Hello, SV readers.
I know I haven’t posted in a while. You may or may not care. I went on vacation and for the past 2-3 weeks I’ve been busy developing a humor website with some friends (non-vegan friends even!).
I’ll be back after the new year. Happy holidays to all.
- – thanks for reading – -
SV
As I mentioned earlier, I will at least occasionally be doing interviews here on Speciesist Vegan. This is all part of my effort to start conversations about the gray areas between the extremes in the paleo/SAD vs. vegan divide. I think a lot of people with more moderate views and practices tend to get drowned out by all the people on the extreme ends. So I want to provide a forum where people with all kinds of diets and views can get their thoughts out there so that people can take them in and then discuss them if they like.
My first interview is with Nathan Chappell (pronounced like the building, not the comedian). Nathan knows all about living life in the gray areas. The area is so gray, in fact, that he has been known as “that vegetarian guy that eats meat.” For the last 17 years Nathan has been vegetarian and for about 10 of those years he has been eating meat that would otherwise go to waste. Well, it’s actually a little bit more complicated than that, but I’ll let him explain that part of it. I think this is the perfect way to kick off interviews on Speciesist Vegan.
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How long have you been vegetarian? Have you been making freegan exceptions the entire time?
I became vegetarian when I was 17 (I’m 34 now), but then I fell off the wagon for a couple years about half-way through, mostly because of steak quesadillas. Then I ate some fish occasionally for a couple years after that, but I’m back to being an asterisked lacto-ovo now. Being freeganish started about ten years ago while I was waiting tables. I just saw so much wasted meat. I found it really offensive, not just in principle, but because my beliefs didn’t allow me to eat meat, so it made me jealous or something to see people take their delicious ignorance for granted, and just sad to see people take meat for granted.
How would you describe your motivation for becoming vegetarian? Has it changed over the years?
I would describe my motivation as about 5’6″, brown hair, and bossy. Yep, I made the switch for a girl. But, my motivation has changed. It’s always changing. After a while it became less about the girl and more about animals. I simply couldn’t accept that it was okay to eat chickens, but not cats. I was kind of a preachy vegetarian for a bit. To really get into something I have to be firm, strict, argumentative. I have to be black or white. But then I started talking to people instead of arguing and realized that I wasn’t completely sure I was right. Or if it’s the worst thing in the world to be wrong.
I got to a point where I realized that I could (and had to) accept that people will probably eat meat for a long time. But my being on the not eating meat side could pull the center toward not eating meat, toward moderation, toward at least being conscious of our meat consumption. Recently I’ve been inclined to think that the most reasonable, provable point is the extreme inefficiency of meat production, especially the way we do it. Basically, I don’t want to support the business of meat. I don’t buy meat, I don’t let other people buy me meat. Waste is good for business. I try to lessen that.
And on a less objective note, I don’t like having too much guilt wrapped up in my eating. Health has never been a big consideration for me.
How do you label the way you eat and has that changed over the years? How much do labels matter?
I used to be very sneaky about it for fear of being kicked out of the club, but then I learned that I don’t much like clubs. I tell people I don’t know that I’m a lacto-ovo vegetarian. If pressed, I say “I used to eat fish, but I don’t really like fish, so it just doesn’t make sense to make the exception. Even though I think fish are stupid.” Because I do. No offense to fish. Not that they’d get it anyways.
It’s strange, I usually love labels, but I find this one to be tough to categorize, so the only time I accurately label myself is in the form of an awkward paragraph. Labels are great as descriptors, but not as definers.
The term “freegan” definitely makes me think of dumpsters. It isn’t fair, but if I think that, I’d bet that most everyone else does too. I think the way we present our ideas or movements is important. I don’t like to give people ammunition to judge my positions too early.
Since you don’t usually actively identify yourself as someone that eats meat that would otherwise go to waste, do people ever feel like they have you in a “gotcha moment” when they find out that you do? Is there a reason that you’re not more upfront about it?
