The festival naturally had a Christmas feel to it, and the free food samples were mostly party foods - miniature mushroom tarts, fruit tarts, mince pies, christmas pudding, and even vegan roast dinner. My impression was that most of the people who attended were already familiar with the concept of veganism. But anyone who wasn't should have been pleasantly surprised to find that vegan food isn't frugal and yes, we do eat other things besides vegetables!

Although it was publicised as a food festival, there were still a few organisations selling vegan toiletries. Most of these were small local businesses, like Little Satsuma and Windmill Wholefoods. Little Satsuma is famous locally for its range of environment-friendly Scouse soaps: "You'll Never wash Alone", "Lennon and Lime Street", "Calm Down". Windmill Wholefoods is one of very few independent wholefood shops left in the city, still holding its own on Smithdown Road in the face of commercial threats from an Asda megastore just along the road, and a smaller Tesco along the road in the opposite direction.

The Co-op had a stall there too but it was just a bit out of place among the campaign groups and small sellers. The Co-op stall was promoting their range of vegan products, mostly toiletries. But most big retailers these days have a few items that are 'not tested on animals'. Such items are a very small part of the Co-op's range of goods and they had no vegan christmas food. Their mince pies, christmas puddings, mincemeat, brandy butter etc contain milk and also contain palm oil, a cheap vegetable oil for which rainforests are being cut down and Orang Utans, as well as other animals, are being driven towards extinction.

Other groups involved were Garston Animal Rescue, Merseyside Hunt Sabs, News from Nowhere (independent book shop), Freshfield Animal Rescue, Pure Plant Power Organics, Lush, and the International Neutering Scheme. Members of the social centre, Next To Nowhere, provided the food and some vegan recipe cards for people to take and try out.