Veganuary—an organization that encourages and supports people to remove animal products from their plates for the month of January—has been growing steadily for several years. In 2024, more than a decade after it was founded, the initiative announced its biggest year yet, with 1.8 million sign-ups worldwide.
In 2025, it is set to grow again by expanding to new countries like Peru, Malaysia, and Canada. And with the help of its new “Weird” campaign, the organization is hoping to inspire more sign-ups than ever.
Veganuary
Veganuary’s new campaign is unique; it doesn’t just focus predominantly on the health and environmental benefits of following a plant-based diet. Instead, it is focused on highlighting the “weirdness” of eating animal products in the first place. “Most of us see the food we grew up with as ‘normal’ but when we stop to ponder the practices behind many familiar foods, they start to look a little bit weird,” says Toni Vernelli, Veganuary’s international head of policy and communications.
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Veganuary’s new ‘weird’ campaign
The new campaign from Veganuary is already in full swing, with ads running across social media platforms. On top of this, the ads are also set to run on the streaming platform ITVX, which is run by ITV, one of the UK’s leading broadcast networks.
Each of the ads follows a similar theme: the question “Weird?” is shown alongside thought-provoking, jarring images. For example, a pig with a sausage for a body is depicted, which aims to highlight that “sausages are literally pigs stuffed into their own intestines,” according to Veganuary. Another shows a slab of steak on a plate with a burning forest on top, which aims to convey the fact that “animal farming is the leading cause of deforestation.”
Veganuary
One image shows a cow-print mug with udders coming out of the top, which aims to represent the reality of the dairy industry (“cows make milk to feed their babies, just like our mothers do,” the wording reads), while another shows a chicken with a nugget-like coating on their body. The wording next to the latter reads: “Chicken comes from birds bred to grow so fast that often they can barely stand. Weird to think about the suffering behind that crispy coating?”
The idea behind the campaign is to challenge the societal conditioning around eating animal products. Most people describe themselves as animal lovers (nearly 90 million Americans, for example, share their homes with a companion animal), and yet they eat meat. This is because most of the time, we don’t see animals on cramped, industrialized, pollutive factory farms (where 99 percent of them are raised for the food industry), but we see meat or dairy wrapped in plastic in the supermarket or the grocery store. This allows society to avoid connecting one with the other.
“Veganuary is asking everyone to face the startling reality of how our food choices impact animals and the planet,” adds Vernelli. “And consider whether trying vegan for January might just be a little less weird.”
Veganuary’s growing success
Right now, a shift is happening around the world. More people than ever are choosing to reduce their meat consumption for their health or the planet, if not cutting it out completely. In 2023, data showed that UK meat consumption, for example, was at its lowest level since records began in the 1970s.
Veganuary is one of the initiatives that has helped to raise awareness of the benefits of moving away from animal products. Founded in 2013, the initiative really started to gain momentum in 2017, when 50,000 people signed up to give the challenge of going plant-based for one month a try. By 2023, that number had rocketed to nearly 707,000 people all over the world. In 2024, it had surged to nearly 2 million.
The major rise was, in part, due to the new way that Veganuary decided to measure participation. Before, it simply counted sign-ups to its email, but in 2024, it decided to include numbers from formats like its social media content and cookbook sales, too.
The Official Veganuary Cookbook
Veganuary has an impressive success rate; its follow-up survey in 2023, for example, showed that 80 percent of participants had cut their intake of animal-based foods by 50 percent or more. On top of this, 28 percent of participants said they opted to remain 100 percent plant-based.
But it’s not just people who are drawn to Veganuary. Several restaurant chains also choose to celebrate the campaign by launching their own meatless menus for January. For example, in 2024, the popular global chain of rock and roll-themed restaurants Hard Rock Cafe added a new Veganuary menu.
“As people become more aware of the incredible impact our food choices have on the health of our planet, attitudes towards veganism are changing everywhere,” said Vernelli in a statement. “Veganuary’s friendly, non-judgmental, just-give-it-a-go-for-a-month-and-see-what-you-think approach has undoubtedly played an instrumental role in this shift.”
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Charlotte is a VegNews editor and writer based in sunny Southsea on England’s southern coast.
