Because of the support that readers of this site have given over the last year (2005) this site will continue as it has done for the last three years. But there is still a great need for support to keep this site going.

A few years ago I was asked by a person who helped maintain the excellent Toronto Vegetarian Society web site how I had time to create and maintain such a detailed vegetarian restaurants and health for stores information site for the entire world.

I took his comment to mean as difficult as it is to maintain one city, how hard it is to maintain the entire world. My answer was by plenty of time-consuming hard work and some how I just found the time. I highly appreciated the thousands of letters of appreciation that I have received concerning this site.

I consider a site like this one to be invaluable to the vegetarian community and even more so to the thousands of animals that are saved each year by knowledge presented on this site.

But regrettably the hard realities of life including financial responsibilities have set in and I just have to face the realities of maintaining such a massive site.

I see some of the excellent animal protection and vegetarian organizations such as PETA, FARM or EarthSave doing a great job both protecting animals and promoting vegetarianism and I also see how they get great support from the vegetarian community and people who love animals.

While my efforts to maintain a vegetarian; vegan, and natural food site have met with a good amount of financial support over the last year. Considering that over 75,000 people view this site last month only about one in a thousand actually give a donation to keep this extremely valuable vegetarian educational site going.

If all of the people who viewed this site each month gave a $20 donation that would add up to over a million dollars and there definitely would be no more need to ask for any more donations. But in reality this is not so, at least not yet. Actually only about 10 people a month looked deep within their hearts and were generous enough to give a much needed donation.

So please believe that even a donation of $20 would make a great amount of difference because if everyone who read this letter gave just $20 it would mean that a few people could work full time on this site. So please know that even a small donation of just $20 or $100 dollars will help to add up to a good deal of support.

Of course if a person is in a good financial situation gave $200 or even $1000 dollar this would go a long way. Your donation could help save thousands of poor suffering animal's lives each year but helping people not eat meat

Every dollar that you give will help give me the time to expand this site and increase the readership and usefulness of this site.

I began working on compiling this site about five years ago because when I traveled around the world I found it very difficult to find information on vegan and vegetarian restaurants and health food stores. Basically I found it difficult and in some places almost impossibleto find a decent vegetarian meal so I decided to compile an up-to-date guide myself.

Not only did I find the places listed on this site, but I also took on the extra time and expense of calling every single place to confirm that they did exist and to get even more information about them.

I am also doing a great deal of research on animal ingredients that may be found in apparent vegetarian items such as yogurt, potato chips or cheese by their name brands and in this way further expand this site. I literally have hundreds of pages of information that I am compiling on this subject, but just need more time to add them onto the site.

I would think that many people don’t know that many of the ingredients in products we eat contain an ingredient listed on the label called “natural flavoring.” Regrettably in the US there are no requirements for companies to list whether these “natural flavorings” contain animal products. It is left to the responsibility of the individual companies if they so choose to state whether their added ingredient contain animals products.

But I believe it would be worth-while to ask them directly. which I am now doing, and if they don’t want to answer directly it could be assumed that these natural flavorings are in truth animal derived.

We are just starting a charity called the Vegetarian Research Organization and Food Relief Project, whose main purpose is to research and compile valuable information for vegetarians and vegans around the world.

Regrettably if I do not receive more financial support to help maintain this site in the coming year this will highly restrict the time that I can spend on maintaining and adding to this site. I am extremely sorry, but otherwise I just can't spare the time.

So please dig deep into your heart and give a donation to help maintain this site. In this way you can help to save thousands of live but stopping the unrestricted killing of animals for food. Please Click Here to give a donation.

Thanking you in advance for your kind help. If you wnat to contact me about what is contained in this letter please feel free to email me at vrupdates@yahoo.com

Sincerely yours,
John Howley