We’re a movement dominated by professional activists — paid by large organizations — to do the bidding of those organizations. This is fine if you think that dressing up in chicken costumes makes sense, or if you believe the latest animal gassing scheme is a good thing, or if you happen to agree that Wayne Pacelle actually deserves a compensation package worth more than $230,000 annually. (The previous link is a PDF. I got the Pacelle number from Statement 71 on page 94.) But if, like me, you have doubts about highly paid activists, about so-called “victories” that still leave animals as commodities and property, and forms of activism that use one form of exploitation (sexism) to combat another (speciesism), there’s only one solution: be your own activist. (Plus, do you really think that throwing more money at PETA to put up half a million naked Alicia Silverstone ads will accomplish anything? Do you really think that the people masturbating to these ads are actually thinking “wow, I should go vegan?” My guess is that they’re not.)
Activism should not be left as the mere province of paid, professional activists. If we are to have the effect that we’re hoping for, we need to make the movement for veganism a genuine, grassroots social movement, driven by everyday people like you and me, working in our communities and in our lives to help create a base of vegan education and outreach. Only by working in our lives and in the spaces that we know best can we hope to affect real change and build a genuine movement built of people who genuinely wish to change the essential relationship of domination that humans have over animals. Without a genuine pool of social activists, without people who are willing to put their own talents and skills to use, we are going to be stuck with the so-called “victories” of PETA and HSUS, victories that celebrate killing more gently. Shouldn’t we be celebrating not killing at all? Shouldn’t we be celebrating veganism?
In her book The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin has a quote that sums up my feelings perfectly about activism. She writes:
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
The revolution is in your spirit — I know it is. If you’re vegan, something got you to go vegan, to decide that you would not have a part in the human domination of animals. You knew it was wrong, and you decided to have no part of it. Find that original fire and use it! You must be the revolution if it is to mean anything or change anything in the long run. You have to do it; no one will do it for you. Considering that, here are three things that you can do to be the revolution:
0. Yeah, 0. If you’re not vegan, go vegan now. ‘nuf said.
1. Use your talents and skills to educate people about veganism
We’ve talked about this at length various times on our podcast, but we’ll repeat it again: every single one of you has some kind of talent that you can use to support this cause. You are a unique and special snowflake! We’re so used to beating ourselves down and to accepting that we don’t have much to offer that we often forget how we can be of use. You may think you have no skills to offer, but that’s impossible. We need everyone. We need people who can write and speak and cook and organize. We need people who can hand out literature. We need people who can sew and sing and entertain. In short, we need everyone. Get creative: use your skills to raise awareness or in support of others who are raising awareness or educating others. Which brings me to point two:
2. Work in small, consensus-based affinity groups
Find a group of people who share your vision, get together, and make some change. Leverage each other’s strengths to promote veganism and to be vegan educators. For example, one of you may be an excellent public speaker, one of you may be a quiet person but a fantastic cook, and one of you may have excellent organizational skills. Why not get together, get a room at your local library, give a talk on veganism or vegan cooking, and bring some food along to convince people that eating vegan isn’t as horrendously subpar as everyone imagines? There are a million different possibilities here and a million different talents. The point is to use your creativity and your understanding of the world to make the most impact.
3. Start asking questions
Why would an organization ostensibly opposed to animal suffering give an award to a slaughterhouse designer? Why would the so-called “father” of the animal rights movement say it was okay to eat animal products? Seems to induce a bit of what the psychologists call “cognitive dissonance,” doesn’t it? It is time that we all start asking questions and stop assuming that because PETA or HSUS or Peter Singer (or anyone, including me) says that something is good, it is. Think. Examine the issues. Ask hard questions. Consider the situation and the context, and think about the issues. I know that thinking is often scorned within this movement as a “luxury,” but you have to stop and think before you can act wisely. Don’t skimp on thinking: it is the most important thing you can do.
