Despite some technical difficulties with the audio, on Friday 6/16/17, Trish Roberts of HowToGoVegan.org and VeganTrove.comand I discussed several aspects of veganism and its relation to other social justice issues. Here is the link to the video of the livestream:
Thank you to Steve Grumbine of Real Progressives for allowing usspace to engage in discussions about veganism with a particular focus on its ethical implications.
Please join Trish and I as we welcome Elena Brodskaya, co-founder and Presidentof SFVEG on our next livestream Wednesday 6/21/17 at 9:15 pm EDT… and stay tuned for future episodes!
[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites.]
In addition to new content, this essay containspreviously published materialin examining a controversial animal welfare single-issue campaign I see promoted weekly and exploring the speciesism behind it:
Meatless Monday
The problem is not how we exploit animals – the problem is thatwe exploit animals in the first place, so the solution is not to reduce animal abuse; it’s to eliminate animal use… and that solution lies in educating people to live vegan.
If you’re a bank robber and one day realize that robbing banks is morally wrong, you don’t seek better ways to rob banks – you just stop robbing them (unless you’re determined to be a criminal and are willing to pay the consequences if caught, or a sociopath and can’t determine right from wrong). To paraphrase the Roman philosopher Seneca’s wise words, there’s no point in trying to find the right way to do a wrong thing.
Meatless Monday – A Toothless Campaign
According to my research, the idea of Meatless Monday began nearly 100 years in the United States as a way to ration food to help with the war effort. It was revived in 2003, according to www.meatlessmonday.com, as a “public health awareness campaign” in order to address “…the prevalence of preventable illnesses associated with excessive meat consumption.” On their “Why Meatless?” page, in 11 paragraphs and 796 words, there is nothing that speaks about the suffering, confinement, enslavement and slaughter of the non-human animals the campaign is suggesting people abstain from eating one day a week. This campaign is clearly not part of any social justice movement intended to help abolish the property status of animals, nor to help any animal in any way – unless that animal is of the human variety and wants to optimize her/his health, as its stated aim is to help humans lower their risk of contracting preventable chronic diseases linked with the consumption of animal products (heart disease, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease, to name a few). In short, Meatless Monday is rooted in the same self-centered egotism, speciesism and myth of human supremacythat allows humans the self-proclaimed “right” to destroy the lives of non-human animals wantonly and with no regard for their well-being, feelings or right to live autonomous lives without human interference.
There is nothing funny about the killing of vulnerable individuals… except if you’re MeatlessMonday.com, that is. The text reads: “Do you have the day off from work tomorrow? You’re not the only one… ~wink~ “.
Even though it’s clear that the Meatless Monday campaign has nothing to do with helping to bring an end to the exploitation of non-human animals (even though some people claim every meatless meal “saves” X-number of animals, as if skipping a hamburger results in, somewhere, a cow being magically transported from a slaughterhouse to a sanctuary), many vegans – including high-profile celebrity “vegans” – lend their names to and continue to support this campaign, rationalizing that it is “part of a journey” toward veganism –even though it promotes a version of vegetarianism rather than veganism. Some seem to believe it’s necessary to encourage non-vegans to take “baby steps” and that “every little bit helps”.
Eating plants won’t save animals. Dismantling speciesism to abolish animal use will save animals.
It’s my contention that one does not encourage people to practice ethical behavior only when personally convenient or in accordance with some arbitrary set of rules. Coddling those who continue to exploit others when they are well aware that their choices and behaviors condemn individuals to miserable lives and horrific, unnecessary deaths is simply unacceptable. We would never suggest that serial killers take “baby steps” and observe Murder-Free Mondays, would we? Of course not. We would explain to them why their behavior is wrong (assuming they didn’t already know) and demand they stop at once or face dire consequences. What consequences do we impose on those who pay others to do their killing for them so they can dine on the carcasses of vulnerable animals? None… but Nature does (see preventable chronic diseases listed above).
“Meatless” Does More Harm Than Good – From the Industry’s Own Mouth
Further, asking non-vegans to go “meat-free” may do more harm than good as it has been shown that people who give up meat for a short time tend to increase their consumption of animal secretions such as dairy and eggs to offset their deprivation of meat through that time period. Here is a quote connecting “meatless” campaigns and rises in egg demand and consumption from a 2015 interview on the Diane Rehm show (the specific audio clip comes at about 43:23, a courtesy for those who don’t want to sit through listening to rationalizations and justifications abouteggs and “welfare”):
“Just back to that other question about the ‘Meatless’. One of the reasons why the egg industry and demand is (sic) going up is because a lot of the families, like one day a week, are having meatless dinners and they’re substituting eggs for that meatless meal, so that’s another good reason why the egg consumption is going up in this country.” – Paul Sauder, president of Sauder Eggs, chairman of the American Egg Board and a board member of United Egg Producers
Interestingly, if that’s the effect of only one meatless meal per week, the net effect of an entire meatless day (3-5 meals?) such as on Meatless Monday or an entire meatless week would be to cause an even greater increase in egg consumption.
By encouraging non-vegans to take just one day off per week from a particular form of animal use, tacit permission and support are given for them to continue their use unabated the rest of the week. Is that really the message we want to give, whether directly or indirectly? Supporting animal exploitation 6 days a week instead of 7 is like supporting spousal abuse 85% of the time instead of 100%. Who does that?? Answer:
Perpetrators who want to get away with what they can whenever they can, that’s who.
There are those who support the baby-step “journeys” of non-vegans to become vegan – some of which take 2-3 decades or longer – and suggest we should “give them a break, they will eventually arrive”. While I understand that not every person will go vegan overnight (though many of us have), we vegans must remain clear that this is their choice and not our suggestion, remaining unequivocal that anything less than embracing veganism as the moral baseline for our treatment of individuals of other species is to continue being complicit in animal exploitation and needless death. For the billions of non-human animals who suffer and die waiting for “eventually” to happen, “eventually” is unacceptable and arrives much too late. If we see a woman being raped, we don’t go help her “eventually”, nor do we wait for the rapist to complete his “journey” to living a rape-free life, asking him to maybe rape a little less every day and applauding him when he goes a whole day without raping anyone.
What drives some people to accept such an unacceptable double-standard when the victims are non-human animals? The answer is speciesism, the most egregious and deadly form of oppression in existence on our planet today.
Veganism should be the starting point on a journey to live as ethically as possible, not some future goal to attain when one is finally ready to live nonviolently.
Some ask why this same debate repeats every “Meatless” Monday, so here’s why:
Every Monday, some people take a mere 16 hours off from participating in an endless worldwide animal holocaust and actually seem to believe this is somehow commendable and effective. During the Holocaust, I’m sure all the Nazis took naps now and then. That didn’t help their victims at all because, after nap time was over, the terrorism and killing continued. The sad reality of this ineffectual campaign is that every Meatless Meaningless Monday is immediately followed by Return to Terrorism Tuesday and We Keep Killing Wednesday (and on through the week). Imagine if there were campaigns for Rape-Free Fridays or Child Abuse-Free Thursdays – would we applaud those well-intentioned baby steps too? Isn’t it a better use of our limited time, energy and resources to work on creating Exploitation-Free EveryDay by consistently promoting veganism?
If we as vegans refuse to commit to a 100% effort toward clear, consistent, unequivocal vegan education, how can we expect non-vegans to commit to a 100% vegan life when, by engaging in and promoting speciesist single-issue campaigns, we’re essentially giving them permission to exploit animals most, but not all, of the time?
Baby steps are for babies. I challenge my fellow vegans to be the adults we are and stop promoting reduction over abolition, which only makes the unacceptable seem acceptable and maintains the speciesist status quo. This behavior is known as enabling and, the sooner it stops, the sooner real change begins.