Sure, here and there, but there’s no accounting for every asshole. I’m mostly not more upfront about it because I don’t like long, qualified explanations regarding what I do. I’m also not upfront about being a vegetarian. I don’t always want to get into a discussion wherein my stated beliefs call into question somebody’s morals. I’m sort of a live and let live sort of fellow.
Do you feel like being vegetarian is a sacrifice? If so, does eating freegan meat lessen or increase this feeling?
Sort of, but not a big one in comparison to the sacrifice that the chickens, pigs and cows make quite without their consent. I don’t think my throw-away meat eating affects that much. It satisfies my general nostalgia for meat and makes me feel like I’m doing what I believe.
In a way that’s the sacrifice, giving up the no flesh streak and trading in my high horse. I just don’t want to see the nutrients and delicious flavors go to waste. Also, I like being limited at restaurants because I am a terrible decision maker. I was recently at a vegetarian restaurant and it took me half an hour to order. I don’t have that kind of time. I’m a very busy man.
So, giving up being a strict, no-exceptions vegetarian might have actually been harder than giving up meat when you first went vegetarian?
For me, definitely.
How do omnivores respond to how you eat? Do you find that they want to argue with you and find inconsistencies in your approach? Does anyone ever call you a hypocrite? How do you respond to that?
Omnivores really seem to like the cut of my jib, particularly the ones that I know well enough to get into this conversation with. So it might be a flawed sample. But they respect my nuance, and probably feel like they don’t have to be defensive because I’m not exactly on the other team. They think about it a little more than if I state my label. Maybe they see my practices as a sign that I’m not judging them, that I’m making myself vulnerable to being called a hypocrite.
And I am a bit of a hypocrite. My actions don’t always perfectly reflect my morals. Whose do? I probably wouldn’t eat milk or eggs if they did. But I am not interested in unrealistic goals, and I am very interested in breakfast burritos. It’s tricky though. Sometimes omnivores will pretend that they’re going to throw meat away just to get me to eat it. Sometimes to pull me off my horse, sometimes just to see the incredible unicorn of a vegetarian eating meat, sometimes just to be dicks.
Some people have mentioned this as a pitfall of making freegan exceptions, the way that other people can try to manipulate you. Do you still eat it when you get the sense that they’re just messing with you?
I at least bluff that I’m not going to. Then the kind-hearted protein pushers (“I just want to make sure that you’re getting enough protein…not to mention iron!”) usually eat it or take it home. They just can’t help it. But if they insist on not eating it, I’ll totally eat it.
What about vegetarians and vegans? How do they respond to you?
They’re the ones who usually call me a hypocrite, especially new vegetarians, as they are in that black and white zone, that defensive place when they’re trying to suss out what they really believe. Then a lot of people end up accepting my viewpoint, even agreeing with it, at least logically. I think it’s just nice for thoughtful people to hear another idea that isn’t yea or nay.
So they agree with it in principle, but they don’t want to do it themselves. Why do you think more vegetarians and vegans don’t allow for freegan exceptions?
Because of the gray area. Most people aren’t happy there, if they have to recognize they’re there. Let’s face it, we’re all in some gray area, no matter how many absolutes we round up (or down) to.
You mentioned that you think you’re a bit of a hypocrite because your actions don’t always perfectly reflect your morals. I don’t see hypocrisy in that way. I think that as long as you don’t do what you say you won’t do, you’re not a hypocrite. How do you stack up given that definition?
I initially identify as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, which certainly suggests that I don’t eat any flesh, but I do. Trash flesh. But I don’t beat myself up about it. It’s not really anybody else’s business, anyway.
Are there certain people that you won’t eat meat around?
Nope.
One common objection that vegans make to vegetarians eating freegan meat is that they think once someone loses their disgust for meat, they’ll just slip up and fall off the wagon and become omnivore again. Does making freegan exceptions make it harder to pass up non-freegan meat in certain situations?