Effecting change is never easy and is often inglorious, but it doesn’t have to be onerous; you can work little by little to educate others, and you can work with others to deepen your impact. We need to build a vital movement of people doing genuine, abolitionist vegan education. We don’t need another set of stupid stunts, sexist ads full of naked people, or overcompensated suits declaring yet another false victory.
Posted by Bob Torres 
Filed under: Welcome to the new Vegan Freak redesign! The old design was getting, well...a bit old. We started the last site when we released our book back in 2005, and we hadn’t really updated it much since then. We’ve now moved to a new content management system that will be easier to update and keep the site and blog current.
All of this is being done in advance of Vegan Freak Version 2.0, which is due out at some point in early 2009. We’re working on the rewrite now, which is a pretty big project. In the book industry, you can typically come out with a second edition when you’ve changed 20% or so of the original; in our case, we decided to simply blow that out of the water, and rewrite the whole thing. As you might imagine, some of our views about veganism and the animal rights movement have changed in the intervening three years, and while we stand by much of our advice in the first version, we’re looking forward to having the chance to say a bit more this time around.
So, keep your eyes peeled here for updates and more. We’ve decided to get back into blogging regularly, and as we work on the new edition of Vegan Freak, we’ll surely share some of what’s going on in these pages.
We don’t blog much about food around here, but I can never forgo an opportunity to wax poetic about fresh fruits and vegetables (just ask Bob).
When one mentions local food, unfortunately many people instantly conjure up images of “local grass fed beef,” because most locavores are also omnivores who can’t pass up a good steak - but if it was treated well before it was killed, then it’s okay and it’s better for you, right? Can you feel me rolling my eyes right now?
When I think of local food, this is what I picture:
Food that is able to be picked at the height of ripeness by someone that I actually know, not loaded with pesticides, and not trucked across the country or shipped from another part of the world. (Thank you to the Kent Family Growers for their amazing produce!) I eyeball the strawberries in the grocery store and feel sad that someone is going to eat the sour, tasteless berries in the plastic package. The strawberries pictured above taste so amazing that we don’t ever put them into a pie or a strawberry shortcake - we just eat them as is, or on top of our morning muesli.
I think I’ve actually blogged about this topic before on here, but since our archives never made it through the move to our new design, you lucky people get to read about it again. It’s just that when every summer rolls around, I am so awed at the quality of the produce we can get, how amazing it tastes, and and wonderful it is to eat whole, fresh foods, especially after a long, harsh winter full of sad, tasteless produce.
I’m not a diehard locavore and I don’t think that it’s the be all end all to any food crisis, but it certainly can’t hurt, and it is nice to support the local economy and eat healthier as a result. If you are able to, visit your local farmer’s market, farm stand, and/or look into joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in which you’ll get a weekly delivery of whatever’s in season. It is probably too late for this year, but it’s a good time to start looking into joining for next year. It’s a great way to connect into the local community, learn what is in season when in your area, expand your produce horizon (every year we get a new vegetable that I haven’t cooked before), and eat healthy, whole foods.
I love Ursula LeGuin’s science fiction. The work of hers that I’ve read almost always contemplates some aspect of the human character, and of our nature as social creatures. Most recently, I’ve begun working my way through The Lathe of Heaven, which has an enticing premise. George Orr is your average guy, except that he has what he calls “effective dreams:” dreams that change reality. Caught by the government for using prescriptions illegally, Orr is put in the care of a doctor who specializes in sleep disorders. Realizing that Orr has the ability to change reality, the doctor induces in Orr particular kinds of dream states which he uses to change the world. Set in the not-so-distant future, the world is rife with war and hunger following a global collapse of the human population. Wishing for a better world, and with wholly honest intentions, Orr’s doctor uses the “effective” dreams to change the world, willing into existence new circumstances that he feels are for the better.
The problem, of course, is that it becomes more and more difficult for the doctor to account for all of the potential issues that spin off of his relatively simple prescriptions for the way the world should be. When the doctor urges Orr to dream of the earth at peace with itself, Orr dreams into reality a humanity forced into a peaceful unity by its need to fight off an alien race.
