“Vegetarianism protected my identity. Veganism challenged my integrity” – Shreya Ghodawat.

Dear Climate Healers,

Today, you are no doubt inundated with wishes for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2026! At Climate Healers, we wish you a healthy, happy and prosperous 2026 as well, but we also offer you a free, month-long V-Planetary deep dive on Planet B: a systems engineering framework, for actually fulfilling that wish with integrity. Please join us here.

Today, if you have read Wayne Hsiung’s latest Substack newsfeed pronouncement that “Veganism is failing,” please don’t be discouraged. Normally, Wayne’s assessments are spot on, but in this case, I respectfully submit that he is wildly off the mark. He bases his bleak diagnosis on four main factors:
1) Plant-based meat companies are losing market share;
2) Progress on animal welfare has stalled;
3) Zoe Rosenburg was convicted for her animal rights advocacy; and
4) Google search for the word “Vegan” has stalled since 2019.

Let me begin by observing that since 2019, the animal agriculture industry has been actively fighting the Vegan movement with massive resources allocated for its anti-Vegan advocacy:

1) It has spent massive resources to label plant-based meats as “ultra-processed”;
2) It has spent massive resources to reverse animal welfare measures;
3) It strong-armed the conviction of Zoe Rosenberg in a legal procedure so corrupt that it would make Kangaroo courts in authoritarian regimes blush; and
4) It advertises heavily through Google, making Google’s statistics suspect.

I have written to a high-ranking [Google Executive], a classmate of mine, about Google’s recent shenanigans conflating Vegetarianism with Veganism:

“Dear [Google Executive],

Last week, a Vegan activist posted that Google was suppressing the word Vegan in its language translations. I didn’t spend too much energy over it until I tried to post a review for Crossroads Kitchen in Las Vegas and discovered that Google no longer has “Vegan” as an option for food type selection in its reviews.

Please see attached screenshot.

By blurring Veganism and Vegetarianism in our language, we gloss over the enormous ecological impact of dairy consumption and obscure the fact that dairy is the first domino that urgently needs to fall in our path to ecological sustainability.

Please let me know how this can be corrected.

Thanks,
Sailesh”

Needless to say, I am yet to hear from my classmate on this matter. Therefore, I cannot swallow Google’s statistics, even if it were shoved down my throat with a mountain of salt.

As a result of these increasingly desperate efforts, the animal agriculture industry has indeed temporarily succeeded in bottling up the exponential growth of the Vegan movement since 2019, as Wayne Hsiang points out. However, the animal agriculture industry has failed to address the underlying root causes for which a Vegan World is the only rational response:
1) horrific cruelty to animals as the industry tries to relentlessly increase its efficiency;
2) reckless destruction of the life-support systems of our fragile planet; and
3) increasing ill-health in the global human population that the animal agriculture industry preys upon;

Today, even in USA, the bastion of cowboy culture, 80% of respondents oppose most standard practices of the animal agriculture industry as a recent Faunalytics survey shows (please see figure above). Therefore, in my assessment, the animal agriculture industry has bottled up a volcano and it is sitting tight on the bottle cap with its sausage legs dangling on the side. In my assessment, its obliteration is imminent and I, for one, will cheer the loudest when this bottled-up volcano erupts as soon as possible!

Instead of wringing our hands over the industry’s ephemeral gains, I prefer that we highlight auspicious beginnings on New Year’s Day 2026, such as the very successful event that Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshji used to promote Veganism within his global Rajachandra Mission Jain community here. The event had
1) a panel consisting of a Jain medical doctor, Dr. Sharang Wartikar, a Jain research scholar, Ruchika Chitrabanu, a Jain athlete, Kuntal Joisher, and a young Jain social influencer, Shreya Ghodawat, moderated by Pujya Rakeshji;
2) a short video highlighting the horrific nature of the animal agriculture industry;
3) a smorgasbord of Vegan dishes to soothe the community’s fear of deprivation; and
4) a website highlighting why the Jain community needs to rethink dairy.

As Dotsie Bausch at Switch4Good has pointed out, dairy is the first domino in this greatest transformation in human history that the planet and the animals urgently need, which means that communities like Rajchandra Mission have an indispensable leadership role to play. Pujya Rakeshji’s insightful and inspiring approach to Vegan advocacy is an excellent blueprint for other Vegetarian organizations like Brahma Kumaris and Sai Baba Foundation to emulate.

Finally, as we usher in Vegan World 2026, let us enjoy this inspiring poem composed by Dr. Sharang Wartikar detailing his Vegan journey:

“So let me tell you this little story of mine
In the year 1999
A person asked me a question so fine
Can you yourself kill on what you dine?

Now I have enjoyed eating meat, chicken and fish
But I used to see them directly on my dish
Would I be able to kill them myself? Never!
In fact, I considered myself to be an “animal lover”!

So when I realized that something was wrong
I stopped eating meat, I just couldn’t go on
Just because someone else did the killing for me
I could no longer remain guilt-free!

But milk and eggs, I continued to enjoy,
I believed to obtain those, no one needs to die
Another 20 years passed by
Before I realized I was still living a lie

Based on a random video I saw
I realized my thinking had a major flaw
In the poultry and dairy industry, males are of no use
Only the females they need to abuse

One day old male chicks are put in a grinder and killed
Or drowned in a barrel with water filled
So in my mind, the question begs,
Am I OK to pay this price to have my eggs?

All my learnings as a doctor were no good
I didn’t even realize that milk is an infant food
Drinking milk as an adult is done by no other mammal
So what makes us think that we are so special?

That we need to drink milk even after we grow
That too, of another species, that’s so weird, no?
We separate the calf from his mother within a day
The cow watches helplessly, she has no say

She tries to protest against what we are doing
But if only we could understand her mooing
She would be telling us, “Can’t you see?
The milk you are taking is meant for my baby!”

But for so long we have been fed a bunch of lies
That we turn a deaf ear to their pitiful cries
Now, I never really wanted to hurt anyone
Certainly not for my pleasure, taste or fun

That’s how my journey has begun
That same day I became a Vegan!”

With much love,