Yes, maybe, but I’ve never been disgusted by meat (except for haggis – that shit is gross). I’m opposed to the meat business. And I’m not in it for the streak, I’m not into perfection, I am not looking to win. I used to be, and then when I slipped, I ate meat for two years. I figured, well, shit, there goes that. I blew it, I might as well shove a bunch of beef tips in my face. Now I’m looking to live a decent life, and as long as I remember why I came back to this lifestyle, there’s no wagon to fall off. It’s my life. I tend to exist in gray areas and I like it there. I like the fluidity, the humility it demands or facilitates, the constant realization that you’re not necessarily right. It forces you to reconsider things a lot, which is something I strive for.
How did your “slip” happen? What caused you to decide to move back toward vegetarianism?
I don’t remember exactly. I was depressed. I felt like I was doing and had done a lot of things that weren’t in line with who I thought I was, so what’s one more? Eventually, as I was bringing myself out of my slump, returning to vegetarianism was just one way I began to line my life up with who I was and what I believed. It just followed naturally from getting my head right in general.
Do you have different feelings or standards for different types of meat (such as factory-farmed vs. free-range organic)?
If ALL meat was produced on small farms, and we could go out and see the animals, and you knew where it was coming from, and the livestock (or “animals”) were treated and fed well and with respect (you know, except for that slaughtering part), I would certainly reconsider. I don’t know where I’d land, but it would be something to think about. I think we would be a lot happier as a society, for sure. We’re too far removed from all of our food. So maybe that’s a business I could accept into my gray area.
There are ways to get meat that are pretty much how you just described. Are you saying that you don’t want to do that because it wouldn’t change the overall reality of meat?
Yes, absolutely. I choose to boycott the business of meat.
You mentioned that you probably wouldn’t eat milk or eggs if your actions perfectly reflected your morals. Does this cause you to limit your eating of eggs and dairy?
I simply can’t imagine it does, given the amount of eggs and dairy I consume. Although, who knows? Maybe if I didn’t see any moral problem with eggs and milk I would eat exclusively cheese and egg sandwiches dipped in ice cream.
What advice would you give to someone that is considering giving up meat (or just factory-farmed meat)? Would you recommend taking an approach to eating that is similar to yours? Are there any mistakes that you’ve made that you might be able to save others from?
Just be mindful. Know why you’re making the decision. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re not perfect. Go get ‘em, tiger? If you can’t handle the gray area of throw-away meat exceptions, if you think you’ll slide down that hill and go back to meat-eating, you probably shouldn’t do it. Because you’ll probably be happier not eating the meat.
But no, I don’t think I’ve made any mistakes in this area. Oh, except one, many years ago – despite what I thought the menu said (Spicy Mexican Salsa), chorizo is totally meat. (I’ve never been much of a reader).
This story is not exactly breaking news, but I’d like to say something about it. PeTA filed a lawsuit alleging that SeaWorld enslaves killer whales.
Now I realize I’m not breaking new ground here by being a vegan that criticizes PeTA. Hell, there’s already a website for that (although it seems to be defunct). Nothing new here. But I wish that it just stopped with PeTA. I wish I could say that the error originates and ends with PeTA.
There are probably a lot of anti-speciesist vegans out there that think PeTA’s lawsuit is misguided on tactical grounds. How could there not be? But a lot of those same vegans probably don’t disagree with the assertion that SeaWorld having killer whales IS slavery. This is because they find any distinction between humans and non-humans to be essentially unjustified. Therefore, the concepts of murder, genocide and slavery can all be applied to animals in their minds. Well, most people find that offensive. Most (probably all) legal systems find the assertion ludicrous. But if you buy into a rigid anti-speciesism worldview, it makes perfect sense.
I find this to be problematic. It’s a problem when the movement that cares about animals uses language that alienates people to the cause. There are certainly non-vegans and people that don’t “believe in” animal rights that are sympathetic to the idea that we shouldn’t keep killer whales in a huge fish tank so that they can entertain us. But you lose their support when you try to use the 13th amendment, the legislation that freed slaves in the United States, as a publicity stunt.
