Articles Reflecting a Vegan Lifestyle From All-Creatures.org
Ethical Consumption
Businesses and organisations like non-profits,
democratically run workers’ co-operatives, social enterprises and
collectives. We should be working to prefigure the society we want to see in
the future. We believe this is what will help us to move from reformist to
radical change and to contribute to actually changing the system.
So many vegan products we consume are not truly ‘cruelty-free’. They still
harm other animals, humans and the environment.
For example:
- Vegan chocolate produced using child slaves in West Africa
- Vegan T-shirts produced using sweatshop labour in the Global South
- Non-organic vegan foods, whole and processed, produced using conventional,
industrial agriculture which degrades the soil, poisons free-living animals
and the environment, destroys habitats, kills field animals such as mice and
birds and is inherently unsustainable.
- Organic fruit and vegetables which uses by-products of animal agriculture
like blood and bonemeal for manure, and much of which is not produced
sustainably due to ploughing which degrades the soil.
If we want to work towards creating a world which is just for all, it is not
enough to consider only the direct impacts of our consumption choices on
other animals. We need to be more mindful about our direct and indirect
impacts on other animals, humans and the environment.
Our consumption choices can legitimise or reject the global corporate
capitalist economic system that causes so much harm to other animals, humans
and the planet. As sociologist Dr Nicki Lisa Cole writes in the article How
to Be an Ethical Consumer in Today's World:
“If unconscious consumption supports and reproduces the problematic status
quo, then a critically conscious, ethical consumption can challenge it by
supporting alternative economic, social, and political relations of
production and consumption.”
There are now a plethora of certifications e.g. Fairtrade, Organic, Vegan,
Cruelty-Free, Rainforest Alliance etc. and resources e.g. Ethical
Consumer which can help us to be more ethical consumers.
However, ethical consumption can only take us so far. Our corporate
capitalist economic system is inherently exploitative and destructive. All
consumption within this system causes suffering in one form or another.
Simply buying a product that’s certified ‘Fairtrade’, ‘Organic’ or ‘Vegan’
in many cases helps to fund the same corporations that are responsible for
so much injustice.
Ethical consumption is also not accessible to many since it requires
investments of time, energy and money.
Reducing our veganism and ethics to individual consumer choices also
reinforces the faulty belief that we can achieve real moral progress or
political change by “voting” with our ethical vegan pounds. We can’t. And
even if we could, those who are better off get more votes which is clearly
unfair.
Many of the injustices we want to challenge require a structural change to
overcome. Changes in laws, policies, institutions, the actual corporate
capitalist system itself. Individual consumption choices are not enough to
make these structural changes. We can’t consume our way to a more ethical
world.
If we want to minimise the suffering we cause through our consumption
choices and reject the corporate capitalist system we should really be
consuming as little as possible. What we do consume should still be sourced
as ethically as possible.
We believe that if we want to be producing and consuming as ethically as
possible we should be focusing on setting up, working for and supporting
independent ethical vegan businesses and other organisations which provide
an alternative to corporate capitalist modes of production. Businesses and
organisations like non-profits, democratically run workers’ co-operatives,
social enterprises and collectives. We should be working to prefigure the
society we want to see in the future. We believe this is what will help us
to move from reformist to radical change and to contribute to actually
changing the system.
Posted on All-Creatures: August 17, 2024
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