Orr realizes that he’s being used to change the world, and in this realization, he comes to the point that, for me, is interesting in the context of social movements, including the animal rights movement. Each time Orr’s doctor uses him, he creates unintended results, even with completely beneficent intentions. As Orr says:
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.
And this is the essential point: all we have is means. In other words, we can dream of alternate realities, and plan for them, and even work towards them, but if we’re going to work towards them, the way that we work towards them must be consistent with our principles. As I wrote in Making A Killing, we cannot sacrifice what we think is right in a principled trade-off for a better world in some distant tomorrow that may never come.
In the animal rights movement, we’ve largely lost sight of the importance of this kind of thinking. The bulk of the movement is preoccupied with negotiating with the industry for better treatment of exploited animals, keeping in place the essential relations of property and commodification that condemn animals to be mere instruments to human want and profit (and indeed, many of the arguments made for welfare reforms highlight the cost-effictiveness of the reforms for producers). As long as the agricultural industry can hold animals as property, it can exploit them effectively for profit. Welfare regulations may modify the way that property owners treat their animal property, but ultimately, as long as animals can be treated as property, they will never gain equal consideration.
The problem is this: fighting for welfare reform doesn’t significantly reduce the desire for animal foods, nor does it significantly impact the productive relation at the heart of animal exploitation. It is thinking in which the presumed end justifies the means. Yet, as Orr points out, all we have is means. Every day that we live, we remake the world. The question is, are we remaking the world in the way that we really want it to be? Would we prefer that animals be nicely treated commodities, still exploited, albeit more gently, or would we prefer that the world be vegan, and recognize the inherent worth of animals as beings with their own subjective experience of the world?
If we want a vegan world, we have to work to produce one, and the only way to produce one is by living one uncompromisingly on a daily basis. Vegan education works to effectively remodel social relations, and to hit at the heart of the problem with animal exploitation. For this reason, our work should focus on the inglorious, quotidian work that’s required for creating a broad-based movement of people who live abolition in their daily life, who work to change the conditions that condemn animals to being mere instruments and property, and who work to educate others about the importance of veganism as a lived form of protest. No amount of negotiating with KFC or McDonald’s or whatever fast food restaurant will have such an impact; no amount of banning gestation crates, or producing cage free eggs will get us there. Only veganism can bring the kind of world we’re after, and only veganism can be the means if we are truly serious about respecting the inherent needs of animals to live free of exploitation and suffering.
Lots of people seem to think that veganism is hard. It isn’t. At first, it may be a bit overwhelming, but that fades fast. In a few weeks, it is like second nature, and it is easy. It doesn’t require a huge amount of will power, all that much discipline, or any kind of elaborate rituals. Yet, I think people make it more complicated than it needs to be by not just stepping up and simply making the commitment to do it, and do it fully.
Every so often, I get email correspondence from people who tell me that they’re vegan, but for one exception. One of the most common things that I hear and read is “I’m vegan, except when I eat out.” This perplexes me, in all honesty. People who are on the verge of going vegan like this clearly have a pretty good handle on why one would go vegan. They clearly want to do it. And they understand the ethical reasons involved. So, I’m left wondering....do the animals that produce dairy and eggs for restaurants not suffer as much as animals that produce them for your home? When you break it down, the same dynamics of production are still involved, the exploitation is the same, and the suffering is the same. There’s no ethical reason to eat non-vegan foods when you’re out of the home.
The only reason that people do it is convenience.
Yet, for someone who has decided that the suffering of animals matters, convenience is not a solid justification. I realize that this may seem radical, or fundamentalist, or divisive, or whatever, especially when we have people like Peter Singer advocating for the “Paris exception” of eating just about whatever the hell anyone wants every so often. What I’m advocating is not radical: it is simply recognizing that some ethical principles matter, and that living by those principles is important, even when it is inconvenient. This may mean that on occasion, you don’t have as many choices, or that you have to appear “weird” in front of friends and waitstaff. But so what? Living your life as a vegan matters, because you’re standing in for the animal. You’re the living witness at the table, the lone objector who says, by their actions, “Exploiting animals isn’t right, and I won’t do it.” By failing to do this, you fail not only to live up to your own principles, but you fail to make as big an impact as you could. You fail to introduce the necessary cognitive dissonance into the lives of those around you. In short, the visceral protest of veganism becomes limp and falls flat if you can’t actually be bothered to go to the trouble to be vegan.