If you’re already vegan, please stop making it OK for others to continue destroying the lives of non-human animals by lending your support to half-measures like Meatless Meaningless Monday and the other useless, ineffective and counter-productive single-issue campaigns promoted by animal welfare organizations that treat “vegan” like a dirty word. Instead, let’s focus our efforts on clear, consistent vegan education wherever and whenever we can, being unequivocal about the idea of veganism as the moral baseline for our treatment of the animals with whom we share this small planet.
[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.]
If we are appalled at the idea of eating human babies but accepting of the idea of eating non-human babies, then we need to examine our speciesism.
Rational Lies Cause Mythunderstandings
When it comes to the use and exploitation of animals for reasons of palate pleasure, comfort and convenience, I’m not proud of how I used to think, but it’s part of my story and may be relatable to others who live in a society where speciesism is currently the norm.
In my denial, I used to rationalize that it’s a good thing we kill “food” animals when they’re young so they don’t endure prolonged suffering (slaughter age for most non-human animals used for food is between 1-6 months. If you’re not yet vegan, take a moment to consider that those are babies on your plate and that the age of the victim is, in the end, irrelevant…).
Through my own extravagant mental gymnastics, I found ways to justify my use of animals and had crafted a comforting myth for myself that went like this:
“Yes, I’m aware that veal calves are traumatically separated from their mothers shortly after birth, confined and chained by their necks in crates, fed a nutrient-poor diet that causes them health problems like anemia and then killed within a few months, but here’s why that’s ok: they’re not really ‘suffering‘ because they’ve never experienced a ‘good’ life and therefore have no frame of reference for what pleasure and comfort feel like. To them, this is just ‘life’, much as when someone is born without legs, they never ‘miss’ their legs since they don’t know what it is to have legs. They just adapt and deal with life as they know it. And, if by some chance I’m wrong and the calves actually are suffering, it’s certainly better to kill them and put them out of their misery as soon as possible. Either way, there’s no problem that I can see.”
Yes, I actually said that. More than once. To anyone who’d listen.
I must have believed, in some misguided utilitarian fantasy, that we were being “humane“, merciful and doing non-human individuals a favor by slaughtering them to avoid prolonging their miserable lives. I conveniently overlooked the obvious fact that we are the ones causing their misery in the first placeby forcibly breeding them into existence for the express purpose of killing them and that the only way to stop all of what’s deemed as “misery”, “abuse”, “suffering” and “cruelty” is to stop behaving as if non-human individuals are objects, things and replaceable, disposable resources to be used to satisfy our trivial desires.
In short, when we understand that it’s wrong to hurt and kill innocent, vulnerable individuals irrespective of species membership, age, gender identity, class, race or any other arbitrary criterion, we have a moral obligation to live vegan.
Rational Eyes See the Truth
I’m glad that when my mind and heart woke up to reality and I became aware of the consequences of my behavior, I began living vegan that same day.
The best amends I can make for the horrific and irreparable damage I used to cause non-human individuals by supporting a system that demands their enslavement, exploitation and execution is to live differently, to live ethically, to live vegan… and to carry a clear, consistent, unequivocal vegan message to others.
I’m asking you to do the same, starting today. Live vegan and advocate veganism. It’s a choice you will never regret.
[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites.]
Please note that, during the show, I lost my Internet connection for roughly ten minutes around the 38-minute mark but was able to return before the close of the program.
We hope to be invited back again for more opportunities to speak with Steve and further discuss veganism on Real Progressives!
[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites.]
When we as vegan advocates dilute what veganism is by wrongly conflating it with vegetarianism, we are a) being dishonest, b) misleading the public in a way that costs the lives of non-human individuals and c) missing a key opportunity to educate people about the ethical and moral reasons to live vegan and end their participation in the fundamental injustice of animal use.
Here is a widely accepted definition (arguably, it’s the definition) of veganism:
“A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms, it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.” – Vegan Society 1979
But isn’t vegetarianism a good thing?
I’ve observed many people and groups extolling the virtues of vegetarianism, calling it an “ethical” and “compassionate” choice that “reduces cruelty”, however when one applies a modicum of critical thinking and takes a closer look, one quickly arrives at a far different conclusion. An excerpt from What Is Wrong With Vegetarianism? from UVE Archives(I encourage everyone to read the entire essay linked above):
“The Moral Problems with Vegetarianism
Many people are vegetarians for ethical reasons. They object to either the treatment of animals in animal agriculture or the intentional killing of animals, or both. Paradoxically, despite their objections to the treatment or intentional killing of animals, they continue to consume dairy products and eggs, which… certainly contribute more to the suffering and arguably as much to the intentional killing of animals than the consumption of meat products. In fact, to the extent that a vegetarian replaces calories from flesh with calories from dairy and egg products, the vegetarian has increased his or her contribution to animal suffering.”
“Potential confusion is not in any way helped when so many groups and organisations conflate the words ‘vegetarian’ and ‘vegan’, implying that they are similar. The standard definition has become so accepted here in the UK that the supermarkets all stock huge ranges of products defined as ‘vegetarian’, all supported by skilful marketing strategies that promote them as everything from ‘healthy’ to ‘humane’ with few exceptions, each of which contains animal milk in some form – frequently as cheese – and eggs which are often described as ‘free range’.
Many of us – and I was one – mistakenly assume that ‘vegetarian’ is synonymous with ‘cruelty free’ when nothing could possibly be further from the truth. Yes, I had stopped eating the obvious slabs of bloodied flesh. But what I did not realise was that my dietary consumption was continuing to supply the market with dead flesh, even though I did not consume it directly. And as for my non-food choices…”
I was once under the erroneous impression that vegans were simply vegetarians whose diet also excluded dairy, eggs and honey. This seemed to me to be an extreme position to take, but then, so did vegetarianism as I was indoctrinated to fall in line with the common societal belief that humans need to eat (and otherwise use) animals to survive. I believed vegetarianism and veganism to be aberrant dietary choices and had no real understanding of either as having any sort of ethical underpinnings. I do recall being aware of certain animal “rights” groups promoting vegetarian diets but I wrote those groups off as “extremists” and paid no attention to their antics and promotions (which, ironically, I would later take part in myself for a regrettable decade).
On the evening that veganism was explained to me in a calm and rational manner, I understood that it went far beyond mere dietary choices and found that what is truly “extreme” is the injustice of enslaving, exploiting and executing innocent, vulnerable sentient beings to satisfy human pleasure, comfort and convenience. In that moment, I experienced a fundamental internal shift and made the decision to bring my morals and actions into congruence by living vegan.
If we, as vegan individuals and groups, are afraid to commit to a 100% effort toward clear, consistent, unequivocal vegan education because “vegetarian sounds better” and is “more marketable” (as I was told by a representative of a speciesist animal welfare group), how do we expect non-vegans to commit to a 100% vegan life when we’re afraid to say what we really mean and ask for what we really want?
If you want less than veganism, then ask for it and that’s what you’ll get. After all, it doesn’t require any real change to move from one form of non-veganism to another, and make no mistake that “vegetarian” in all its guises and with all its prefixes and hyphenations is anything other than animal exploitation. Each new permutation is just a new coat of blood-red paint on the same old abattoir.
Conversely, if you want people to take a firm stand against injustice and oppression toward vulnerable sentient beings by first ending their participation in it, educate them about veganism as our minimum moral obligation toward the non-humans with whom we share this planet. In this way, we move closer to dismantling speciesism, which can be defined as “a double standard created by humans placing higher moral value on some individual animals over other individual animals, based solely on the morally irrelevant criterion of species membership“.The fundamental injustice of speciesismbegets all other forms of oppression toward vulnerable individuals and groups that we see running rampant on our planet today. We believe the dismantling and abolition of speciesism are integral in starting the chain of conscious evolution that will lead to the end of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism and the like.