“The lawsuit is the first of its kind in contending that constitutional protections against slavery are not limited to humans.” Of course it is. No one else has ever had enough disposable money to bring a lawsuit so sure to fail. There is essentially ZERO chance that the protections of the 13th amendment will be extended to animals. Can you imagine the precedent that it would set? Can you even imagine how much money is at stake?
Again, I wish that the logic used by PeTA was unique to PeTA. But it isn’t. A lot of vegans and AR people think this way. It’s a problem.
And for the record, I have no love for SeaWorld, zoos, circuses, rodeos etc. etc. I would never give my money to any of them.
I think some of my family members are really freaked out that I would tell their kids the truth about what they’re eating. Probably some of my friends, too. I understand why parents who eat meat feel this way. They don’t want their kids to know the truth. It’s really not hard to understand why they would want to shield their kids from the knowledge that they’re eating the body of a dead animal.
Plenty of meat-eating adults have some amount of compunction about eating meat. They might not admit it to anyone, especially not a veg*an, but I know it’s true because some of them have told me (some people are honest, after all). Also, I used to be an omnivore, and I know that I had little lies that I told myself to feel okay about it all. Many omnivores cling to the idea that you basically HAVE to eat meat. When you present them with evidence and arguments to the contrary, they usually find ways to ignore it, because it’s an important idea for them to cling to. The idea allows them to think of it as a “necessary evil” akin to paying taxes (that fund plenty of things that people disagree with). They know they’re complicit in bad things, but they convince themselves that they really don’t have a viable alternative. I think a lot of them have some amount of awareness that these rationalizations are tenuous. I did.
So, since they know that it takes a delicate blend of rationalizing and self-imposed ignorance to think the way they do, and they know that kids aren’t as skilled at excusing their own poor behavior, they really feel that they’re doing the right thing by protecting their children from the truth. Most kids feel bad when they do something that they think is wrong. So parents really just feel like they’re shielding their children from bad feelings and guilt. Well, that and they’re really afraid that their kid would actually dare to do something that they haven’t been able to do: change their behavior (instead of their way of thinking) in response to something that they find morally problematic.
I know that not all parents are like this. Some do tell their kids the truth at an early age. But in most cases, they probably tell them after he or she has already been eating meat for quite some time.
I had my own experience with this, but I can’t say I remember much of it clearly. One memory that sticks out is when my younger brother (let’s call him Gordie) asked what the red stuff was in and around his steak. My dad said “that’s just the juice, Gordie.” Someone knew the truth (probably me or my older brother, let’s call him Raekwon) and let it out: “It’s blood!” Gordie did not like that answer at all and he did not want to eat it, which pissed my dad off, of course. I don’t remember if he ended up eating it that day or not, but I do remember that there were multiple times after that day my dad had to angrily re-grill a steak until it no longer had any “juice” coming out of it. Man, that guy can grit his teeth. My dad was probably like “Goddammit, SpeciesistVegan, how dare you tell my kid the truth!” Anyway… so… part of the reason that parents don’t want their kids to know the truth simply comes down to selfishness and convenience. It’s just easier if your kids eat what you eat.
I’m not trying to demonize parents that don’t want their kids to know the truth. They’ve found ways to justify why eating meat is okay, so why would they want to put thoughts into their kid’s head to make him or her question if it’s okay? I’m not trying to lionize parents that tell their kids the truth, either. Parents lie to kids for a lot of reasons and some parents probably tell their kids too much truth too early. There’s something to be said for childhood innocence. At the very least, I just hope that we can get to a point where parents that are omnivorous can have enough knowledge and perspective to allow their kids to become veg*an if that’s what they want to do.
All I know is that I have no interest in breaking the news to little Johnny that he has a dead animal in his mouth, so you can all chill the fuck out, god, get off my back already!
I guess this is my way of saying that SpeciesistVegan is now going to become a parenting blog.
