Animal Rights/Vegan Activists' Strategies Articles

People Can Be Vegan, but the Father of "Reducetarianism" Doesn't Agree

From Unparalleled Suffering
January 2023

I think systemic changes are where we can accomplish the most gains for a better world for humans and all other life. We should compromise on the message that animal lives and bodies are their right and don’t belong to us no matter what kind of system they are being oppressed under.

According to Brian Kateman, founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, I’m a reducetarian and if you are reading this maybe you are too. Vegans, vegetarians, and anyone who makes an effort to eat less animal “products” than they used to eat is a so-called reducetarian. Brian believes that people can save animal lives by eating less animals, essentially banking on a fantasy supply and demand version of how our rigged, overabundant, corporation-dominated, artificially inflated, and waste-heavy food system actually works. He also believes that factory farming can be eradicated if people just reduce their amount of animal consumption, as if more humans eating less animals won’t still require cramming billions of individuals together to meet society’s reducetarian demands.

Despite professing in numerous interviews that he would like to see a “vegan world” eventually, the Reducetarian Foundation’s vision is “a world in which societal consumption of red meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, and dairy is significantly reduced.” What constitutes significant reduction I do not know. In a recent interview he did with Sentient Media Brian Kateman said, “To me, particularly vegan, from my perspective, is an impossible standard to reach according to its own definition,” yet in the above tweet he calls for people to do the best they can to avoid being complicit in animal cruelty, which is precisely what veganism is about (if individuals are being honest about the term “best”).

Societal pressure leads people to abandon being the best versions of themselves

Kateman coined the reducetarian label in 2014 after he tried being a vegetarian but gave into eating part of a cooked turkey corpse during a Thanksgiving dinner with his family. Indeed, my last Thanksgiving meal was almost a decade ago and I had the highly unpleasant experience of witnessing two self-proclaimed vegetarians eating sliced up dead turkeys. I only made the special exception (not a fan of holidays) to join this meal in the first place because I was promised multiple times that it would be strictly plant-based, which was a longtime personal standard I’ve had when eating with others. I’ve since come to learn that it’s not uncommon for people who call themselves vegetarians to eat animal flesh either regularly or occasionally. If you don’t believe me just ask the next few vegetarians you meet if they ever eat any birds, fishes, or any other type of animal flesh.

Some of the topics include:

• Societal pressure leads people to abandon being the best versions of themselves
• Why and How Brian Kateman Launched the Reducetarian Movement
• Are you still a true vegan if you go on walks outside?
• Nothing wrong with veganism as a philosophical and ethical stance
• Factory farming sucks, but not animal farming as a whole?

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

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