I live in a extremely rural area. People around here have no clue what a vegan is, yet I’m able to get vegan food when I go out to eat, simply by asking nicely for it, and being clear about my needs. It isn’t complex.
I’m not trying to argue that I’m an exceptional model of veganism. I’m not. I’m just another guy trying to live as a vegan as best I can. But in the end, if your principles mean anything to you, they should mean something even when they’re inconvenient. When it comes down to it, people make going vegan harder than it is. I see a lot of people pity themselves for their “sacrifice” as a vegan, which is absurdly misplaced pity. The pity shouldn’t be for yourself, it should be for the animals that you claim to be caring about when you decide to make this commitment. Ultimately, going vegan isn’t that hard for most of us, and the sooner that people recognize that it is doing the right thing by their ethics, step up, and begin living by the principles that they say are important, the sooner we’ll actually begin to make changes in the world.
I wanted to add to Bob’s critique of Mark Bittman’s response to his vegan critics. Bittman also relies on this tired argument against veganism and abolition:
Humans do not tread lightly on this planet (understatement of the year, I know). Many of us agree we need to minimize our footprint. I’d rather argue against unnecessary cruelty, against overconsumption, for better human and planetary health, than for a strict regimen that the majority of the earth’s citizens will reject outright. I think people can hear “eat less meat,” and I can say it. But “eat no meat?” Few people are listening, nor will they.
I’m sure the welfarists are loving this part of Bittman’s article, because it legitimizes their approach to reform: call for nicer methods of production and reducing animal consumption, but don’t you dare mention not eating animals at all, because people won’t listen. While vegan education might not be easy because of the societal and psychological blocks it has to overcome to be successful, it is the only way to be morally and logically consistent if you claim to care about animal rights. Bittman’s (and the welfarist) arguments make veganism sound completely untenable, unsustainable, and unnecessary, which is great if you want to keep convincing yourself that humans have to eat meat to be happy and healthy. After all, it tastes good and it’s our tradition!
But those of us who lead happy, healthy lives without consuming animal products know that veganism is doable, and necessary. We’ve listened to the arguments for and against veganism, and we’ve make the choice for living our ethics. There are many, many more people out there who will change if they are given information and support. Our radio show is proof positive of that - I can’t tell you how many emails and voicemails we get from people who, once they heard all the arguments for veganism, decided to make the leap. Yes, change is difficult, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t try. We owe it to ourselves and to the future of the planet to do so.
Last week, on Vegan Freak Radio, we discussed an article by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. In the article, Bittman made a compelling case against the mass consumption of meat, linking its production and consumption to concerns about the environment, human health, and animal welfare. In our estimation, the article was a good mainstream treatment of the subject, but we discussed on our show, Bittman stopped short. Our reasoning was plain: if meat is troubling on so many levels, why continue to eat it? Why not just go vegan? After all, no one can honestly maintain—in the face of such overwhelming evidence—that eating meat is in any way necessary for human well-being.
If we don’t need to eat meat for our health, then why do we eat it? The reasons are multiple and obvious: tradition, taste, and convenience. We justify what we do to animals—at the tune of 10 billion lives a year in the US alone—simply by referring back to the old adage that “this is how we’ve always done it.” Collapsing into this odd logic of “might makes right,” when pushed, most people who eat meat cannot really justify it much beyond this simplistic thinking. Like the privilege of any other form of domination, those who benefit from the privilege are hesitant to see the relationship of their benefits to the exploitation of others. Men are often hesitant to see the domination of sexism; white people are often hesitant to see the wages of racism. Similarly, those of us that enjoy species privilege are hesitant to honestly acknowledge how our privilege benefits us at the expense of the freedom of others.