Wear gaudy shoes that look very obviously NOT leather.
When you go out to eat with non-vegans, be sure to harass waiters about whether there is butter or milk in the free bread that they’ve placed on your table. Personal purity is way more important than showing your dining companions that being vegan isn’t a big deal. Oh, and whey. Don’t forget about whey. That shit’ll kill ya, bro! Also, make faces of disgust when your dining companions eat or order non-vegan food. Excuse yourself to have a cry in the bathroom if you need to.
When you refer to non-vegan food, use the most offensive term for that food as possible. Carcass, corpse, secretion, udder secretion, chicken period, dead animal, you know the drill, young vegan. Always speak in ways that sound like little soundbites that you’ve memorized.
Wear clothing, and patches on your clothing and backpack, that challenge the speciesist attitudes of this fucked up world. “Meat Is Murder” is a good choice. It’s nice and subtle and it will draw open-minded people in for a conversation so they can probe your nuanced thoughts. If you run out of things to talk about, discuss whether the opposite is also true: is murder meat?
Start bringing up veganism whenever possible. One of the great things about veganism is that it’s about food, and people love to talk about food, so you have dozens of opportunities to ruin conversations every week! Even when the topic isn’t food, a good vegan will find a way. Clothes? DUH!!! Sports? The ball might be leather. Politics? Farm subsidies. The weather? Sheep and cows are sometimes left out in the cold. Feminism? Dairy cows are female, duh! The resourceful vegan will find a way. Trust me, people really want to talk about veganism and animal torture whether they know it or not, especially while they’re eating.
Say things like “that just isn’t food to me.”
If you ever have to skip a meal or wait until later because you don’t have access to vegan food, be sure to do one of two things: either complain loudly or sit in total silence while looking really hungry. This will show non-vegans how fucking serious of a person you are. Feel the pain. Love it. You’re doing it for the animals, and they appreciate it.
You know what? Fuck this! Eating with non-vegans is just too much! Stop doing it whenever possible.
As much as possible, try to stop hanging out with non-vegans. You’ll probably have to see your parents and immediate family from time to time, but you can make the best of it by refusing to eat at the same table as them and commenting on how the Thanksgiving turkey smells like a carcass.
Vegan clothing is great, but if you’re really committed to this life, you should consider getting a “Vegan” tattoo. They’re great conversation starters (and enders). And don’t hide it. Prominent places that are rarely covered by clothing like your elbow and forearm are pretty good choices. But if you really, really love animals, you’ll get it on your fucking neck. You might think that it’s weird to put your dietary preference on your face, but a lot of non-vegans are doing it now too. It’s quite common. You just haven’t noticed it because you already stopped hanging out with non-vegans months ago, right? Right? Poseur.
When you encounter a sad picture or description of something bad happening to an animal, always try to make your emotional response to it even more emotional than everyone else’s. If your friends get mad, get livid! If your friends get sad, cry. Be inconsolable. Wail. Inflicting physical harm on yourself is the next step. You can start light, maybe wear a hairshirt or just do some light self-flagellation. But if you really care, pulling your beating heart out of your chest and eating it would be The Ultimate Sacrifice!
Overall, just try to be MORE vegan than your vegan friends and your vegan street cred will go sky high. Never miss an opportunity to express a view that is more extreme or an opinion that is harder and more unbending than what someone else just said.
Man, your vegan buddies are going to LOVE you. Your vegan street cred is going to go through the roof!
Of course, non-vegans will find you to be an insufferably douchey caricature of yourself, but whatevs, man. They eat carcass!
- – thanks for reading – -
SV
A lot of new vegans tend to think of themselves as a martyr to a cause. They want to eat cheese and eggs and maybe even meat, but they have been convinced by the logic of adopting a “cruelty free” diet. Cheese holds a power over them, but like any good ascetic, they dutifully look away. Their friends tell them “I don’t know how you do it!” and though they feign modesty pretty convincingly, inside they feel a small glow of self-satisfaction. At no time is this glow felt more intensely than when our brave young vegan martyr goes hungry for lack of vegan food.
