I'd like to bring up the topic of investments and whether you believe that precious metals and crypto are vegan? There are plenty of ETFs that invest in precious metals e.g. gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. There are also more and more ETFs that invest in crypto such as BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL and even DOGE. I am aware that precious metals and some crypto can be energy intensive, but ETH, XRP, and SOL use very little energy as they are not proof of work cryptos.
There are potentially vegan stocks that can be invested in e.g. the US-listed Beyond Meat, Oatly, elf Cosmetics, and even e.g. LSE-listed ANIC, which invests in lab meat and precision fermentation, but these stocks are quite speculative and I wouldn't feel comfortable putting significant money in them as they are highly volatile and you can potentially lose a lot. I think a small allocation to these vegan stocks would be better, and I feel diversification into more established asset classes like crypto and precious metals make sense.
Then there are the ESG ETFs that screen out unethical stocks, but usually when I scan through the holdings for these ESG ETFs, I find that there are plenty of pharmaceutical companies that test on animals, but these are considered ethical by mainstream ESG because they contribute to human longevity. Even more neutral sectors like finance I think are morally uncertain because a bank may heavily finance the meat and dairy industry. I am not sure about the veganness of the tech sector and I note that the US-listed VEGN ETF has a lot of tech companies in it. Regardless, because companies are so varied and it is unclear what they do, it's not certain if they are vegan or not, but precious metals and crypto are simply metals or code, so there is a lot of certainty there about what you are investing in. I suppose the same can be said of real estate, which is simply land.
Do do you assess the veganness of your investments, if you do at all? Is this something you think is important to fund a vegan world? In my opinion, for veganism to be successful, there needs to be more vegan capital.
There are potentially vegan stocks that can be invested in e.g. the US-listed Beyond Meat, Oatly, elf Cosmetics, and even e.g. LSE-listed ANIC, which invests in lab meat and precision fermentation, but these stocks are quite speculative and I wouldn't feel comfortable putting significant money in them as they are highly volatile and you can potentially lose a lot. I think a small allocation to these vegan stocks would be better, and I feel diversification into more established asset classes like crypto and precious metals make sense.
Then there are the ESG ETFs that screen out unethical stocks, but usually when I scan through the holdings for these ESG ETFs, I find that there are plenty of pharmaceutical companies that test on animals, but these are considered ethical by mainstream ESG because they contribute to human longevity. Even more neutral sectors like finance I think are morally uncertain because a bank may heavily finance the meat and dairy industry. I am not sure about the veganness of the tech sector and I note that the US-listed VEGN ETF has a lot of tech companies in it. Regardless, because companies are so varied and it is unclear what they do, it's not certain if they are vegan or not, but precious metals and crypto are simply metals or code, so there is a lot of certainty there about what you are investing in. I suppose the same can be said of real estate, which is simply land.
Do do you assess the veganness of your investments, if you do at all? Is this something you think is important to fund a vegan world? In my opinion, for veganism to be successful, there needs to be more vegan capital.
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