Doesn’t that sound like the kind of world in which you’d like to live? Let’s make it happen, one new vegan at a time!
[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites.]
I received a call today about participating in a marketing focus group on auto care and the caller asked me as part of the questionnaire, “If money wasn’t an object, what would you love to spend your life doing?” I immediately replied, “Educating people about a social justice issue near to my heart – veganism.”
My friend and fellow vegan educator Colin Wright wrote an essay about engaging in vegan advocacy over the phone and I thought about his ideas at the moment I decided to shift the conversation into a potential vegan education experience (please read Colin’s excellent essay hereand consider perusing the rest of his site for more information and ideas).
The caller (a 51-year-old gentleman named John) and I ended up talking for over 20 minutes and, in that time, he asked and I answered questions about plant-based nutrition – protein, B12… the usual – and I explained the ethical reasons for veganism to him, to which he said he agreed. His questions were insightful and he seemed interested in and agreeable to the answers I provided. It turns out he’d had a couple of close relationships with vegans in the past, so he wasn’t a total stranger to what I was presenting. I was sure to direct him to VeganEducationGroup.com and HowToGoVegan.org as resources for further information.
When the call was coming to an end, I thanked him for taking the time to speak with me and to ask me the questions he didn’t have to ask, as well as for listening thoughtfully to the answers. I ended by stating, “If you believe that causing unnecessary harm and death to innocent, vulnerable beings is wrong, then you stop engaging in behaviors that bring those results. To do that, you begin by living vegan.” He said, “I agree!” and thanked me for the conversation.
There was a time when I would have shied away from engaging a stranger in this manner for fear of not being well-received, but I’ve come to believe in taking the opportunities as they’re presented and educating about veganism clearly, consistently and unequivocally whenever I can.
The “V” Word
Slightly tangential note: There’s nothing “scary” or “off-putting” about the word vegan or the idea of veganism, despite what some large animal welfare corporations would want people to believe (and they propagate that myth to further their own ends and increase their profitability at the expense of the animals they purport to be “helping”). When presented in a calm, rational and respectful manner, there is nothing about veganism that drives people away. On the contrary, these ideas of nonviolence, fairness and true justice for all resonate deeply with those who hear them and frequently foster internal and external changes that can and will shift the current speciesist paradigm that demands the enslavement, exploitation and execution of the most vulnerable members of our global society – non-human individuals.
[I encourage all readers to click theblue linksembedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites.]
Although the scenario of all humanity becoming vegan overnight does not seem feasible, even if that were to happen, is the answer to a potential animal overpopulation problem to continue forcibly breeding them into existence for the sole purpose of killing them for human pleasure, comfort and convenience? It takes some serious, Olympic-gold-medal-worthy mental and ethical gymnastics to get to “Yes” as the answer to that question and to use it as justification for continuing animal exploitation and slaughter.
Our Own Devices
Considering I have a device I’m able to carry in my pocket that can, with the flick of a finger, connect me to the entire repository of human knowledge, allow me to speak with friends who are 9,600 miles away as if we were in the same room (hello Tasmania!) AND help me locate the nearest public toilet (quite possibly the most important app ever invented… but I digress), I’m fairly certain that with a minimally concerted effort across humanity we can find a suitable, nonviolent solution to where all the cows, pigs, chickens, fish and other non-human refugees of animal agriculture will go once they’re no longer seen and treated as mere commodities and are finally afforded the one basic, fundamental right that ought never be withheld from any sentient being – the right not to be used as the property of more powerful others.
Excuses, Excuses
The simplest and most immediate action one can take to stop the violent oppression and exploitation of billions of innocent, vulnerable individuals is to start living vegan. There are no valid reasons not to; there are only morally unjustifiable excuses to hide behind.
[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites.]
Hi all! 🙂 Because we appreciate your continuing support, we’ve launched a new fundraising platform that gives YOU something great and lasting with a powerful message to share while simultaneously helping us continue our unequivocal vegan advocacy!
Please help South Florida Vegan Education Group raise funds to create a vegan world through dismantling speciesism one conversation at a time. Encourage everyone you meet to live vegan by sporting one (or three) of these nifty shirts (just not all at the same time, unless you live someplace cold…)! As always, all donations are tax deductible – just contact us for the documentation if you require it (see bottom of page for more information).
Here’s how it works:
We’ve created a collection of three awesome shirts on booster.com, each with a straightforward vegan message and a link to our website. Just click on any of the blue booster.com links in this essay (there are 5 of them, you can’t miss), choose the shirt(s) you want and make your donation. Then, get ready to be a walking billboard for veganism and animal rights! If we’re able to sell a minimum of 16 of each shirt by April 26, the shirts will be printed and delivered to buyers by the 2nd week of May. If we don’t reach the minimum goal, all orders will be refunded in full. Prices range from $20.00 USD (t-shirt) to $30.00 USD (hoodie), shipping is extra (sorry! 🙁 ) and will be calculated at time of purchase.
We hope that you will enjoy carrying the message of veganism as much as we enjoyed creating these shirts for you! Please share our campaign with others. Let’s create a vegan world together!!!
South Florida Vegan Education Group is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. All donations are tax-deductible.
FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE & CONSUMER SERVICES REGISTRATION # CH47564. A COPY OF THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICES BY CALLING TOLL-FREE (800-435-7352) WITHIN THE STATE. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION BY THE STATE.
It was recently suggested to me, once again, that vegans ought to “encourage and support incremental changes made by non-vegans on their journey to becoming vegan”. In something of a new slant on the idea, this individual likened the situation to alcoholics becoming and hopefully remaining sober in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and finding support from other AA members during that process. They said, “AA has Twelve Steps and that’s ok, so why should it be different with non-vegans?”
It was immediately clear that this individual had little if any understanding of how 12-Step support groups function, nor much understanding of just how far short their “non-veganism-is-like-alcoholism” analogy fell.
[This essay briefly discusses correlations between defense mechanisms used by addicts to protect their maladaptive behaviors and those used by non-vegans to protect their use of products of animal exploitation. From that perspective, non-veganism can be compared with alcoholism.]
Having had over two decades of experience both professionally and personally with many facets of substance abuse recovery, I have come to understand that the 12-Step process in AA and similar recovery fellowships doesn’t lead to sobriety as an end goal to be achieved, but rather presents sobriety (or at least abstinence from addictive mood-and-mind altering chemicals) as a starting point on a path of recovery that will hopefully last a lifetime. In order to fully benefit from and move through the Steps, one must cease the maladaptive, self-destructive behavior of substance abuse at the onset of the 12-Step journey of honest introspection, internal moral inventory, spiritual housecleaning and daily behavior maintenance. Otherwise, if one continues their chemical use, one’s chances of growing, healing and recovering from the damage done by one’s addiction(s) diminish by the day. As it says in the Alcoholics Anonymous basic text (commonly known as the Big Book), “Half measures availed us nothing.”
I’m not opposed to encouraging and supporting any individual who wishes to stop abusing themselves no matter how quickly or slowly they cease their self-destructive behaviors nor how many times they relapse and resume damaging themselves. I’m firmly in support of self-improvement. However, here is a key distinction between alcoholism (and other manifestations of addiction) and the consumption of animal products – alcoholics who drink (and addicts who use) primarily victimize themselves* through engaging in active addiction while non-vegans primarily victimize innocent, vulnerable individuals through the consumption and use of products of animal exploitation to satisfy their pleasure, comfort and convenience. Of course, mountains of scientific evidence make it abundantly clear that non-vegans also compromise their own health by consuming animal flesh and secretions, so they can also be counted among their own victims.