Flash forward about six months to a year and what do we find? Probably a vegan that no longer believes that veganism is martyrdom. What happened? Who killed the Vegan Martyr?
Well, the longer you’re vegan, the more you find out about all the horrible things that happen for animals to produce and become food. And the more you adapt to a vegan lifestyle, the more you realize that veganism really isn’t that hard for the most part, and no one should be given a medal for it. This is all very logical.
But where it starts to get illogical, probably the most significant change in our young vegan is self-imposed disgust. The last time our young vegan ate a piece of cheese, he probably liked it. Same with meat. But the longer you stay vegan, and the more you read vegan blogs and listen to vegan podcasts, the more you start to think of non-vegan food as disgusting. Why is that? You used to like it, young vegan!
Once you convince yourself that cheese tastes disgusting, it no longer takes any will power to avoid eating it. You can easily get to a point where eating some cheese becomes way harder than avoiding it. So if it involves no will power, then how can you be a martyr? This is probably right around the time you start to think that “vegan is the moral baseline” totally makes sense. Because if it really takes no will power to be vegan (once you’re properly programmed), then aren’t all these people eating meat and cheese just doing things that they know are wrong and that they could easily stop? If they’re below the moral baseline, doesn’t that make them immoral? Doesn’t that make them sinners?!
Yes! Now you’ve crossed the line! Now you get it! Veganism is not martyrdom. NON-veganism is SIN!!! Now you get it.
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You see, this is why so many vegans will tell you that veganism is not hard at all and that it never involves any sense of deprivation. If you can get to the point where you’re so disgusted by non-vegan food that the thought of eating it makes you want to retch, it really doesn’t take will power to avoid it.
But how real is this disgust if it has to be learned? Is relying on a self-cultivated sense of disgust kind of like “cheating?” If you don’t think that you could avoid eating something if you didn’t teach yourself to find it disgusting, do you really find it ethically unacceptable? If you really, truly find it ethically unacceptable, why do you have to force yourself to find it disgusting? Why do you have to say patently nonsensical things like non-vegan food just ISN’T food (here)?
I think a lot of vegans, especially new vegans that are in the phase of veganism when they’re still trying to cultivate disgust, are really conflicted by certain smells that their animal brain finds enticing but their enlightened “vegan brain” finds repugnant. Which brain wins? Well, the vegan brain, obviously. You MUST subjugate your natural feelings to your new-found ideas of decency. You can’t admit that some broiling meat smells good because then you’d have to admit that veganism requires feelings of deprivation, that you’re denying yourself something that you would find enjoyable. Nope, you have to pretend that 1) what is immoral and 2) what is tasty forms a Venn diagram with no overlap.
Absolutism helps breed disgust and disgust helps breed absolutism. If a thing or act has absolutely no justification and it’s unequivocally wrong, then your disgust for it is warranted. If you see someone eating a cheeseburger, be sure to wrinkle your nose and generally make a face that says “I may have just shat myself.”
You can extend this disgust to non-food items, such as friends. This way, your disgust for certain types of food can start to dictate who you hang around with. You know that friend you’ve had forever who is really fun and hilarious, but who stubbornly refuses to see the light and stop eating hamburgers? Well, you probably shouldn’t hang out with him anymore. You wouldn’t want to have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of watching a great person eat something that you want to convince yourself is disgusting. Imagine if he gave some sort of indication that he was enjoying it! Gasp!
But just remember – all of this disgust enhancement is for a good purpose. You’re doing this so that you can continue to NOT eat something that you already stopped eating because of logical arguments. You’re doing this so that you can get to a point where it interferes with your ability to interact socially with 99% of humanity. You’re doing it so that you can avoid eating non-vegan food that would otherwise go to waste (waste is good as long as it’s wasted on principle, right?).
Martyr? Yeah, right! Everyone else is just sinners!