Sadly, Bittman falls into this trap in his blog at the Times when he responds to some of his vegan critics. In his piece, Bittman treats meat like any other resource when he writes:
Maybe I’m thick, but I don’t get it. If I write a piece about Americans driving too much, do I get trashed for owning a car? For using too much electricity, do I become a bad person for turning on the lights? This would seem to counter 90 percent of the arguments about continuing to eat meat: I choose to; it’s part of my life and my work; in general, I eat the most conscientiously raised meat I can find; and — relatively — I don’t eat much of it.
In this clever little comparison, Bittman ignores one central point: animals are unlike other resources in so far as they are sentient and feel pain. Clearly, driving too much has horrible impacts that have ethical implications, but it isn’t like driving your car makes it suffer. Similarly, using electricity depletes natural resources, but no one would really ever argue that electricity can feel pain, or have a continuous mental existence. Thus, while we do treat animals like resources—indeed, this is the central problem of animal exploitation—animals are sentient beings, which changes our obligations towards them. In this regard, the moral wrong of consuming animals is one that cannot be mitigated by doing less of it. Simply put, either consuming animals is a moral wrong or it isn’t. If it is a moral wrong, doing less of it or doing it more nicely does not mitigate that moral wrong. Analogously, several hundred years ago, Bittman could have argued the same thing about slavery: he chooses to treat his slaves well; they’re part of his life and work; and really, he only has a few slaves. Most of us (I hope) would find this logic objectionable concerning humans. The only reason we can stomach it for animals is that we are conditioned to view animals as somethings and not as someones.
Bittman continues on with his justification for eating meat, writing:
It’s traditional. It’s mainstream, and almost everyone alive who can eat meat does so.
Traditional “values” have been used throughout time immemorial to justify all manner of exploitation. Women should be most sensitive to this particular line of reasoning, for “tradition” has often been used as an argument to keep women in positions of domination within patriarchy.
In the end, what we get from Bittman is another weak justification for eating “happy meat” (and sadly, this is a position most of the animal rights movement is happy with, too). By falling back on the old, unexamined arguments about tradition, Bittman does little to really challenge the central dynamic of animal exploitation. In doing so, Bittman will only help to drive the creation of a niche market for the consumption of “happy meat” for the wealthy “ethical consumer,” the “conscientious omnivore.” Bittman sees animals as just another commodity; this mistaken logic undercuts his own arguments on welfare, and will ultimately condemn many more animals to a life of pointless suffering.
The other day, we realized that it has been more than a year since we updated our blog. What has kept us away? Well, we’ve been busy with other projects, including our podcast, our day jobs, and our various writing projects. We’ve been steadily cranking out radio shows, but not so steadily cranking out blog entries, and we decided that it was time to get our collective vegan asses back in gear, to get back on the blogging wagon, and to crank out some posts.
So, we’re back, but the hundred-plus old entries may or may not make it back over here with us. We’ve had a hell of a time importing them, and so we may just let them drift off into the ether, another bit of Internet ephemera lost to the tides of time....
With that said, we’re back with some tofu-powered blogging. Stay tuned, loyal reader.
When we were interviewing Gary Francione the other day for our podcast, he remarked that humans are unwilling to see similarities between themselves and other sentient beings. To most people, anthropomorphism is a bad thing – it is ascribing human characteristics where they do not belong. It's usually dismissed as an emotional response, so that those who anthropomorphize can be considered merely crazy animal lovers who imagine that these similarities exist (and we do so love to downgrade emotional responses in our society, since they are usually associated with women). Gary pointed out, however, that we can and should find similarities since we are all sentient, but the problem is that we have an epistemological limitation in being able to understand the world through their point of view.
Language is one of those areas where humans are quick to create a hierarchy to separate themselves from other beings and to justify categorizing other sentient beings as somehow inferior. Our manner of communication is quite impressive and interesting, I must admit, or I wouldn't have chosen to study it for a living. But, when we get down to it, it is just another example of a semiotic system, and I would argue, has more similarities with how other sentient beings communicate than we realize. (And no, I'm not just talking about gorillas who know sign language and birds who can talk.)
