Some of these challenges are perhaps quite light-hearted - but I think that even those that may seem most absurd can still shed some light on differences in assumptions or "worldviews" between vegans and non-vegans. I don't claim to provide the full and final answer to all of these points, but I hope to tackle them in an open-minded and non-dogmatic way: neither ducking embarassing questions, nor providing crisp but wrong answers. Of course, as veganism is highly controversial, many readers will likely view that stated aim with a wry grin.
This article was prompted by a heated debate on the #kuro5hin IRC channel, in which I was criticised for failing to defend my views adequately. I hope that this medium will allow me to express myself in a more leisurely and coherent manner - away from the rapid cut-and-thrust of scintillating IRC repartee, which leaves a slow thinker such as myself at a disadvantage.
Ethical Veganism1, for me, in a nutshell
All ethical vegans (see note 1) tend to agree that cruelty to animals is a bad thing, that raising awareness of it in appropriate ways is a good thing, and so on. Many of us have pretty much convergent ideas on a wide range of animal-related and broader issues. However, as I will be dealing with some areas in which there is not necessarily a cohesive, well-agreed-upon consesus opinion, I can't reasonably claim to speak for all, or even many, other vegans. Thus, right from the outset I want to make it clear that these are my personal thoughts, which are not necessarily representative of the opinions of vegans in general - although they may be in some cases.
So, perhaps I should start by answering the most basic question: what does it mean to be a vegan? In theory, a vegan is someone who does not use, buy or consume any products - whether they be food, clothes, or anything else - with ingredients or constituents derived directly from animals above a certain level of complexity.
1 Throughout this piece, the concept "People who are vegan primarily for ethical reasons" will be abbreviated to "Ethical vegans" or just "Vegans". There are a small minority of vegans who choose to follow the diet, sometimes for health reasons, but do not fully agree with the animal-rights-based arguments for veganism. However, most "converts" come to veganism through being persuaded by ethics-based (in particular, empathy-based) arguments - and it is this sort of veganism that I am focusing on in this article.
Just a minute! Animals "above a certain level of complexity"? Where did that come from?
Ethical veganism is not like a mindless observance of a religious ritual, executed by its adherents just because the Torah or the Koran specifies it. It is not designed to demonstrate the obediance or reverence of believers to their chosen deity. It has a definite down-to-earth point to it. (Or two. Or three.)
I'll explain my "level of complexity" clarification below, but first I want to avoid skating over the key point here. Different vegans will explain their reasons for becoming or staying vegan in different ways, but undoubtedly a common thread for many, many vegans is not wanting to economically support the literal institutionalised barbarity that comes under the heading of "factory farming". A short list of examples:
- Battery hens crammed together into cages, so small they cannot even in stretch their wings. Truly, battery farms are a shining example (if you'll pardon the expression) of the genesis of the term "factory farming". The birds are reduced to mechanical production units, treated as nothing more than statistics.
- Sows confined in stalls so small they cannot even turn around - nor fulfill their maternal instincts to look after their young, which may be placed on the other side of their "cages".
- De-beaking, de-tailing, and tooth-pulling - sometimes without anaesthetic - practices which are to a large extent a response to mental illnesses of overcrowding. In spacious conditions pigs and chickens do not generally feel the need to attack their fellow creatures so viciously - it is only the ridiculous levels of overcrowding in factory farms that drive them to these highly aggressive behaviour modes.
- Rogue - but undisciplined - "meat-packers" (translation: slaughterhouse workers) playing sick "games" of torture and mutilation with helpless animals. Or, perhaps worse, simply disregarding systematic breaking of basic animal welfare principles, such as the principle that birds should be unconscious before being dunked into a scalding hot tank to de-feather them.
- Animals packed into vehicles and ships so densely, and with so little regard for basic needs such as water, that many of them die en-route.
I don't like delving into the graphic detail of these abuses any more than you would like to hear me rant on about them, so I deliberately kept this list much briefer than I could have. However, a wealth of books and websites are available to fill in the details, such as for example Gail Eisnitz's shocking and self-explanatory Slaughterhouse, Erik Marcus's Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating - and of course, everyone's favorite cuddly animal rights group, PETA.org. McSpotlight and their coverage of the infamous "McLibel trial" is also worth looking into - as McDonalds ended up admitting in court that some of the allegations made against them were accurate.
So veganism, for me, is partly about fighting cruelty by not supporting it in the first place. It's only a small step, but at the same time it's a large one - the more people that go vegan, and the more people that raise their children vegan, the less demand there'll be for animal products, so the theory goes.
For me, being anti-cruelty is the primary factor in being vegan. I don't usually object to painless killing of non-human animals, as long as it doesn't upset anyone.
