Tag Archives: Slaughter

Abolitionism, Animal Ethics, Animal Rights, Dairy, Eggs, Nonviolence, South Florida Vegan Education Group, Speciesism, Vegan, Vegan Education, Veganism, Violence

A Vegan Looks at Cravings

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Written by Elena Brodskaya and Keith Berger, co-founders, South Florida Vegan Education Group

A common question I’m asked when non-vegans find out I’m vegan is “You must have cravings, don’t you?”

Why yes, I do.

Now, I could take this opportunity to describe how I’ve been able to find wonderfully delicious veganized versions of practically every non-vegan foodstuff I once enjoyed eating before I began living vegan, but there are easily hundreds of blogs and other websites devoted to extolling the tummy-tempting virtues of thriving on food made entirely from plants, so I’ll pass.  Instead, I’ll tell you what this vegan craves every… single… day.

I crave justice, fairness and basic respect for the vulnerable non-human victims of systematic oppression who are exploited and killed by the billions each year for human pleasure, comfort, convenience and entertainment.

I crave a world in which that shit is no longer normalized, tolerated and marketed as acceptable and desirable via cultural conditioning, tradition, emotional attachment and pseudoscience.

I crave an enlightened society that teaches its younger generations to treat themselves and those around them, regardless of species or any other arbitrary characteristic, with the respect and unconditional love they deserve merely by virtue of each individual’s inherent sentience rather than teaching them to devalue life.

I crave the dismantling of speciesism, the most egregious and deadly form of violent oppression our global society has ever known, until it is nothing more than an ugly scar on our collective heart and a dark stain on the tapestry of our lives, ever reminding us of a barbaric past we ought never repeat.

I crave a worldwide tidal wave of ethical integrity to wash over the planet and bring people’s behaviors into alignment with their morals so that nonviolence toward ourselves and others is the order of the day.

I crave an end to the self-centered fear endemic to humans that causes individuals and groups to claim false “superiority” over others resulting in the wrongful domination, subjugation, exploitation, humiliation and extermination of those individuals and groups deemed “inferior”.

I crave a time when there is no longer a need to convince goodhearted, rational people that it is wrong to hurt and kill others for their own benefit because they will have already learned to live in accordance with their inherent understanding of right and wrong.

Oh, and soft pretzels.  I crave soft pretzels like nobody’s business, and that’s ok because there’s a place near us that makes them with no products of animal exploitation so they’re suitable for vegans!

If the point of the original question was to ask whether I have, in 14 years of living vegan, ever had a craving for animal flesh or secretions, the answer is yes.  Early on, I had the occasional craving for certain kinds of sushi (that’s pretty much the only craving I can recall having more than once) and understood two things: 1) the taste cravings I experienced had nothing to do with the fish in the sushi and everything to do with the spices being used which can easily be replicated without any animals being involved and 2) giving in to the craving was not an option.

Having a craving doesn’t mean it’s appropriate or acceptable to give in to the craving, especially when to do so means taking something that belongs to someone else without their consent (i.e.; an animal’s body and/or secretions).  That’s called theft, and most people would agree that theft is wrong.  Although I could conceivably experience a craving for some animal product such as eggs, cheese, milk chocolate, honey, bacon or anything else that may have once brought me pleasure to eat, it doesn’t mean I will go out and buy or otherwise indulge in any of these items to satisfy that craving.  I have the option to either substitute what I’m craving with a 100% plant-based version or to go without… and still continue to live.  All cravings pass; the deadly consequences of giving into these kinds of cravings last forever, and my fleeting desire to satisfy my palate pleasure could never justify taking the freedom, body or life of another individual.  I’m just not that important.

Having focused on palate cravings to this point, it should also be noted that the same principles apply to desires for other products obtained through the exploitation and killing of non-humans – leather jackets, suede shoes, wool sweaters, fur coats, silk scarves and other such items of personal attire, furniture, automotive accessories and the like.

My sense is that the “cravings question” (and the “protein question“, and the “B12  question“) comes not from the non-vegan’s desire to understand more about my life as a vegan but rather to understand what their life might be like should they choose to start living vegan.  It’s a veiled attempt to say “Here’s why I could never be vegan” as if a desire for bacon (for example) gives one moral license to devalue and take the life of a living, breathing sentient being by paying someone to cut her throat and then butcher her body to pieces so one can swallow her flesh and ignobly defecate her remains into a toilet.  A more honest question might be, “Will I have cravings for the familiar foods I enjoy and how will I manage to get through them?”  It does provide a conversational opening for me to help debunk the erroneous preconceived myths about veganism that they may have come to believe up to that point if I’m willing to take the time and they’re willing to listen with an open mind.   I can identify with those fearful questions and recall that the night I began living vegan, I had no idea how I was going to navigate this new life path, but I knew without a doubt that there was no going back to my previous morally indefensible non-vegan path.  And with that, I set my mind to figuring out whatever I needed to know to live as nonviolent a life as possible with as much moral integrity as I can.  I searched for and found fantastic online resources, books and articles that helped me make sense of how to live vegan, and much of this can be found in the Downloadable Content, Online Vegan Resources and Recommended Reading sections of this blog.

A Few Questions We Hope Non-Vegans Will Ponder

Consider how you would answer this question: “Is my pleasure more important than someone else’s life?”  If your answer is”no”, then you already believe what vegans believe and can easily align your beliefs with your actions by living vegan!  If you answered “yes”, then the next question to ask yourself is whether you would find it acceptable for you to be harmed or killed for someone else’s pleasure.  If you answer “no” to this question, then ask yourself how you justify holding this moral double-standard when you understand that to do so results in the violent exploitation and slaughter of innocent, vulnerable individuals.