[*it should not be discounted that alcoholics and other addicts do harm others, including but not limited to family members, loved ones, employers/employees, co-workers and friends, both directly and indirectly through their self-destructive behaviors, however those others, in many cases, have choices as to how much abuse they are willing to take and have the ability to set boundaries to limit their exposure to the damaging behaviors of the alcoholic/addict in their lives. Conversely, the animals who are unnecessarily harmed and killed for use by non-vegans have absolutely no choice nor ability to take action to seek safety on their own behalf. They are, in the purest sense, defenseless innocent victims who are powerless over our relentless oppression.]
Encouraging and supporting people as they strive to stop hurting themselves and become physically, emotionally and spiritually healthy is appropriate and acceptable. Encouraging and supporting people to take their time (sometimes for decades) in ceasing their complicity in the morally unjustifiable exploitation, enslavement and execution of the most vulnerable members of our global society – non-human individuals – is inappropriate and unacceptable. The transition timeline for anyone to embrace veganism is up to each individual who moves in that direction (for many of us, the transition was instantaneousonce we understood the fundamental injustices in which we were participating and knew immediately we had to stop). What is up to us, as vegan advocates, is to present a clear and morally consistent message that anything less than veganism means a person is still engaging in violent, unacceptable, oppressive exploitation of the vulnerable and to encourage the fastest transition possible. To think and behave otherwise is to engage in and reinforce the current cultural paradigm of speciesism, as one would never take such a laissez-faire position if the victims of any oppressive situation were human.
Is Veganism “Difficult”?
When we clearly define an idea or concept, especially one that is routinely misunderstood, misinterpreted and mischaracterized, it becomes easier to understand and identify whether it is something with which one resonates ethically. Veganism is:
“A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms, it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.” – Vegan Society 1979
There is a difference between something being “difficult” and something being “inconvenient”. To many, the prospect of living vegan can seem daunting at first, as it is a way of living that goes far beyond mere dietary choices and extends into most aspects of life and the choices we make on a daily basis (clothing, cosmetics, body care products, home cleaning products, furniture, automobile upholstery, etc.). I have found, as have many other vegans with whom I’ve spoken, that the changes I once may have thought of as “difficulties” turned out to be “inconveniences”. For example, it was never actually “difficult” to reach ten inches past the cow’s milk to pick up the almond milk – it was merely inconvenient. In reality, any perceived inconveniences I have ever faced in living vegan pale in comparison to the actual difficulties (which is far too weak a word to adequately describe a lifetime of horrific and perverse agonies) suffered by every animal used to satisfy human pleasure.
Hi. My Name is Keith, I’m a Recovering Non-Vegan
Does making the commitment to live vegan require a Twelve Step process? No. The only Twelve Steps I know that relate to veganism are the twelve steps it takes to walk past the meat/dairy department to the produce department in my local supermarket, and I find those are twelve incredibly easy steps to take!
Here are the Two Steps we suggest when it comes to veganism:
Why waste time – and continue causing unnecessary suffering and death to others – by intentionally putting roadblocks in our own way? Perhaps it’s better to heed AA’s popular slogan, “Keep It Simple”.
If you are already vegan, please educate others about veganism. If you are not vegan and believe that animals matter morally at all, please consider living vegan as it is the choice that matches your morals.
[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites. Also, please read our Disclaimerregarding external sites, organizations, individuals, etc.]
[Author’s note – I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites. The podcasts and essays connected to those links will help to expand on the ideas presented here.]
Imagine you’re on a crowded bus and it’s your stop. As you exit, you pass the driver whom you know from previous trips and, as usual, wish him a nice day. As he replies, you clearly smell alcohol on his breath and notice his eyes are red and glassy. What do you do?
Do you leave the bus and go about your day, hoping the driver won’t crash the bus and injure or kill himself, the other passengers and possibly some pedestrians and other drivers? Or do you exit and say a little prayer for them all, sending positive energy their way (“Nama-stay-in-your-lane, Mr. Bus Driver!”)? Do you dive into denial and tell yourself you didn’t see what you saw or smell what you smelled, convincing yourself that it’s just your imagination because, after all, you respect this bus driver and he’s a professional? Do you leave the bus and call the bus company to report the driver? Or do you confront him, alert the other passengers to the situation and call 911?
I hope I’m never in such a situation but, if I am, I hope I’d take the kind of action airport security screeners took in Miami on July 1, 2002 when they smelled alcohol on two America West pilots’ breath – they took a stand and did the right thing by calling TSA, who then called the police and (barely) stopped the plane from taking off for Phoenix with 127 passengers and 3 other crew members on board.
What’s this got to do with veganism?
Imagine you’re vegan and you become aware, as I and many others have, that the animal welfare/protection groups you and others trust to carry an anti-speciesist vegan message and work for animal rights are actually doing quite the opposite. What do you do?
Do you continue to support such organizations, either financially or otherwise, and promote them because “at least they’re doing some good work, right?” while ignoring the moral inconsistency of their campaignsthat a) ask for an end or, more often, only a reduction to some forms of violent oppression toward non-human individuals while doing nothing to stop other forms, all of which are equally unjust and morally unacceptable, b) engage in blatant speciesism by advocating for specific favored species rather than working to end all animal use by promoting veganism through vegan education and c) help animal exploiters streamline their productivity and become more profitable? [the list of ways such organizations betray and fail the animals they purport to help is quite long – these were the first three that came to mind]
Do you “hope” that through the promotion of such ideas as vegetarianism, reducetarianism, “ditching meat”, “ditching fur”, eating “cage-free”, “humanely-raised” or “local” animals and their secretions and the myriad other non-vegan dietary and fashion options offered by these organizations, consumers of animal products will somehow “make the connection” – a common phrase among those who promote welfare – stumble into the decision to live vegan (hopefully within a decade or three…) and embrace the ethical stance that lies at the heart of veganism – despite the intentional absence of a clear, consistent vegan message coming from these organizations (I will provide an example of one such organization’s current campaign below)?
Or do you take a stand for justice by removing your support from such organizations and making public their betrayal of animals while focusing your limited time, energy and other resources on engaging in clear, consistent grassroots vegan education that truly addresses the underlying cause of animal exploitation – the fallacy of human supremacy that has created and fostered a paradigm of globalspeciesism claiming the lives of billions of vulnerable individuals every year?
Here’s an example of one such organization and their unwillingness to provide a vegan message at the risk of losing donations and other funding:
I watched a recent video by The Humane League advertising their new chicken-specific 88% Campaign aimed to “reduce their immense suffering” by campaigning “for companies to make meaningful changes”, “address health issues” of birds who will still be killed, “improve living conditions” of birds who will still be killed and “replace slaughter methods”. They purport that “things are starting to change” (this alleged “start” comes after 200+ years of similar animal welfare campaigns – after a solid two centuries, are we to believe that The Humane League has finally cracked the code and is making substantive change with their repackaging of the same methods that have yet to achieve such change? That’s called branding and marketing) and trumpet “some major victories for chickens”, showing a Huffington Post headline stating “There’s A Major New Effort To Help The Billions Of Chickens We Eat Every Year” and “New protections for farm animals in 2017” from the San Francisco Chronicle. Those are feel-good ideas, but the truth behind them is that the so-called “protections” don’t protect these individuals from being killed nor “help” them in any significant way considering they are still destined to be eaten by the billions every year by a largely non-vegan human population. THL goes on to ask that donors “support the movement to reduce the suffering of billions of chickens” (a focus on abuse rather than use, which is at the core of the welfare movement) and that “Together, we can create the change” (accompanied by footage of a chicken gasping for her last breaths). There is, of course, no definition of what “the change” is, so that is left open to interpretation by the viewer who has now seen images of animals being neglected and abused and will likely take away the idea that animal abuse, rather than use, is the problem that needs addressing. When The Humane League’s logo appears seconds later, the deal is sealed – here the viewer is (mis)led to believe THL is diligently working to make “the change”, whatever that is. With three seconds to go in this one minute and forty-one second video, a tiny message appears:
If you squint…
I’ll enlarge the intentionally minuscule message here:
REMEMBER: THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO REDUCE THE SUFFERING OF FARM ANIMAL IS TO ELIMINATE MEAT, DAIRY AND EGGS FROM YOUR DIET.