Everyone, whether they realize it or not, communicates semiotically; it's how we understand the world. Language is but one example of a semiotic system. In brief, semiotics is the study of signs: how we devise categories of meaning in our lives. A sign is made up of a signifier and a signified. The signified is what that sign represents, and the signifier is how we represent it. The two always go together (think of a sign as a piece of paper – you always have two sides, back and front, and cannot separate the two.) In English, we represent the idea of a chair (the signified) with the word chair (signifier). Other languages choose a different signifier: silla, chaise, stuhl to represent the same signified. Of course, this gets more complicated when you add layers of meaning to this understanding of the world (which I'm not going to discuss in too much detail here, for fear of turning into a semiotics lecture). We can add connotations to certain signifiers (such that a red rose doesn't just represent a flower, it also represents love). There are also different types of signs, and not all are represented with language. We can think of hand or body movements as signs (raised eyebrows = surprise or suspicion), colors, art, and music as signs, etc. It just so happens that we value language as one of the most important and useful semiotic systems for communication; technically, though, we make sense of the world through signs first, language second.
I would argue that other animals also use semiotic systems to communicate as well, giving another area of similarity between us and other sentient beings. I'm going to use the examples of dogs here, not because they are any better than any other animal, but because I spend a lot of time with my dogs and know them best. (I don't want to create a hierarchy among the animals which gives them special treatment. Many times in the news we hear reports about apes, dolphins, dogs, etc. doing things that are similar to humans or something we see as quite intelligent, meaning that we'll give that group special treatment while relegating other animals to an even lesser category, e.g. the ones that we'll eat, shoot, step on, etc. As Gary Francione has written in the New Scientist, this is counterproductive, since all sentient beings should be given consideration.)
Our dogs Mole and Emmy have certainly shown signs of communicating in a semiotic system. Anyone with dogs knows that they have different barks for different situations. When someone walks past our house, one of the dogs gives a series of barks and the other then joins in. When Emmy gets frustrated at one of her chew toys, she looks at it and gives a single, sharp bark. When Mole wants to get the attention of our neighbors (in the hopes that they'll give him biscuits), he'll do a kind of "hey, hey" double bark. It's obvious that both Emmy and Mole understand what the other's barks mean. Therefore, a bark is a sign. It has a certain signifier (double bark), and a signified (hey, come out and give me a biscuit!)
Mole and Emmy (as well as our cat Michi) are also good at using iconic signs – signs that point to something else. When we leave something interesting on the kitchen counter, like a loaf of bread, some tofu, etc., Mole will sit under the counter, look at the bread, look at us, and look at the counter again. It's obvious that he's trying to point to what he wants, and then point at us indicating that we should do something about the fact that he can't get to the bread. (From experience, I have also assigned the connotative meaning that Mole is saying, look, I'm being good by not jumping up on the counter and just taking the bread, so don't you want to give me some?) Whenever Michi can't get into the bedroom because the door is closed, he'll go find one of us, meow to get our attention, and then walk in the direction of the door, in a way, pointing at it. If this isn't successful, he'll do it several times, and each time the meows get a little louder. When Mole wants his kong filled with biscuits, he brings it over and drops it on one of our laps. There have even been studies on bees that show that they do a complicated dance (movement of their bodies) to tell other bees where to find a good patch of flowers or other important feature of the landscape. If this isn't semiotic communication, I don't know what is. (Although I'm sure some would argue that it is different, because we assign meaning to things in different ways. Fine – it's different, but it's still a semiotic system at its core.)
Animals also have other ways of signifying things without vocal or visual cues. Dogs communicate by smells. All the neighborhood dogs know where the others have been based on where they pee. Because that method of communication is so foreign to us, we give it little credence when thinking about the intelligence of dogs. Our language must be superior to dog communication, because they are but simple creatures who sniff each other's asses. But if you're a dog, sniffing asses is a most logical way of finding out about each other. They experience the world much more through smells, and to be a successful dog and exist in the dog world, you have to understand what the smells mean. If you were a dog and tried to communicate like humans do, you would be screwed in the dog world. If we tried to survive in the dog world with our limited sense of smell, we'd be screwed. One of the reasons that dogs and cats don't often get along is that the signifier of a tail wagging has a different signified to a dog than it does to a cat. To a dog, it is happiness or excitement, to a cat it is anger.
