Dear Sir Paul McCartney,

I’ve got a feeling my words have as much chance of reaching you directly as might a letter addressed to Santa Claus, but I thought I might try anyway…

As a lifelong fan of your work, I have found you to be an inspiration from as far back as I can remember.  Your words and music have provided the larger part of the soundtrack of my life, carrying me through all that I have experienced, and for this I am eternally grateful.

Having lived vegan since 2004, I would like to share something I find unsettling about a piece of your work, something that has the potential to live in people’s memories – and on YouTube – for years to come.

Upon watching a rebroadcast of your performance of “Scrambled Eggs” (above) with Jimmy Fallon from December 2010, I was struck with the following thoughts:

Part of the Fallon bit involved you taking a “vegetarian” stand against singing “chicken wings,” yet you appeared perfectly comfortable singing a song about scrambled eggs (and yes, I’m aware of the origin of that lyric and how it eventually became Yesterday.  The joke is not lost on me; I just don’t find allusions to animal exploitation funny).  Surely you’re aware of the horrible conditions and miserably short lives laying hens suffer through as they are forced to produce unnatural quantities of eggs for human consumption.  Statistically, chickens are the most exploited and abused animals on the planet, and the retirement plan for all these individuals  – and all non-humans used for their bodies and secretions to satisfy human pleasures and conveniences (be they “free range”, “cage-free”, “humanely”-raised, etc.) – is a trip to the slaughterhouse and a sharp blade across the throat.

Initially, I found your performance delightful and, probably because of its charm, I nearly missed the subtext that it’s not ok to eat chickens but it is ok to enslave them and eat their eggs.  By extension, this message further implies that some forms of animal exploitation are acceptable while others are not.  I find this message baffling and inconsistent.

To paraphrase Voltaire (by way of Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee above), “With great power comes great responsibility.”  I submit that your words and actions have the power to influence countless numbers of people worldwide for generations to come, and I respectfully ask that you be mindful and sing responsibly.

I once applauded your long-time commitment to vegetarianism and your work in bringing the idea of Meat Free Mondays to a world audience.  Today I fully understand that vegetarians, by abstaining from some arbitrarily-chosen animal products while continuing to consume others, remain complicit in all other forms of animal exploitation except the one or two they’ve given up.  I used to involve myself in “vegan” outreach in South Florida utilizing the Glass Walls video you narrate and handing out what I now know to be speciesist litter-ature to educate passersby as to the horrors of the animal agriculture industry and specifically factory farming.  Today I believe that, by failing to engage the public in true, unequivocal vegan education focusing on the idea that all animal use, no matter how much “cruelty” is involved, is morally unjustifiable, wrong and needs to be abolished, we did a great disservice to the animals we thought we were trying to help.  By focusing heavily on factory farms, we may well have been tacitly promoting small farms while the truth is that every animal on every farm, regardless of size (and this includes backyard animal exploiters), is treated as property, is denied the right to a free and autonomous life and will live and die solely for purposes deemed important and profitable by humans.  Slavery is always wrong, and even the “kindest” slave owner is still a slave owner.  This is the difference between promoting animal “welfare” and the abolition of animal use.

Sir Paul, I can’t help but wonder why, with the knowledge and resources at your disposal, you would remain vegetarian and welfarist all these years rather than taking a stand for social justice and animal rights by making the firm commitment to live vegan and eschewing the consumption of all products of animal exploitation.  Can you imagine the difference you would make by publicly taking that simple step and helping educate the world that veganism needs to be the moral baseline for our treatment of non-human individuals?  After all, it’s not how we use animals that’s at issue – it’s that we use them for our own gains in the first place.  There’s a paradigm waiting to be shifted, and this is the kind of action that can move that process along.

Vegetarianism is a journey going nowhere, man.  It’s a long and winding road that leads individuals of other species to the same place all non-vegan roads lead – the slaughterhouse door.

My hope is that my words reach you as yours have reached me, and that the ideas I’ve presented reach even further to your mind, your sense of justice and your heart.

Sir Paul, please please live vegan and use your voice to educate others.  Don’t let me – and the animals – down.

Wishing you peace, love and continued success,

Keith Berger

Co-founder, South Florida Vegan Education Group

Boca Raton, Florida, USA (phone number available upon request if you wanna ring me up!)

Live vegan.  Educate others.  Start now, here’s how: