NOISE for the sake of the environment, for the sake of the other animals and for the sake of the human race.

Respectfully,


George Jacobs, Ph.D
Chairperson of the International Council of the International Vegetarian Union