The Second Annual Kansas City VegFest was held at the historic city market. This festival enables Vegan Resturants and Merchants as well as other eco-friendly vendors a chance to network and advertise their work, There were a lot of free samples to be had and delicious food options including Vegan Barbeque. (This is Kansas City, after all, there has to be Barbeque.
My first memory of Kansas City was the stockyards. They seemed to me to go on for miles. They occupied this area in KC called the bottoms. It was a flat floodplain that ran parallel with the intersection of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. Everythings bigger when you’re a child, but the vastness of the stockyard area was overwhelming. Oh, and the smell. Horrendous. We would drive by with the windows up, and we’d still have the scent inside our car. Kansas City was rightly called a cowtown. Beef and Hogs were big business. The livestock would be unloaded at the stockyard, processed into meat north of the Missouri river and shipped off to the east coast. There are still streets in North Kansas City with the names of Swift and Armour (two of the largest meat packers in the nation) The stockyards have long since disappeared, but the meat legacy is still a strong one. Being a Vegan in KC is tricky. We are known for our Barbeque and rightly so. Everywhere you turn there is great meat to be had. Vegans still somehow exist despite all of this and the community is growing,
Whether due to health, ethical concerns or both more people are becoming vegetarian or vegan. This is the second annual Vegfest and the crowd is much larger than the prior year. The festival featured vegan food, earth-friendly apparel, music/ It also provided an opportunity to educate the public on the many organizations that are striving toward the ethical treatment of our animal co-inhabitants.
Pig Rescue Network Kansas City seeks to find forever homes for our porcine brothers and sisters. They seek to protect, advocate and educate. Pigs are one of the most intelligent of the non-primate mammals.
Even omnivores would enjoy the VegFest. Being a Vegan might not be a right fit for everyone, but a deeper consciousness never hurt anyone. Besides those Vegan Nachos might surprise you.
