Erica Meier, the executive director of Compassion Over Killing, the animal advocacy organization that recently announced its Three Greeen Stars awards for the area's top vegetarian/vegan restaurants, promptly responded to my concerns and questions over this year's VegDC.com contest. Her unedited responses are below.
How many of the winners were part of COK's Restaurant Outreach Program?

Since COK launched [...]

You may not believe this, but I love a good vegetarian dish. I regularly order them—and not just to see how much care a kitchen puts into these notoriously neglected plates. Sometimes I order them because I want a break from meat. Sometimes I do it as a symbolic acknowledgment of the environmental problems that livestock farming can [...]