Rochester VegFest is a joint project of Animal Rights Rochester (ARRoc) and Rochester Area Vegan Society (RAVS), bringing together volunteers, businesses, and nonprofits to promote ethical living, environmental sustainability, and plant-based health through a vibrant community festival.
Website: rocvegfestny.org
Instagram: instagram.com/rocvegfest
Facebook: facebook.com/RocVegFest
Why Live a Vegan Lifestyle?
For Personal Health: A Whole Food, Plant-Based (WFPB) diet provides all the nutrients to maintain a healthy, active, long life. This nourishing lifestyle will help avoid obesity, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, strokes, and type 2 diabetes. We can have more energy, sleep better, be in a better mood, and have less pain on a WFPB diet. If you want to be as strong as an ox, then eat like an ox. Eat plants!
For Planetary Health: Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate change. Billions of cows produce methane, a much more potent Greenhouse Gas (GHG) than carbon dioxide, from burps, farts, and defecation. Worldwide deforestation to support animals for humans to eat is changing our entire ecosystem – destroying the plants that sequester GHGs and decreasing the oxygen we need to breathe.
For Animal Health: Industrial slaughterhouses are an inhumane way to treat our fellow animals on this earth. Factory farms are the breeding grounds for the next pandemic. World deforestation is destroying the ecosystems that support the biodiversity that supports human life. We don’t need to eat animals to be healthy. Humans evolved having a primarily plant-based diet. Love animals – Don’t eat them.
Past Events
A Look Back at VegFest 2024
2024 Speakers:
Dr. Kerry Graff, Medical Director, Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute (RLMI)
Dr. Kerry Graff is board-certified in family and lifestyle medicine, spending the first half of her career treating patients with medications and procedures and now dedicating the second half to helping patients adopt healthier habits to address the underlying causes of most chronic disease. She is the co-author of The 4Leaf Guide to Vibrant Health, Using the Power of Food to Heal Ourselves and Our Planet.
Sarina Farb, Born Vegan
Sarina Farb is a holistic vegan educator, TEDx Speaker, and liberation activist working to make the world a better place for all beings. Being born and raised vegan in Kansas taught Sarina to think for herself stand for justice even when it’s unpopular. Today she focuses on combining heart and science to empower people to think critically, see past corporate propaganda, and to live ethically. Sarina is co-founder of the International Vegan Earth Day March, and has given hundreds of lectures and spoken at numerous universities while traveling the country in her vegan camper van. As a former science teacher with a biochemistry and policy studies degree, she is deeply passionate about bringing nuance, ethics, and social justice into conversation about science in society. Her videos and content have reached over million people and been featured in numerous publications and books.
Jim Hicks, Planetary Heath Advocate
In 2004, Jim began referring to our food choices as the most important issue in the history of humanity — having concluded that our future as a species was riding on those choices. In 2009, he earned a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from eCornell and the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, where he served on the board of directors for six years. Jim realized that in order to preserve the fragile ecosystem that sustains us, we must also begin urgently addressing many other human endeavors that now threaten our civilization and even our long-term survival as a species. His long-term vision began emerging in three books that he has authored:
- Healthy Eating, Healthy World (2011)
- 4Leaf Guide to Vibrant Health (2015) – co-authored with Dr. Kerry Graff
- OUTCRY, Urgent Alarms from Our Planet and What We Can Do About Them (2020)
Jim’s work has primarily been aimed at waking up the leaders of the world to the fact that animal agriculture is the leading driver of climate change – and that it is the only driver than can be easily disabled by individual citizens who simply begin choosing plant-based foods that promote both physical and environmental health.
A Look Back at VegFest 2019
A Blast from the Past: View More 2019 Photos Here & More Photos Here!
2019 Speakers:
Dr. Chris Hirschler, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Health and Physical Education at Monmouth University. Chris founded Plants for Peace.
“The Dimensions of Wellness: Lessons from a 20-year vegan journey”
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Jonell Belcher-Chudyk, Mockingbird Farm Sanctuary
“Animal Rights as Transformation”
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Tim Kaufman, “Fat Man Rants” and Fat Man Foods.
“Finding the Road to Health and Wellness”
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2018 Speakers:
Sarah Goodenough, local nurse who has lost 160 pounds by eating a plant based diet, owner of Kitchen Verde & Verde Health
Kevin Lahey and Ben Le Roi, activists and producers of the Livegan Podcast
Dr. Milton Mills, a critical care physician who has been featured in the movies “What the Health” and the upcoming “The Invisible Vegan”
2017 Speakers:
Torre Washington
Jo-anne McArthur
Ted Barnett, M.D.
Harold Brown
Kerry Graff, M.D.
Bruce Monger, PhD.
Cam F. Awesome
Mark Devries
Mike Stura
Josh Keeler, D.C.
…and the film What the Health
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