How is the viewer supposed to “remember” information that has at no point previously been provided to them? Up until that moment, there is no imagery or verbiage in the video to support or even hint at the information in that statement – it’s all about the suffering of chickens. Moreover, that statement would be easily missed as it appears in tiny font at the bottom of the screen after The Humane League’s logo has disappeared and the screen has faded to black. As the video boasts high production values, it isn’t a stretch to say that this sizing, placement and timing is quite intentional. It’s also not a vegan message by any definition, as it excludes any mention of the myriad non-food-related uses of animals and, interestingly, overlooks honey in its menu of dietary items.
In reading the 88% Campaign White Paper, I was not surprised to find the following passages lamenting how the quality of modern chicken meat has been reduced, discussing how to “improve” slaughter conditions and explaining how the implementation of THL’s recommendations for chicken welfare would help the animal agriculture corporations and the consumers of animal products simultaneously:
“The quality of chicken meat is also substantially affected too (sic), with white striping and wooden breast impacting the texture, fat content and nutritional value”. “Meat that comes from birds suffering from woody breast or from those with both conditions are found to have a harder texture, impaired ability to hold water, and poorer nutritional value… White striping by itself also impacts the general appearance of the breast meat… These conditions are forcing the downgrading of meat due to the lack of aesthetic appeal… There is an alternative; breeds exist that can alleviate many of the negative predispositions we see with the current typical fast-growing breeds. By utilising these higher welfare breeds and giving birds more space, enriching the environment, and improving slaughtering conditions using CAK or LAPS, the industry would see an improvement in meat quality [italics added] and, most importantly, an improved level of welfare for the billions of chickens farmed for meat production every year.”
“Slaughter conditions are improved by the use of controlled atmosphere stunning or killing (CAK) which involves transferring the birds to a controlled atmosphere chamber with gases or gas mixtures (gases permitted are carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and inert gases such as argon and nitrogen)… Low atmospheric stunning may also provide a more humane method of slaughter… The birds are thus stunned or killed, depending on the length of exposure to the gases or low pressure. Both methods eliminate the need for live handling, shackling and inversion of conscious chickens, and should ensure chickens are fully unconscious at neck cutting and dead by the time they reach the scald tank.”
This is from a corporation claiming to help animals, yet it sounds eerily like something one would expect to read in an animal agriculture insider publication.
From the SF Chronicle article comes a disturbing quote from THL’s executive director, David Coman-Hidy: “We’re [italics added] looking to raise birds that are not just bred to suffer, that are bred with some consideration to the quality of their lives”. “We’re”?? Does this indicate that The Humane League is now in the business of raising chickens? One has to wonder whether Mr. Coman-Hidy has lost sight of the blurry boundary where his multi-million-dollar corporation and the multi-million-dollar animal agriculture corporations begin and end, or whether he’s simply acknowledging that the two are truly partners in profit. Either way, the quote could just as easily have come from the mouth of any duplicitous farmer seeking to placate animal welfare proponents. I shudder to hear the head of an organization that purports to have the best interests of animals in mind make such a statement.
Sadly, campaigns like this from The Humane League don’t aim to end the use of chickens (or other non-human individuals) for food and other purposes. They simply aim to alter or, to use their marketing terminology, “improve” conditions for chickens that will still be killed for human consumption (their slaughter method improvement recommendations take a page out of PeTA’s book) and, in so doing, increase THL donations, create better and more profitable conditions for the animal suppliers and assure consumers that they can have “higher-welfare” animal products. The one group that loses every time and pays with their lives is the chickens. If this is a “victory”, then it is a victory under some new definition of which I am not aware.
Playing nicely in the sandbox
More often than not, those of us who make the choice to live vegan upon coming to understand, abhor and eschew participation in the injustices being done to non-human individuals tend to speak out against those and other injustices. We carry the message that living vegan is the clearest path toward dismantling speciesism and creating a world in which all sentient beings are given the right to live autonomous lives free from being used without their consent to satisfy the pleasures and conveniences of more powerful others.
When one engages in critical thinking, which is different than being critical and which I believe every social justice advocate ought to do, one can quickly see past the marketing propaganda of the animal welfare corporations (which is similar in form and function to the marketing techniques of the animal exploiters they purport to oppose) and begin to understand just how dishonest they truly are.
I find it interesting and disturbing that, when some of us challenge and call attention to individuals and groups when we see them engaging in intentional deception and manipulation to further their own ends (said deceptions and manipulations resulting in the continued exploitation and needless deaths of animals and increased profits for themselves and animal exploiters), we are told we’re being “divisive” and are rebuked for “not playing well with others”. It’s important to remember that being vegan doesn’t mean one is above reproach nor that one is incapable of being as dishonest, calculating, manipulative and lacking in integrity as any other person, vegan or not. I have observed some of the most “highly regarded” animal advocates engaging in blatantly disingenuous efforts, claiming to be working in the best interests of animals while in reality fostering speciesism and working to advance their careers and make a profit. Examples of this abound in animal welfare corporations and I seem to see more of them by the day. I can think of no reason why I would want to “play” or work with anyone who would choose to behave in such a way, either in vegan advocacy or anywhere else. Boundaries keep individuals and organizations healthy; engaging with toxic individuals and organizations is damaging on many levels.
I recently had the privilege of having a conversation with a paid employee of a multi-million dollar animal welfare organization, though I will not identify that individual or their organization here as I did not ask their permission to do so (it wasn’t my intention to do an interview and exposé) and respect their right to anonymity. Here are the salient points from that discussion:
Despite our obvious philosophical differences when it comes to animal advocacy methodologies (abolitionism vs. utilitarian welfarism), we both agreed that animal exploiters are not the problem and that the real solution lies with educating animal product consumers about veganism. They stated their organization “targets” animal suppliers “but always talks about going veg in our presentations”, and I asked that “veg” be defined, as I found it unclear. They told me “It means vegan”, so I asked why they don’t just say “vegan” if that’s truly what they mean and if it’s because it’s not a “marketable” word, and I was informed that “studies show people respond better to words like veg and vegetarian” (I personally find that approach dishonest – say what you mean and mean what you say – and believe that an organization that asks for one thing when they mean another lacks integrity. I also believe the studies cited are inherently biased and flawed). I asked whether they would agree that, since we as individuals and groups have “limited resources” (their term with which I wholeheartedly agree), a better use of those resources might be to engage the public in clear, consistent vegan education to strike at the root of the problem rather than flailing at the branches that only grow back stronger once they’re pruned. Their answer was a simple “No”.
It was brought to my attention later that this is the only answer one could give to such a question when one’s career depends on a steady stream of income through a steady stream of donations brought in by a steady stream of single-issue campaigns that avoid a clear vegan message in order not to disrupt the status quo of animal use in any meaningful way. After all, the reality is that if animal welfare corporations truly focused their efforts and resources (and hundreds of millions of combined dollars) on getting people to live vegan and brought an end to animal exploitation, they would have to shutter up their businesses and go find other work… and that’s just not something careerists are interested in doing when they’ve carved out a comfortable niche for themselves.
