On the top floor of the Robert Hoag Rawlings Public Library on Sunday, a group of about two dozen Puebloans gathered in the Ryals Special Events Room to eat, socialize and listen to presentations from speakers who'd come to discuss their ideals on National Farm Animal Day.

The event was like many held at the Ryals Room: impassioned speakers, engaged listeners, informative pamphlets and a full spread of food for those who wandered into the event with an empty belly.

The primary difference between this event and others like it, however, is that at Sunday's happening the food, the message and the majority of the people were all vegan.

National Farm Animal Day is a nationwide annual event that began in 2005 as an initiative by animal activist Colleen Paige to shed light on the plight of animals that are abused and slaughtered on farms.

Joshua Chappell and Sandrah Burrier, co-organizers of the event at the library and orchestrators of the Pueblo Vegan and Vegetarians group on meetup.com, said that the goal of the National Farm Animal Day event was to prompt thought and discussion about the role that animals play in relation to human diets.

"I would hope that somebody would walk away from this event really contemplating their relationship to non-human animals," Burrier said.

"I think most of us want to call ourselves animal lovers or consider ourselves animal lovers, but eating and killing someone when you don't have to -- since humans don't biologically need meat or dairy to live -- isn't an act of love. And our culture does a really god job of keeping our eyes closed to that."

Since moving to Pueblo about 9 1/2 months ago, Chappell and Burrier have organized about 18-20 events in Pueblo to promote veganism and animal rights with film screenings, documentaries, potlucks, community meetings and even game nights.

In organizing Saturday's event, Burrier said the group chose to feature speakers who have seen firsthand the production side of the animal agriculture industry.

"Kind of our theme was to have speakers that have been on both sides of the industry, so people who have willingly participated in commodifying animals and then who have kind of had an awakening so to speak, and are now speaking on their behalf," Burrier said, "Each of our speakers in some way has been involved in animal agriculture."

The day's speakers included Julia Cameron Weingardt, the founder of a Greeley-based activist group called The Greeley Cow Save and Becky Bottomley Bernholtz, an Animal Rights Activist with Direct Action Everywhere.

The keynote speaker of the event was Renee King Sonnen, a well-known figure in the vegan activism community who lives in Texas and addressed the crowd via Skype.

"She started with (a blog called) 'Vegan Journal of a Ranchers Wife' -- she essentially married a cattle rancher, had no idea what cattle ranching entailed, fell in love with the animals and then essentially bought her husband's entire herd and turned their 90-acre cattle ranch into a sanctuary to protect these animals. She's like a huge name within the vegan community right now," Burrier said.

Although not every participant at the National Farm Animal Day occasion came to, or left the library as a vegan, the non-vegans in attendance undoubtedly departed with a fuller understanding of what veganism means.

"We try to sum it up with three main angles," Chappell said.

"The first and most important, we believe, is the rights of the animals -- that they're individuals with individual experiences. So today is primarily focused on that aspect. The other two are the impacts on your personal health, which are very profound, as well as the impacts the food industry has on the environment, so that's the trifecta of veganism we say."

zhillstrom@chieftain.com

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Vegan group hosts National Farm Animal Day event - Pueblo Chieftain