If you can identify with any of the cravings mentioned above and are not vegan, I’ll first ask you to ask yourself why you feel one way but act another, and then I’ll ask you to make the one decision that will bring your values and actions into congruence – the decision to live vegan.

Dismantle speciesism.  Live vegan.  Educate others.
 
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"Humane", Abolitionism, Animal Rights, Eggs, South Florida Vegan Education Group, Speciesism, Vegan, Vegan Education, Veganism, Violence, Welfarism

Fast Against Slaughter? Not This Vegan

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With messaging focused on cruelty and suffering rather than the inherent injustice of animal use itself, FARM intentionally misses an opportunity to promote veganism and instead promotes harm reduction.

[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites.  Also, please read our Disclaimer regarding external sites, organizations, individuals, etc.]

Life Outside the Fast Lane

I am pleased to report that for the 4th consecutive year, I did not “fast against slaughter” on World Day for Farmed Animals (October 2).  Here are some of my thoughts on why I made that choice… and why I think others should as well.

Before I began living vegan, if I’d known that someone was “fasting against slaughter”, I would not have been compelled in the least to inquire about why they were taking such an action.  In fact, it would likely have further solidified my existing belief that “vegans are extremists”, a myth that was fed to me as a byproduct of our human society’s ubiquitous exploitation of individuals of other species for its own pleasure and benefit.  In my non-vegan mindset, such activities struck me as ludicrous and I could not have imagined investigating or taking part in something I saw as completely nonsensical.  It’s important for those vegans who choose to support and participate in this and related events to understand and carefully consider the probability that a furthering of this “extremist/ridiculous vegan” image may be an unintended outcome of their involvement and association with such single-issue campaigns organized by large, self-serving corporate animal welfare charities.  When this happens we move further from, rather than closer to, the goal of dismantling speciesism to achieve the right for non-human animals to no longer be treated as human property.

In this case, the group behind the event is Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), an organization whose founder Alex Hershaft made this revealing statement when asked in a 2015 interview to describe FARM’s mission:

“Our mission is to get people to reduce and eventually eliminate the number of animals killed for food.  We tried to make it very simple.  We’re not into making vegans, we’re not into reducing suffering, we’re not into ending factory farming.  All that other stuff is implicit, but we’re very focused on just reducing the number of animals [killed], however we can do it, and there are lots of ways of doing it.  The most obvious way is to get people to go vegan, but you can reduce the number much more effectively by getting some major cookie company, like Keebler, to reduce the number of eggs in making cookies.”

Simple logic proves that these campaigns are not reducing animal use and are, in fact, causing more harm than good by failing to clearly, emphatically and unequivocally call for an end to all animal use and instead promote the message that some animal use is morally acceptable.

While it’s a nice-sounding idea that reducing the number of eggs used by a cookie company will reduce the number of animals killed for food, apply a little critical thinking and it is difficult to believe that when Keebler agrees to use fewer eggs, the result is a decrease in egg production and the freeing of laying hens.  Many such reduction initiatives have been implemented in recent years and yet the number of animals being killed every year for human consumption continues to increase, not decrease (for any who might be under the false impression as I once was that “no animals die in egg production”, please read this eye-opening article from Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary).   When animal “rights” organizations such as FARM promote the message that “it’s ok to use eggs – but just not too many eggs” – they are reinforcing the speciesist idea that it’s morally acceptable for humans to use animals and their secretions – to steal their property and their lives – for their own purposes.

FARM’s intentional refusal to promote veganism as a non-negotiable moral imperative and instead to present it as just another option to “reduce the number of animals killed for food” (which conveniently overlooks the myriad other uses of non-humans for human pleasure and personal benefit) is the hallmark of the animal welfare movement.  As always, one need only frame the issue with humans as victims to immediately see the speciesism inherent in the idea of working to “reduce” rather than advocating for a stop to such violent and oppressive victimization.   From a previous Turbulence of Dreaming essay entitled Challenging Our Complacency Vol. 1:

“Unfortunately, it’s quite likely that humans will always rape and murder other humans as they have since the beginning of time, but it’s not likely that anyone is going to advocate for ‘gentler’ rape and ‘kinder’ murder based on that terrible likelihood.  When we believe a behavior is morally unjustifiable, we advocate for the abolition of said behavior rather than ‘nicer’ ways to continue propagating the same injustice.  To do the latter only helps the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the injustice feel comfortable about continuing to reap the benefits of their oppression-of-choice.”

Non-Human Resources

Fasting for farmed animals, as my friend and fellow abolitionist vegan educator Colin Wright has noted, does nothing to further the idea that, if we are to change the property paradigm that allows and demands that animals be used as disposable, replaceable resources to be exploited for human pleasure and benefit, we need always promote veganism as the moral baseline for our treatment of individuals of other species.

There is no discernible educational value in intentionally refusing oneself nutrition in order to make a vague (and mostly silent) point about standing “in remembrance and solidarity” with the millions of animal slaughtered for food each day.  I don’t need to cause my own suffering to enhance my empathy about the unnecessary suffering of my fellow sentient beings.

No, I won’t be fasting against slaughter this year or at any time nor will I ever promote such an idea.  Instead, I’ll continue living vegan and educating others about veganism as our moral obligation to those non-human individuals with whom we share this planet.

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