With the current animal welfare movement heading in no discernible direction (backward seems to be the most likely choice), abolitionist vegans face an uphill battle that’s twofold – 1) educate the non-vegan public about veganism and 2) educate fellow vegans about the inherent and systemic hypocrisy of the animal welfare corporations and the single-issue marketing campaigns they frequently design and implement (and recycle and repeat) in order to keep the donor dollars rolling in. If we truly want to create “the change” – changing the animals-as-property paradigm that that allows for and demands the morally unjustifiable enslavement, exploitation and execution of billions of non-human individuals every year for no better reason than to satisfy the fleeting pleasures, comforts and conveniences of humans – this is how we do it:
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
Can someone explain to me why The Humane League, an animal welfare group that received a ONE MILLION DOLLAR GRANT a year ago, needs to put on a $50.00-per-ticket fundraising gala 20 miles from my house today??? Have they fallen on hard times already? Did they accidentally drop the million down a sewer or leave it on a bus? They certainly didn’t spend it on educating people about veganism, as that would conflict with their stated speciesist purposes (more about that below).
With any luck and by keeping our windows closed, we won’t be able to smell the plant-based hypocrisy wafting in from Ft. Lauderdale this evening.
[WARNING: this essay contains pockets of sarcasm (from the Greek word sarkasmos, meaning “to tear flesh” – not very vegan of me, I know, but it’s metaphorical so I’m going with it). If my frustration with animal welfare organizations’ humaneshit were radioactive, I’d be melting Geiger counters right now]
Marketing – lies designed to separate you from your money and your morals
One would think that an organization with at least a cool million in the bank and that ended 2014 with $968,246.00 in total revenue might throw a sell-out-bration on their own dime rather than acting like they need a handout…
…but that would presuppose that such a speciesist organization (they focus exclusively on farm animals to the exclusion of other exploited non-humans) is interested in more than self-branding and maximizing donations by working extremely hard to convince donors and the world at large that they are “making a difference for animals” through their “online and community-based vegetarianadvocacy programs”. Sadly, it’s a very profitable farce that moves us no closer to ending animal use as their campaigns stay stuck in the same old “cage-free-by-2025-but-still-exploited (-and-ultimately-killed) -every-day-until-and-after-that-time” mentality. That’s what they call a “victory” – eight years from now, chickens will still be exploited and killed… but at least they won’t be in cages when it happens. Since the average life span of egg-laying hens is 2 years, that “victory” will happen 4 generations of chickens from now. Another shining “victory” from The Humane League was convincing United Egg Producers to utilize “in-ovo egg sexing technology” to “enable the termination of all male-identified eggs from the hatchery, preventing them from ever being hatched and culled”, as male chicks are useless (read: profitless) by-products of the egg industry and are currently either ground alive or left to suffocate to death on the first – and only – day of their lives. Unless I’m missing something, this sounds perversely like chicken abortions. And unless I’m missing something else, it seems that The Humane League is overlooking the fact that if it’s wrong to kill male chickens, it’s equally wrong to kill female chickens, and yet their campaigns regarding those individuals seem to end at ensuring cage-free executions.
I’m baffled that so many people are either unwilling or unable to see that when a group such as this (and all the other large animal welfare corporations) partners with institutional animal exploiters to create and promote “humane” ways to use animals rather than actually working to end animal use, that is still a very clear and direct promotion of animal use… and that use is funded by donations from galas like the one here on February 4 and others around the country.
Denial of reality never changes reality. It only leads to a state of willful ignorance.
Can You Say “Conflict of Interest”?
Some would undoubtedly point out that The Humane League was “Named ‘Top Charity ‘by Animal Charity Evaluators 4 years in a row”, however it is a dubious honor for several reasons, most notably due to the fact that THL’s founder, Nick Cooney, “…has been the main person responsible for producing the pseudoscientific research that ACE relies upon to justify its belief in the effectiveness of interventions, which is the allegedly objective basis for its unfailingly consistent recommendation of Cooney’s charities [which include the speciesist and profit-motivated Mercy for Animals and the Good Food Institute– Editor]; and moreover, when Cooney became involved in a new charity lacking any track record, ACE suspended its normal criteria in order to recommend it. At the very minimum, Cooney’s thinking has had a great degree of influence on ACE’s thinking.” – Re-evaluating Animal Charity Evaluators, 12/22/2016
So, this means this “top charity” was chosen by ACE based on criteria designed and presented by… [drum roll] …the head of the charity they’re supposedly “objectively evaluating”??? The stacking of that deck is higher than H$U$ President and CEO Wayne Pacelle’s salary (a paltry $392,107 in 2015).
The sad and certain bottom line is this:
A donation to The Humane League (or any other animal “welfare”/”protection” organization) represents direct financial complicity in institutionalized animal exploitation. Tragically, through clever and deceptive marketing, animal welfare organizations have convinced vegans to fund the exact injustices they stridently oppose. I speak from personal experience because I fell victim to this trap for years and when I learned the truth, I felt betrayed. What I know today is that with awareness comes responsibility and that, once aware, continuing down the same path makes me not a victim but a volunteer.
I can only imagine the good The Humane League could do if they were to focus their time, energy, wealth and considerable marketing acumen on engaging in clear, consistent vegan education, but to do so would risk alienating their non-vegan donor base so it’s simply not an option.
I see that the gala has sold out. That makes sense since The Humane League has already sold out the animals.
I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites. The podcasts and essays connected to those links will help to expand on the ideas presented here.
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
Before I go further, I would like to state that there is a distinction between simply being critical for criticism’s sake (which I am not) and employing critical thinking and then responding appropriately (which I am). In situations where erroneous ideas that further a particular injustice are presented as facts, it is incumbent upon individuals who see this to call attention to it and make clear to as many people as possible that what’s been presented is not as it may appear on its glossy surface. It is crucial that we examine the information we’re given to determine its veracity and legitimacy, and to speak out when we find that it lacks credibility. To do otherwise is to give tacit acceptance to the unacceptable and allow propaganda to flourish unchallenged. I do not have a problem with Dr. Oz, as I’m not aware of his work (except for this) – I have a problem with his misrepresentation of veganism and would hope that other vegans would take issue, as well.
From the segment, a failed attempt at a clever animal exploitation-themed pun…
Programming
Having canceled our cable subscription over a year ago (just Interwebs and Netflix for us now), there is very little in the way of TV viewing in our home, so our exposure to much of what America is being programmed to watch is quite limited. Of course, we still see people posting and sharing content online, so when I recently saw a slew of vegans sharing and resharing this segment from Dr. Oz (I’m only vaguely aware of who he is and had actually never seen his face or heard his voice prior to last week and am not surprised to learn that he was spawned into prominence by the never-vegan-and-never-miss-an-opportunity-to-be-an-opportunist Oprah), I took some time to watch it and see what the fuss was all about. After all, everyone seemed excited that he was talking about veganism… or was he?
The answer, as we can see, is no.
In 13-ish minutes of erroneously conflating the consumption of plant-based foods with veganism, there were ZERO mentions of the injustice of animal use as the primary reason for living vegan (“reasons” given included “eat cleaner, greener and lose weight” and other personal, humancentric concerns about “how you look and how you feel” – there was absolutely no discussion about animals). Here are some other issues that make the segment problematic in its inaccurate portrayal of veganism:
The segment title suggests that living vegan is so difficult, it could drive a person “crazy”. In reality, living vegan presents minor inconveniences that are easily adapted to and overcome once one realizes the ethical issues at stake and the ramifications of not expending the minor extra effort of, say, reaching six inches past the cow milk to the almond milk.
