International Vegetarian Union (IVU)
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17th World Vegetarian Congress 1963
Barcelona, Spain

Delegate Report

Mr. Niel Nielsen, Norway
At previous congresses (since 1935 in Denmark), I've been a delegate from the Danish Vegetarian Society. Now I'm living in Norway and have been asked by the former president of the Norwegian Vegetarian Union, Magnus Karlson, to bring to you all a hearty greeting and the best wishes for a successful Congress. Mr. Karlson has just retired as president-aged 85. He was for 35 years president of his society.

If you ask me how the vegetarian movement is getting on in Norway, I have to answer: it's not getting on at all; fewer members, less activity. And the reasons are, in my opinion, firstly, that the old leaders are going and new ones have not turned up. They are also split in several groups.

Secondly, and this is also the case in Denmark, too much weight is being laid in the propaganda in the periodicals on the benefit of a vegetarian diet to sick people, thereby giving to the general public the impression that vegetarianism is something for sick people only.

Five years ago I was interviewed by the leading papers in Copenhagen, having won the championship in the Old Boys' class in tennis, 56 clubs competing; I won by endurance - the final lasting 2 hours, 40 minutes! One of the reporters asked me if I could affirm that the members of my society were less sick than people in general. I had to answer him that on the contrary, there were in our society more sick people than in any other because people became vegetarians only when they were given up by the doctors and hospitals to find help in a vegetarian diet!

It's all right that we may help people that are sick, but what we need are healthy people who by their vitality and energy show their co-citizens that the vegetarian diet is keeping them fit.

You can't convert young people and people in good health to vegetarianism by promising them health the rest of their lives if they adopt a vegetarian diet. But you may win them - as I was won 58 years ago by the mother of a schoolfellow - if, with all the feelings of your heart, you tell them of the cruelties to animals - to living beings - that are caused by meat-eating, and tell them with all the knowledge and logic of your brain, that flesh eating is absolutely unnecessary.