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HISTORY Vegan Outreach founders Matt Ball and Jack Norris met in in Cincinnati, OH in 1990. As members of the Animal Rights Community of Cincinnati, Matt and Jack (along with Phil Murray, now co-owner of Pangea Vegan Products) spent the winter of 1990-1991 holding fur protests outside of cultural events. Their focus turned to Vegetarianism in 1992, and the Animal Rights Community of Cincinnati funded the printing and distribution of 10,000 pro-vegetarian flyers entitled "Vegetarianism." In June of 1993, twelve activists -- including Matt and Jack -- held a three-day " Fast for Farm Animals" in front of a Cincinnati Slaughterhouse (the logic behind this being that most animals typically go three days without food before slaughter). On the last day of the fast, some of the protestors took a large banner reading "Stop Eating Animals" to the University Of Cincinnati campus. Though the fast itself generated some media coverage, many of the people involved felt that holding the banner in the university district was the most effective part of the fast. Following this event, Matt and Jack formed Animal Liberation Action (ALA) and started a campaign of holding "Stop Eating Animals" banners on street corners. This would become the foundation of Vegan Outreach's current tactic of disseminating information on College Campuses and in other high-traffic areas. In conjunction with an upswing in Civil Disobedience relating to the Animal Rights movement, in 1994 ALA developed a booklet called "And Justice For All." It focused on the reasons to adopt a Vegan Diet , including the abuse of the animals involved, the impact of industrialized farming on the Environment , and the benefits of consuming a plant-based diet. The following year, ALA's name was officially changed to Vegan Outreach, and the campaign to hold banners -- generally poorly received by the public, who did not understand the reasons behind the request -- was set aside in favor of the distribution of printed booklets. Another revision of the booklet, now called "Vegan Outreach," was printed in 1995. The initial 10,000 copy run was stapled, folded, and collated by hand to save money. That autumn, Jack Norris embarked on a tour of the Midwestern United States, distributing the Vegan Outreach brochure at nineteen universities. The first "Why Vegan" was printed in 1996 and distributed at 171 colleges during that year. Jack continued his traveling until funds ran out in 1997. Jack decided to become a Registered Dietitian, which entailed three years of school and an internship. He did this to become educated on the science of nutrition and to figure out what could be done to minimize the number of failed vegetarians in the future. In their June 1998 newsletter, Vegan Outreach published a very long article called "Veganism as the Path to Animal Liberation" (now called "Activism and Veganism Reconsidered" "Activism and Veganism Reconsidered" ). This article questioned the priorities of the Animal Rights Movement (in part by pointing out that ~99% of all animals killed in the U.S. died to be eaten, while only a minority of the movement's attention went to exposing factory farms and promoting vegetarianism) and also argued against the movement's focus on trying to get media attention through Protests . The essay also questioned the effectiveness of Civil Disobedience and Direct Action , and a perceived tendency towards self-delusion and dogmatism in vegetarian and animal rights promotion. Until veganism was more widespread, Matt argued, animal liberation could not succeed on any major front. The essay made a wide impact on activists and shaped Vegan Outreach's guiding principals of advocacy "Guiding Principles of Advocacy" "Vegan Outreach". New booklets were developed in 1999 and 2000, including a Vegetarian Starter Guide (now the "Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating") for people who were interested in following a veterarian diet and "Vegetarian Living" (now "Try Vegetarian") which had none of the graphic photos contained in the "Why Vegan" brochure. In 2001, over 330,000 copies of "Why Vegan" and "Vegetarian Living" were distributed. In the fall of 2003, Vegan Outreach launched its Adopt-A-College program, the Animal Advocacy Movement 's first systematic attempt to reach large numbers of students in the U.S. and Canada in an organized way. The program's first year saw 22,000 brochures distributed at 63 schools; most recently, 344,000 brochures were distributed at 385 schools during the fall 2006 semester "Adopt-A-College semester totals" . Vegan Outreach was able to hire a new employee, Jon Camp, whose focus was entirely on leafleting at colleges. In his first two years of employment with the group, he handed out over 145,000 brochures. Another big change for Vegan Outreach occurred in 2005, when the first copy of their new brochure, "Even If You Like Meat," was printed. The brochure is explained in this way:
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