Four statements were made indicating non-vegan food is “real” food, thus insinuating plant-based food is “not real”. Two statements were made indicating the plant-based food on set “doesn’t taste fake” and one comment was made upon tasting a plant-based option that “it’s good but it’s vegan”.
“Vegan” is disparagingly referred to by Dr. Oz as “the V-word”.
During the introduction of the “Gradual Meat Stepdown”, Dr. Oz stated “it’s hard to stop all at once”, his guest agreed, “It is, it is!” and said she stopped eating bacon because “I learned how bad it is for us”. She goes on to say that dairy/cheese and eggs “are the last one(s) that people play with” as they’re cutting out animal products. I find it difficult and disrespectful to hear someone blithely refer to products born of the slavery and death of vulnerable individuals as things “people play with”.
Dr. Oz offered the following “definition” for “what it really means to go vegan – well, simply put, nothing from an animal – nothing with a face is going in your mouth. There’s no meat, there’s no fish, there’s no dairy or eggs”… but there’s also no mention of honey or any of the myriad other ways animal are exploited such as wearing leather, wool or silk or supporting animal-based entertainment, etc. [for more information on these issues, please visit the What’s Wrong With… section of HowToGoVegan.org]. Once again, veganism is misidentified as being only one of its components and wrongly defined, which only helps further public confusion about what veganism truly is:
“A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms, it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.” – Vegan Society 1979
Dr. Oz went on to further the erroneous idea that living vegan is something to be feared rather than a personal ethic to embrace by saying, “You can actually mimic these tastes so you don’t actually feel like you’re going meatless, which is what people fear the most.”
Dr. Oz also glibly referred to the non-vegan taste tester as the “victim”, when in reality the body parts of the true victims of exploitation and oppression were spread out on the table and eaten by this person. I found it personally unsettling and unnecessary that there were slabs and piles of dead animal parts and secretions on set for people to taste-test alongside plant-based options. This has the effect of further normalizing the consumption of products of animal exploitation and presents “vegan” (read: plant-based) foods as just another set of options.
13 seconds into the segment, Dr. Oz says “Let’s be real”. Yes Dr. Oz, let’s. Veganism is not a diet, a lifestyle (as he calls it in the first 3 minutes), a fad or a phase – it’s a personal commitment to stop participating in the enslavement, exploitation and execution of the most vulnerable members of our global society – non-human animals.
When talking about a plant-based diet, call it what it is and, of course, provide facts, tips and ideas to help people understand its benefits – just don’t call it veganism, because it’s not.
Like many I see on social media, I used to excitedly share every incident of the word “vegan” being used in any context just to “get the idea out there”, but not anymore. I have come to understand that when the word is coupled with an unclear message that distorts the true meaning of veganism (or one that promotes speciesism, racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism, classism or any other form of oppression), it is better that it not be shared so that I don’t act irresponsibly by adding to the confusion and misinformation that unfortunately already follows the word wherever it goes. I hope others will come to do the same.
If we’re going to be real, we need to offer real information about veganism as our minimum moral obligation to individuals of other species, sticking to the real definition of veganism and taking real action to dismantle speciesismthrough educating non-vegans about veganism. When we do, we will start making real change and saving real lives.
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
If you’re vegan, chances are you can identify with the following statements:
“I find it frustrating that non-vegans are either unable or unwilling to understand and agree with the simple concept that, if one believes it’s wrong to harm and kill animals unnecessarily, then the only sensible solution is to start living vegan. Logic proves this while profit-driven marketing propaganda claims there are ‘humane’ ways to exploit and kill innocent, vulnerable beings. If only non-vegans would listen to the facts!”
If you’re abolitionist vegan, chances are you can identify with the following statements:
“I find it frustrating that vegans who support animal welfare ideology are either unable or unwilling to understand and agree with the simple concept that welfarism – despite seeming to be well-intentioned – has not worked, is not working and will not work as a means of dismantling speciesism and ending the use of animals for the satisfaction of fleeting human pleasures and conveniences. Empirical evidence proves this while self-serving pseudoscienceclaims the opposite is true. If only welfarists would listen to the facts!”
[Note: identifying as an abolitionist vegan does not necessitate aligning oneself with, interacting with, promoting or otherwise supporting any particular individual, group, community, website or social media page(s). Please see our Disclaimer for more details. SFVEGdoes, however, find great benefit in sharing ideas, advocacy strategies and support with other abolitionist vegans whose approaches and sensibilities resonate with our own. Let’s talk!]
In both of the above cases, the innate human characteristics of selfishness (“What’s in it for me?”), laziness (“How much energy am I going to have to spend on this?”) and a desire to be right at all costs (“I’m right, you’re wrong… and I’m also right!”) set up stumbling blocks to accepting new and vital information. The result is defensiveness born of cognitive dissonance (“If what you’re telling me is true, that means my firmly-held beliefs are wrong and I’ll need to make significant changes… and that can’t be simply because it can’t be, so clearly you’re wrong and I’m right because I believe I’m right!”) and an almost impenetrable wall of denial is immediately constructed.
What do we do when we encounter seemingly insurmountable resistance to our vegan message? Do we tell ourselves the cause is lost, let it go and move on to someone more receptive to the message we’re carrying? Sure, that’s tempting – we only have so many hours in the day, so many ways to say what we want to say and so much energy to put forth… or do we try to remember that, in both cases, the lives of vulnerable sentient beings hang in the balance and rise to this challenge by doing our level best to present our case, knowing that we must advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves just as we would want others to do for us were we in a similarly vulnerable position? In each and every situation in which we have the opportunity to talk about veganism with others, we have a choice to make – educate or retreat.
As you listen to those who support animal welfare ideology, you will hear some frequently repeated phrases, all of which seem to have merit on the surface:
“It’s a start.”
“Every little bit helps.”
“It doesn’t matter what we do as long as we’re doing something.”
“We don’t have to use the word ‘vegan‘ to get a vegan message across.”
“If we ask people to go vegan, we’ll push them away.”
“We’re all abolitionists, but people won’t go vegan overnight. Welfare will get us there faster.”
“The best way to get people to go vegan is to cook them a yummy vegan meal. Don’t talk to them about the animals.”
Here is one generally accepted definition of the word “insanity”:
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Where do these ideas intersect?
Our Best Thinking Got Us Here
“It’s a start”, “Every little bit helps” and similar sentiments have been among the rallying cries of the animal welfare movement since it began over 200 years ago. Despite recent pseudoscientific “studies” by welfare organizations that intentionally distort reality by skewing their own data to support their own specious claims that “X-million fewer animals were killed” and “suffering has been greatly reduced” by promoting Meatless Monday, distributing speciesist literature and other single-issue animal welfare campaigns or SICs (many of which are of their own creation), here is where the greatest minds and intentions of the “leaders” and “fathers” of the animal welfare movement have gotten us: today, an ever-increasing number of non-human individuals (now in the trillions each year) are being enslaved, exploited and executed for the satisfaction of human pleasure and convenience.
If it’s true that “every little bit helps”, shouldn’t that number be decreasing rather than increasing? If fill-in-the-blank is a “start”, shouldn’t two centuries have been sufficient to see at least some forward movement rather than what appears to be momentum in the opposite direction?