We as humans give primacy to language, and therefore put every other semiotic system on a lower rung in the hierarchy of communication. We like to think that our language is special because we have a history of beautiful prose and poetry, we are able to argue using logic, we analyze and write blog entries, and we can sing, shout, and clap. It is wonderful what we can do. But at the root of it all, language is just a semiotic system, and is more similar than we'd like to admit to the semiotic systems of other sentient beings because the unit of a semiotic system is a sign, not a word. When it gets down to it, we all share that commonality of having semiotics as the basis of way of understanding the world, and we should recognize that instead of creating yet another category where we are seen as superior.
Anyone who has listened to our radio show or read the blog here knows that we’re long-time critics of Whole Foods. And indeed, there’s so much to dislike about Whole Foods. From CEO Mackey’s near-pornographic love of unbridled neoliberal market capitalism as the great savior to his problems with unions to his promoting compassion while simultaneously selling dead animals, Whole Foods is a company that’s coopted an image of “ethics” and “compassion” to make money, expand suburban sprawl big-box style, and crush local natural groceries. Can someone remind me again why I’m supposed to love them?
Given this, it still came as something of a surprise to us to see an article that we wrote over a year ago linked in a recent article in Slate magazine about Whole Foods stock tanking. And though I don’t think our piece is particularly angry, we are linked as “angry vegans,” a particular kind of dismissal that satisfy the mind’s piece on the Slate article dissects nicely. Of course, as Satisfy the Mind points out, calling us angry for asking honest questions about the distinction between the marketing speak and the real treatment of animals serves as an effective (if cheap) way of marginalizing us and our concerns.
In any case, whenever we’re linked anywhere in the mainstream or non-vegan press, we inevitably get a variety of emails from our non-target audience that range from the polite to the insane. In this round, we only got a few, and fortunately, none of them were insane, though many of them did seem a bit confused and/or curious about ethical veganism. Some of them ask honest questions that could be answered by reading books about ethical veganism (and indeed, some of the questions are in-depth enough to require book-length answers), while others seem to want to goad us into argument by alleging that we’re fanatics (does wanting to see Anthony Bourdain eaten alive by predatory animals make me a fanatic? Well, hell, then I’m a fanatic1).
Seriously, though, some of the emails ask thoughtful questions and are from people who clearly care about animal suffering. They say that they don’t want animals to suffer unduly, but that they don’t mind eating them because the hierarchy of species is the “way of our world.” This, of course, ignores the logical consistency of making animals suffer unduly. If someone doesn’t want animals to suffer, a logical extension of this is that one should not want to kill them unnecessarily. Because eating animals or their products is not necessary for human health or survival, my argument would be that if you truly care about not creating undue harm, you should refrain from consuming animals and their products altogether. Gary Francione makes this argument most compellingly in his Introduction to Animal Rights and as far as I can see, there’s no compelling argument against it. It takes a moral and ethical position — that we should not cause harm to animals unnecessarily — and applies it consistently.
Another email raises this point:
“As for whole foods, your problems with them make me skeptical that you are very tolerant people. Whole Foods is not for vegans exclusively. They are very conscientious in catering to vegans. But they are a store for everyone. This makes you upset, it seems. So because Mr. Mackay is a vegan in a capitalist society he should court the ruin of the business he runs in order to enforce his ethical beliefs on others?”
