Popular foods like falafel have gained Israel an international reputation as a vegan-friendly country. (Orel Cohen/Flash90)JTA

The music pounded, the liquor flowed, dancers filled the floor and khinkali meat dumplings andkababi skewers staples of traditional Georgian cuisines sat on almost every table.

That was back in February, before Nana Shrier, the owner of the hip Tel Aviv bar and restaurant Nanuchka, saw a television news report about factory farming. Then everything changed.

Abhorred by how animals are treated in industrial meat and dairy production, Shrier stripped all the animal products from the menu from cheese to eggs to chicken and steak and made the restaurant entirely vegan.

It wasnt an easy shift. Retaining the restaurants Georgian character has forced Shrier to get creative, finding meat substitutes and trying new dishes. She has also noticed that customers order less hard alcohol when they dont eat meat. But none of that matters to her.

We understood that theres no price worth paying to create animal products, to see, to sell, to produce or to buy them, she said. The atmosphere is pleasant, but I would have paid any price. I would have lost half my business for this.

According to the activist group Vegan-Friendly, Shrier is one of approximately 300,000 vegans in Israel. At nearly 4 percent of the country, activists say Israel has the highest per capita vegan population of anywhere in the world. And the trend appears to be accelerating.

A survey conducted in January found that 8 percent of Israelis are vegetarian and nearly 5 percent are vegan. Four years ago, Israels Central Bureau of Statistics reported thatjust2.6 percent of Israelis were vegetarian or vegan.

Some 7,000 Israelis have accepted the Challenge 22 to go vegan for 22 days since the initiative was launched in May by the animal rights group Anonymous (no connection to the hacker collective). About 250 Israeli restaurants are now certified vegan friendly by the group of the same name, meaning that at least one-quarter of their dishes contain no animal products.

Israel is also frequently included on lists of the worlds most vegan-friendly nations, thanks in part to the fact that national staples like falafel and hummus contain no animal products. And on Monday, Tel Avivs second annual Vegan-Fest drew more than 10,000 attendees to a festival of food, crafts and music that organizers claimisthe worlds largest.

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Israelis growing hungry for vegan diet