But isn't it possible to be both "anti-cruelty" and to eat meat?
What meat-eaters should ask themselves, if they're truly concerned about cruelty, is: Can they be reasonably confident that the food they buy is cruelty-free? And if not, what are they going to do about it?
There are a range of possible responses, such as: Trying to switch to producers which don't use factory farming techniques; cutting down on meat; going vegan; holding an anti-factory-farming stall outside a supermarket; pressing for less lax laws and regulations, and less lax enforcement of those regulations. Or, of course, wringing ones hands and doing nothing.
So what makes veganism stand out? Aren't any of the above decisions just as valuable, or even more, compared to giving up animal products?
The same thing that makes a vegetarian wearing leather shoes stand out, or an anti-Nike activist wearing Nike shoes stand out. If a person professes to be concerned about the plight of factory farmed animals, and then continues to shovel money into the arms of the factory farmers when they could feasibly make other food choices, perhaps there is a question-mark over how sincere that person really is.
Now, having got the moral-advocacy-oriented part, which I feel very strongly about, out of the way, I'll move on to:
Why draw the line here?
After all, even if someone agrees that factory farming is a Bad Thing[tm], and even decides that they want to reduce the degree to which they support the animal industries, it doesn't logically follow that they should draw the line where the Vegan Society draws its line. Isn't it asking a bit much to expect people to give up not only beef, but chicken, turkey, ham, milk, cheese, butter and eggs as well?
What are you left with? Rice and baked beans?
Well, not exactly. You've got fruit, vegetables, pulses, breads, rice, sprouts, pasta, etc. which still leaves you with a hell of a lot of variety for the creative cook - and even vegan chocolate, or carob if you prefer. And if you're lucky and you're in an area with a moderate-to-high concentration of vegans (relatively speaking), you might find things like vegan "not ham", vegan "cheeze", or vegan "ice cream" at your supermarket or health food store. New substitutes seem to crop up every year. It's really not such a hard life, I've found - even being a "fast food vegan" who hates cooking anything non-trivial.
But what is the reasoning behind boycotting eggs and dairy products? Battery hens we've already covered, and in the case of milk it's again due to cruelty: briefly, bovine growth hormones and breeding for large udders has lead to widespread foot problems and mastitis; also, the dairy trade is rather closely linked to the vile veal trade. Veal is a byproduct of milk production, not the other way around.
Basically, for me, once I'd made the decision to go fully vegetarian, it didn't seem that impossible to go the whole hog and go vegan as well. It was daunting, yes - but I weighed up in my head the convenience and pleasure of cream cheese, cakes, milk chocolate and things like that, with in my view the moral gravity of supporting the dairy and battery farm industries - and I decided there was absolutely no comparison.
It's ultimately got to be a personal decision. Obviously to me the choice was clear and stark - but equally obviously, the same choice is not so obvious to everyone, otherwise everyone would be going vegan by now. There's no objective measure by which I can say "Reducing the number of calves bred for veal is more important than eating cream cake". All I can really do is dig up facts on animal abuse, the health benefits of a vegan diet and so on, and appeal to empathy. (Called by unkind souls a "guilt trip" - but what else can one do to call attention to the gravity of the situation and to people's personal responsibility to do something about it?)
But isn't the cut-off point arbitrary? What about prawns? Honey? Carrots, even?
I actually do avoid honey, but I don't think it's very likely that bees can feel pain or suffer. The Vegan Society says avoiding honey is optional. It's no big deal to avoid honey though, so I just stay on the "moral safe side", as it were.
The key question, for me, is, "Is the organism in question panient?" - in other words, does it have the capacity to feel pain and/or suffer. And this is, at least in principle, a scientific question - although it's rather embarassingly difficult to answer within today's current scientific framework. Scientists who have studied the matter, such as Marian Stamp Dawkins, say that factors such as evolutionary reasoning, and the structural similarity of nervous systems among higher vertebrates, strongly suggest that many other "higher" animals are panient. So sheep and cows probably can feel pain, but bees probably can't.
As for plants, well: OK, I admit it, for the sake of argument. No-one can prove that a carrot doesn't feel pain. But let's turn this around. No-one can actually prove that you really feel pain either. Or, put it this way: if a highly realistic futuristic robot was programmed to mimic your behaviour exactly, and it swore and hopped about when it dropped a heavy weight on its feet, would the robot really be in pain?
Or, put yet another way, is a television afraid when it shows a horror movie and emits screaming noises?