I recognize that WF isn’t for vegans exclusively, but I’d debate that they’re a store for “everyone.” Instead, I’d argue that they’re a store for a relatively wealthy section of our population that happens to live in relatively wealthy suburbs, but that’s tangential to the point. What bothers me is not that they’re a store for everyone (I often shop at stores for “everyone”) but that they’re a store that falsely markets themselves as compassionate. It is this distinction between appearance and reality that disturbs me, and I think he’s making a buck on the back of the vegan movement, and — much more importantly — on the back of animal suffering. I see this as unethical. Most importantly, I don’t think someone who calls themselves a “vegan” should be in the business of selling and profiting from dead animals and animal products. Mackey need not force his ethics on anyone; instead, if he’s serious about preventing animal suffering, he should get out of the business of selling dead animals and animal products. I don’t believe that the logic of the market should trump all, nor do I believe that capitalism should be amoral, both of which seem to be implied above. I wouldn’t work in a business that depended on human slavery because of my objection to that institution, and similarly, I wouldn’t work in a business that depended upon animal slavery. Worse yet, I wouldn’t have a business that exploited slaves and then promoted itself as interested in compassionate slavery. I know, this makes me a fanatic. Oh well.
On a different theme, we also received this question from another correspondent:
“Is your veganism the result of environmentalism or simply your opposition to the use of animals, or both? Because it would seem to me that total veganism on a planetary scale (this must be the Apocalypse as imagined by Oscar Meyer) would cause (a) the exinction of some domesticated species, and (b) the requirement of large scale energy expenditures to move produce around to places where there is a short growing season. Understandably, some of the energy expenditure would be made up by the lack of animal industry, but still…it just ain’t natural.”
My veganism is primarily ethical, but the entire premise of this question is flawed. The person writing seems to think that somehow our food is localized, but this is nowhere near the case. We already use “large-scale energy expenditures” to move produce, meat, and dairy around the globe. The average food product travels thousands of miles before arriving on your plate. Granted, some people are trying (valiantly, I’d say) to relocalize our food systems, and I think this is smart — in fact, I belong to a local CSA, and try to buy locally when I can. But to argue that large-scale veganism “ain’t natural” because of the energy required to move products vast distances is a bit dishonest, if only because our current system uses such expenditures, including expenditures to move meat and other animal products long distances. And in any case, this is really a moot point: nothing about the argument above means veganism is impossible today, and even though I’m an optimist, I’m certain that a global vegan revolution is quite far off.
The same correspondent also asks:
“Bonus question: beer. Do you need to find special vegan beer? Does yeast count as an animal? If beer is not vegan then there is no hope of me becoming a vegan. “
Many beers are vegan. Some vegans avoid some beers because they’re filtered with animal products like isinglass. Others just drink whatever. Yeasts are not animals — they’re in the kingdom fungi.
In closing, I didn’t even get close to answering every question that came to us — I did a very selective answering here of what I saw as the most compelling questions. Nevertheless, I appreciate the contact from folks curious about veganism, about where we stand, and about how vegans might see particular scenarios. I wish we had time to answer them all, to dive into the particulars, and to have extended debates with people. If I ever plan to finish my current book, such debates are virtually impossible. But anyone curious about these issues should do some reading, open their minds, and think about whether there really is any logic to our needless exploitation of other species. If thoughtful people can be honest with themselves, I think they’ll come to the same conclusion that I did: that there is no “kind” exploitation, and that as sentient creatures, animals deserve better than what we’re giving them.
1 Calm down, compassion crew, “we’re-becoming-what-we-hate,” humorless email writers in waiting: this is a joke. I’d rather see him die of food poisoning. (I keeed!)
MakingA Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights explores the intersections between human and animal oppressions and their relation to the exploitative dynamics of capitalism. Combining nuts and bolts Marxist political economy, a pluralistic anarchist critique, as well as a searing assessment of the animal rights movement, Bob Torres challenges conventional anti-capitalist thinking and convincingly advocates for the abolition of animals in industry — and on the dinner plate.
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we don't eat nothin' that farts. or anything with a face. or anything from anything that farts or has a face. Basically, vegans avoid animal products to the greatest extent possible, with the overall goal of abolishing animal exploitation. No eggs, meat, dairy, honey, wool, leather, etc. This sounds onerous, but trust us, it isn't. Why kill to eat when you don't have to?
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