Founded 1993 | Area served Switzerland | |
Focus Vegetarianism, Veganism Location Winterthur, Switzerland Key people Renato Pichler, Bernadette Raschle Slogan Information-center for a plant based diet | ||
Swissveg (previously Swiss Association for Vegetarism (SVV) is a Swiss association in the legal context of article 60ff of the Swiss civil code (SCC), where members are exclusively vegetarians. The association has its registered office in Winterthur, together with the secretary of the European Vegetarian Union (EVU). The president is Renato Pichler, who is also on the board of EVU. The CEO of Swissveg is Bernadette Raschle. Swissveg is the biggest community in Switzerland for vegetarians. According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Switzerland has the second highest rate of vegetarianism in the European Union (even though Switzerland is not in the EU, it was most likely included with the other EU countries for this study). Older governmental data from 1997 suggest that 2.3% of the population never eat meat and the observed trend seemed to point towards less meat consumption. Newer studies suggest that the percentage of vegetarians has risen to 5% by 2007.
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History
The association was founded on 8 August 1993 in Sennwald under the name of Schweizerische Vereinigung für Vegetarismus (SVV). The association is an active member of the EVU and the International Vegetarian Union. It is also associated with the organisation Vegetarierbund Deutschland. On 3 March 2014 the name of the association was changed to Swissveg.
V-Label
Swissveg has, together with the EVU, developed the European Vegetarianism-Label V-Label. They control which products and services can use this label within Switzerland. Products with the V-Label are available at the two major groceries in Switzerland: Migros and Coop (Switzerland). About 100 Swiss companies use the V-label.