The point is that pain cannot be defined as how a thing reacts. It's inherently an internal, mental thing, and hence not directly accessible to the scientific method as we know it. (This is a controversial philosophical position, but I believe the examples above, and other more subtle examples that can easily be cooked up, demonstrate its correctness.) All we can do is make certain (reasonable?) assumptions. For other humans it's fairly safe: no sane person seriously doubts that other people are in general panient.
In the case of non-human "higher" animals, you can either defer to the contemporary scientific consensus, which is that they are panient; or go with certain "Englightenment" thinkers of yore, and say "This dog is just a machine. When you kick it, the squeal is just a reflex reaction, it feels nothing. So it's perfectly OK to tie down and dissect live dogs without anaesthetic". Again, a rigorous proof either way isn't really possible.
As for the plants, I really find it hard to take this particular challenge to veganism at all seriously. For one thing, there's no Plant Liberation Front. In fact, no serious organisation or individuals have set themselves the task of protecting plants from cruelty. No-one seriously says to me when I'm talking about veganism "Hey I totally agree with what you're saying, Robin, but I think there's also a problem with cruelty to plants. Wheat should be injected with plant anaesthetic before it's harvested!"
I won't speculate too much about the motives of those who make arguments like "But what about plants?" Suffice it to say that trolling and joking are not the only things that can drive people to champion apparently absurd positions.
But surely no-one can avoid contributing to oppression in some form, whether it be saving money at a bank that invests in sweatshops, or buying from someone who then goes and spends that money on pate de fois gras, or whatever? If you trace things far out enough, everyone's implicated
Maybe - still, there's a question of degree of culpability there. Anyway, not being able to save the world by clicking your fingers is no excuse for not putting in any effort.
But what about all the animals that are killed by combine harvesters each year?
Indeed. Or, all the animals that are killed by road traffic each year. Both are a serious problem, and of course I support research into ways of deterring animals from roads and fields about to be harvested.
I used to argue that since cattle are fed on grain anyway, and one pound of beef takes several pounds of grain to produce, eating meat only increases the amount of grain that has to be produced and thus increases the chance of a poor little fieldmouse being squished.
To a certain extent this is true, but it's perhaps a shaky argument. After all - and this is one of the points that vegan websites often neglect to mention, because it doesn't help their cause - animals are also very good at turning food which we can't eat (grass, seeds etc.) into food that we can eat (meat). The fact that they are often fed grain is a result of economics, not biological necessity.
The person who asked me the combine harvester question was clearly implying that eating "industrially-produced" plants was actually no better than eating meat, because of the animals killed and maimed in the process. I don't have a watertight answer to that one, but firstly it's incidental and not necessary to producing grain - just as some people say "Farming per se is not wrong, it's just factory farming that's abusive". A rebuttal to that is that, allegedly, feeding the world with lower-tech harvesting techniques would not be feasible.
I would say that both aims - abolishing factory farming and regressing to more manual harvesting - are totally unrealistic under the current capitalist system - it would take a socialist revolution, massive technological upheaval or an eco-crash returning us to more primitive times to acheive either of them. Boycotting cruel farms (e.g. by going vegan) is actually more realistic than expecting them all to be cleaned up by government regulation, which is just not going to happen, for economic reasons (although less lax regulations on the animal industries are always a good thing). It is the meat-eating "animal welfarists" who are the pie-in-the-sky ones, even more so than the vegans.
Secondly, I find it hard to believe that the number of animals killed by accident in the course of making my daily bread is at all comparable to the number of animals that have to be killed to feed one person eating meat daily.
Doesn't valuing nonhuman animals on a par with humans lead to the converse: valuing humans on a par with mere animals? And doesn't this implicitly justify animal rights terrorism / Nazism / insert bad thing here?
Only if the oppression of Palestinians, and valuing Palestinian lives on a par with Israeli lives, justifies suicide bombing Israeli civilians (or perhaps I should say soldiers, since animal rights extremists typically target scientists who they believe are torturing animals). This is not really a new question.
Oh, and my answer is no, of course.
But come on. Here's the clincher. Everyone knows vegans are a bunch of hippies who never bathe, look pale and skinny and don't get out much, right?
Aren't you confusing vegans with the readership profile of k5? *ducks*
Well I don't know really, to be honest. I'd love to have a statistical survey on the personalities and looks of vegans at my fingertips (that's always been the allegation that's stumped me the most). But unfortunately I don't have one. Er. Well, you could look at Alicia Silverstone, for example. Or the kickass poet Benjamin Zephania. Or - ah yes, that's what I was looking for: these vegan and vegetarian athletes
No, boys and girls, veganism doesn't doom you to a life of being as skinny and weak as a beanpole - or indeed a fat couch potato. (Genetics and laziness can though.)
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