Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
Karen Davis, PhD, UPC
United Poultry Concerns
June 2017
If most people still consume animal products, there are many reasons having little or nothing to do with how our vegan message is being conveyed. Many people still don’t care enough, know or even think about farmed animals and vegan food as part of their daily routine. Put it this way: McDonald’s is everywhere on the landscape; we’re still barely visible. This is not to say that how we frame and deliver our message doesn’t count. It does. But to blame society’s moral and dietary inertia, ignorance and capriciousness on radical vegan advocates, to impugn vegan activists for “driving people away” and acting like “absolute fanatics” for our cri de Coeur on behalf of mother cows and their suffering calves, as depicted in the video, seems a stretch.
Who is going to feel good when, after being convinced that eating animals is cruel, they are then told to continue being cruel, just do less of it?
To encourage the suffering of any animal is a betrayal and surrender of my responsibility. I refuse to negotiate with cruelty. I refuse to say “eat this animal instead of that one.”
Vegans often blame one another for the fact that society resists going
vegan at the speed of enlightenment that we seek and that billions of
animals desperately need. The question of how to get people to care about
chickens, cows and other farmed animals, let alone enough to quit eating
them, is an ever-present source of hope and despair among those of us who
advocate on behalf of these animals.
There is a spectrum of viewpoints, tactics, strategies and insights on how
to create a world in which one day no animals will ever again be dragged
into a slaughterhouse and made to endure the indignities and miseries we
inflict on them for “food.”
Matt Ball, the founder of Vegan Outreach,
who was formerly with Farm Sanctuary, posted a video on YouTube on May 27, 2017. Titled “Want to save animals’
lives without going veg? Eat beef, not chicken,” the video, which he
narrates, makes four main points: that radical vegan activists alienate the
mainstream; that the vegan movement is a failure; that pitting chickens and
cows against each other avoids alienating people while helping the largest
number of animals; that enlisting the support of a chef (Anthony Bourdain),
who compares vegan activists to “dangerous fundamentalists like Hezbollah”
(an Islamist militant political party in Lebanon), is appropriate.
Points one and two suggest that the reason most people are not vegan, or are
even anti-vegan according to Matt, is that radical vegan activists have
alienated society with their (our) insufferable militancy. Forget that vegan
advocacy has many faces and voices, and that animal rights vegan advocacy
seldom involves screaming and rudeness as a public strategy. How much
accusatory yelling have you heard – or done – at the ever-growing number of
increasingly popular vegan festivals in the United States and elsewhere?
Matt accepts and repeats, as if it were true, Anthony Bourdain’s claim that
vegans have disturbing similarities with dangerous fundamentalist groups
like Hezbollah, because of how, in Matt’s words, “many of us act.” This
statement takes the actions of a small group of radical, nonviolent vegan
activists and attributes their actions to many vegans although there is no
evidence to support the claim that most vegans are perceived by the general
population as dangerous or even antagonistic. Popular media suggests the
opposite – that because of well-known vegan celebrities in sports, music and
Hollywood, being vegan now has the reputation of being cool, and vegans are
not seen as “fanatics,” as Matt claims.
If most people still consume animal products, there are many reasons having
little or nothing to do with how our vegan message is being conveyed. Many
people still don’t care enough, know or even think about farmed animals and
vegan food as part of their daily routine. Put it this way: McDonald’s is
everywhere on the landscape; we’re still barely visible. This is not to say
that how we frame and deliver our message doesn’t count. It does. But to
blame society’s moral and dietary inertia, ignorance and capriciousness on
radical vegan advocates, to impugn vegan activists for “driving people away”
and acting like “absolute fanatics” for our cri de Coeur on behalf of mother
cows and their suffering calves, as depicted in the video, seems a stretch.
Let us please keep in mind that the animal advocacy movement is barely fifty
years old and that vegan advocacy per se didn’t really get started until the
1980s. And a factor in the mix has always been our movement’s anxiety about
alienating the public and fear of “going too far.” It could be argued that
the desire not to offend people, a certain diffidence on our part, has
contributed to society’s overall sense that our issues are not urgent.
Matt claims that “80% of those who go vegan go back to eating animals. Half
go back because they can’t stand the pressure to maintain a pure diet.”
Whether or not “80%” is accurate, the implication that the pressure to
return to meat eating comes mainly from the annoyance or “militancy” of
other vegans ignores that the more likely source comes from family, friends
and coworkers who pressure vegans to eat the familiar food and fall back
into the familiar patterns. If as Matt says, only a tiny portion of the
population is vegan, who is the more likely source of the pressure to eat
animals: vegans or meat eaters? He stresses in the video that society is
saturated with meat-eating messaging.
He goes on to say that by not eating chickens, animal eaters can have a
profound impact on the number of beings who suffer. The number of beings who
suffer would be greatly reduced. While I agree with this statement, the only
action I encourage is to stop eating all animals and eat veggies instead.
Some argue that this is the more difficult path, but I believe it is the
easier path with a greater chance of bringing lasting effect. The message
that no cruelty is okay is easy to understand and to feel good about. Who is
going to feel good when, after being convinced that eating animals is cruel,
they are then told to continue being cruel, just do less of it?
As much as the “stop eating chickens” message appeals from the standpoint of
eliminating the largest number of land animals from food production, I
question whether this approach will ultimately benefit animals. The world
thus envisioned is a world where a smaller number of different animals will
likely suffer in slaughterhouses and where the majority of people will, with
our blessing, switch to eating other animals – more cows, pigs, sheep and
goats, more turkeys, ducks and quails, more aquatic animals, more ostriches
and emus, more factory-farmed insects. To the extent that the call to “make
A suffer instead of B,” kill cows, not chickens, reaches consumers, it is
not likely to reduce the number of chickens being consumed.
For us to agree that the vegan message has failed and that therefore we
should promote abstention from chicken consumption only – doesn’t this
amount to conceding that we are no longer a movement for all animals, but
have opted instead to be marketing strategists for non-chicken products? How
can we help people to conceive and to care how many more small animals
suffer and die for food compared to large animals – 20 or more chickens for
every cow, for example – while maintaining the integrity of our message?
(Back in the 1980s, U.S. activists focused almost exclusively on “veal” ban
campaigns with the result that for years, people felt they had done enough
by quitting veal. Instead of a step, it became a stop that did nothing to
reduce or eliminate the number of “veal” calves being born, since the root
cause of the calves’ existence was and is the public’s consumption of their
milk, which activists are now boldly addressing with encouraging results.)
Why give up on vegan? Why denigrate ourselves? Why abase ourselves before an
animal-abusing chef sneering at “veggens”? Especially with the signs that
veganism is making headway. There are signs in food stores and restaurants.
An article states that in Britain, the number of vegans rose 360% in the
last 10 years and another article says that the number of vegans in the
United States, which in 2009 was 1 percent, rose to 2.5 percent in 2012. Top
Trends in Prepared Foods in 2017 observes that 6% of U.S. consumers now
claim to be vegan, up from 1% in 2014. The health insurance company Kaiser
Permanente advises cardiac patients to adopt a plant-based diet, and the
July-August 2017 issue of Harvard Magazine has an article about the rise of
vegan culture. Very significantly, the American Medical Association has just
passed a resolution calling on hospitals to serve plant-based meals and to
eliminate all processed meats. See: AMA Comes Out Against Serving Processed
Meats in Hospitals!
To encourage the suffering of any animal is a betrayal and surrender of my
responsibility. I refuse to negotiate with cruelty. I refuse to say “eat
this animal instead of that one.”
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