I don’t know what’s worse, a vegan that thinks his veganism makes him a martyr, or a vegan that forces himself to think of all non-vegans as sinners. For my part, I’m trying to be somewhere in the middle. I’m trying to get over my disgust for non-vegan food because it’s something that I had to learn anyway, and for bad reasons. I’m just trying to focus on the reasons why I initially went vegan and try to forget all the crap that I put in my head after that point. Disgust is a big part of that. I need to unlearn it.
- – thanks for reading – -
SV
There seems to be some confusion about what I mean when I say that veganism is an arbitrary line. Some people are understanding “arbitrary” to mean “poorly-defined” and it’s causing them to misunderstand what I’m saying. But it’s not entirely unreasonable why they think this. If we look at the five definitions given here, I think #5 bears this out:
5. undetermined; not assigned a specific value
So let me just clarify what I’m saying. I’m not saying that what vegans propose is random or poorly-defined. Most vegans are pretty clear that what they do and what they support is eliminating animal products from one’s life as much as is practical and reasonable. Even though the last part (practical and reasonable) is a bit fuzzy, I think the overall intent of vegans is pretty clear.
So, the reason I say that veganism is an arbitrary line is not because I think it’s poorly-defined. Veganism, which is just a response to a problem, is arbitrary because it is just one of many choices one could make along a continuum of dietary/lifestyle behaviors.
To illustrate this, let’s remember that veganism is NOT a “cruelty-free” diet as so many uninformed vegans (usually newbies) are wont to claim. There is still animal death and suffering involved with our food choices. Every consumer product you buy (food or not) comes at an environmental price and at a price to animals. Animals are displaced by agriculture. Animals are killed in the planting, harvesting and transportation of vegan goods. The packaging that the food comes in has its environmental and animal costs.
And let’s also not forget that, if we were so inclined, it’s in our power to go further than veganism. We could buy more (or all) of our food locally, thereby decreasing our contribution to environmental degradation. We could take greater pains to make sure that the vegan food we do eat comes from companies that have farming/sourcing methods that take care of the land rather than destroy it. We could take greater pains to make sure that the food we buy comes from companies that do NOT profit from animal exploitation (be honest – do you really KNOW that all of the companies you buy food from do not exploit animals?). We could decide that we’re going to get over ourselves and eat non-vegan freegan food (NVFF) when possible, thereby reducing our need to buy our neatly packaged vegan food (that has a higher animal and environmental cost than most vegans like to admit). We could become as close to fully freegan as possible. These are all options. Veganism, defined simply as “I don’t eat food that comes from animals,” is just one way to address the problems we see. It works well in some ways and falls short in others. It’s not an end in itself. It’s just a lived response to an ethical problem.
In short, there is a lot of gray area between paleo/Standard American Diet and full on freeganism, and veganism is in that gray area. A lot of vegans like to think that since their diet is well-defined (don’t eat food that comes from animals), there is no way someone could accurately call their dietary choice arbitrary. But it is. And as I’ve explained before, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s only a problem when you can’t admit it and you try to tell other people that they have a moral obligation to be vegan.
One other point that I would like to bring up is that the arbitrary nature of veganism applies regardless of one’s motivation to be vegan. Some people say things like “if you take the rights/interests of animals seriously, then you do NOT use them as food or consider them property.” They think that this somehow gets around the fact that production of vegan food causes animal suffering and death. It doesn’t. This applies to all people that practice veganism as a way to eat in this world. Your lofty intentions don’t change this fact.
I’m not trying to make an argument against veganism. I am a vegan. For me, consumer veganism mixed with a little freeganism here and there is the easiest way that I know of to address a lot of the problems I see in modern food production. But I have to stress that, compared to what it would require of someone to really, really take these things seriously and live their lives accordingly, veganism is pretty easy. It’s a well-defined way to make an easily-executed commitment to an arbitrary amount of self-denial, hopefully with the result of decreased animal suffering and death. We’d do well to keep this in mind.