Experience Counts
A decade of promoting, engaging in and supporting welfaristsingle-issue campaigns left me with me ten years’ worth of firsthand experiencein just how ineffective and counterproductive they are – Lolita the killer whale is nearing her 50th year in captivity, circuses continue to use animals (and pimp their captives into medical “research” and zoo breeding programs), people still wear fur and buy puppies from puppy mills and grocery stores continue to sell live lobsters to people they know are going to brutally kill them. These are just some of the failed campaigns to which I and numerous others devoted our time and energy. I deeply regret not having allowed myself to realize sooner that this simply does not work. The photo of me below neatly illustrates the ineffectiveness of such “advocacy” (see photo caption for details):
Taken in 2009, Keith is pictured holding two signs that speak of animal *treatment*, rather than *use*, and promoting three welfarist organizations simultaneously. Note the two individuals walking past while Keith poses for his photo op rather than engaging with them. Also, note that not even a broken right hand could keep him from participating in one of his favorite speciesist events.
Veganism Is Not A “Goal” To Be Reached – It’s The Starting Point Of A New Life
Convincing a non-vegan to choose a vegan option (garden salad vs. cottage cheese, for example) is not a “start” – it’s a momentary food choice that makes zero impact in how that person views the exploitation of non-human animals. It moves them no closer to wanting an end to speciesist injustices than does taking a chicken wing out of their hand and replacing it with an apple (because it does not explain anything about the underlying issues), nor does it instill in them the idea that “Vegan food is awesome – I probably could do this vegan thing after all!” Like nearly everyone, they’ve been eating “vegan” (in reality, “plant-based” is the more accurate term) food their whole lives – fruit, grains, nuts, seeds, etc. – and yet remain non-vegan because they’ve yet to be educated about the moral and ethical reasons for living vegan.
“It’s a start” gets us nowhere. Getting in a car and turning the key in the ignition is a “start”, but unless one has a clear direction and goal, the car and those in it go nowhere or, at best, end up driving around aimlessly. If we were to put all the large animal welfare/protection corporations in a bus and then told them the destination is “the end of animal use” (one they would hopefully, but not definitely, all agree on), each of them would suggest a different route to get there, and each of them would want to drive their way based on their belief that theirs is the best and fastest route… and the one that brings each of their organizations the most donations.
Like It Or Not, Animal Welfare Ideologies ReinforceSpeciesism
When the victims of a particular injustice are non-human individuals, speciesism is usually the unconscious default position. For those unfamiliar with the word, here’s a definition:
Speciesism(spe·cies·ism) – noun – by analogy with racism and sexism, an unjust double standard placing higher moral value on some individual animals over others, based solely on the morally irrelevant criterion of species membership.
Second only to non-humans, children are the most vulnerable societal group. Even though many people may be uncomfortable with the idea of equating humans and non-humans in any way, drawing parallels here is appropriate and necessary to the discussion. That very discomfort alone exposes the speciesism pervasive in our society, just as discomfort with equating white people and people of color would expose underlying racism.
Knowing that the creation, possession, use and other consumption of child pornography is always wrong, morally unacceptable and represents a grievous oppressive injustice toward a vulnerable group (except, of course, in the minds of those who benefit either personally or professionally from it), we would NEVER take the position that child pornography creators, purveyors or consumers should “cut back” on their consumption, create/sell/purchase/obtain “less” of it, use “less explicit” images/videos, consume it only 6 days a week instead of 7, only view images and videos of certain races, ages or genders of children rather than all or engage in some but not all consumption of it on one’s “journey” to becoming ready to make a full commitment to stopping. We would NEVER petition for more “humane” working conditions for the child victims of the pornography industry, thereby making a concession that supports the continuation of the oppression as long as it’s done “humanely”. And we would NEVER display child pornography in public places, on the street or post it on social media in order to show people just how horrible it is… [Warning – Speciesism Ahead!]…
…and yet, because this is animal exploitation and not human exploitation, we set up different sets of standards and engage in everything we would find unacceptable if the victims were human, conveniently overlooking the fact that exploitation is exploitation irrespective of species and that, in the interests of fairness and justice, the same standards ought to apply.
Why Not Apply Animal Welfare Ideologies To Racism?
Speciesism, rooted in the myth of human superiority, begets racism (and other forms of oppression). Imagine how one might react to the following line of thinking:
“Yes, we believe that all racial discrimination is wrong, but let’s just start with helping end injustices toward African-Americans since they are, in our opinion, the ‘most oppressed’ [insert “facts” and “figures” to support this argument]. We’ll obviously mention Asians, Latinos and other oppressed groups so they’re not entirely left out of the conversation, but we won’t focus on them right now because it’s ‘asking too much’ and we don’t want to push people away by being too ‘demanding’ and asking for an end to all racial discrimination. Remember, every little bit helps.”
If you think this sounds unacceptable (which it is), consider this statement from animal “protection” group Mercy for Animals from July 2016:
“Because chickens are much smaller than pigs or cows, many more of them need to be killed to get the same poundage of meat. Comprising 95 percent of the land animals raised and killed for food in the U.S., chickens also lead some of the most miserable lives of all farmed animals.
But that’s just the beginning.”
Interestingly, the last phrase bears a striking resemblance to “It’s a start”.
The MFA Vegetarian Starter Guide (why would an organization that wants people to live vegan put out anything but a vegan starter guide?) states that “The truly humane choice is to cut out or cut back on (italics added for emphasis) chicken, fish, and other animal products”, fostering the idea that some animal use is ok as long as one “cuts back”. It goes on: “Start by cutting out the foods that harm the most animals… By simply replacing chicken, eggs, and fish with other options (like beef, pork, turkey and lamb? You didn’t specify “plant-based” options), you can prevent a tremendous amount of animal abuse.” MFA also makes the following encouraging statements: “If you give in to a craving for meat, don’t beat yourself up about it. Remember that perfection isn’t the goal here—none of us is perfect. It’s far better to eat mostly vegetarian [<—how is “mostly vegetarian” defined? Perhaps the publication should be retitled “Mostly Vegetarian Starter Guide”] than to do nothing at all. Show yourself compassion if you have a setback…” This guide is one of the most speciesist pieces of litter-ature I’ve ever had the displeasure to read and, as such, I will not link to it here.
Would anyone support such a stance if the victims of one’s cravings-induced “setback” were human? Consider:
“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, Mr. Serial Killer. After all, you used to kill 12 people per year at a rate of one per month and now you’ve nearly ditched killing altogether since you only kill one person every three months! Quarterly killing is far more acceptable than monthly killing, and we all know just how difficult those cravings to kill can be, so go easy on yourself. It’s progress, not perfection!”
Our Responsibility
If we claim to work for social justice but refuse to use clear and morally consistent messaging to indicate we want a full end to the oppression of non-humans, our lack of clarity becomes a tacit (and sometimes overt) message that some oppression is acceptable while some is not, and the failure of others to hear a clear, consistent, honest message becomes our responsibility because we are choosing not to provide one. Hence, the continuation of animal exploitation becomes our responsibility since we’re essentially giving people permission to continue oppressing the vulnerable rather than seizing the opportunity to make our case clear from the outset and ongoing that all animal use is wrong and all animal use needs to end. Delivering a deliberately dishonest message brings one’s integrity into question and runs parallel to the dishonest marketing messages used by animal agriculture and other oppressive industries, which puts one squarely on the same level as them. I can’t imagine any vegan advocate wants that.
What We’re Doing Matters
Finally, remember this statement from the beginning of the essay?
“It doesn’t matter what we do as long as we’re doing something.”
What we do as vegan advocates matters a great deal, as it is an indicator of who we are. If we choose to engage in animal welfare campaigns – or promote and support the groups who design them – that are speciesist, racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic, ableist, heterosexist, classist, body-shaming, violent, disrespectful to the victims of oppression, misinforming, misleading or blatantly dishonest because we feel the end (abolition of animal use) justifies the means (anything goes as long as we get there), then we are supporting one or more forms of oppression while advocating against another, and that calls into question the integrity of those who do so. This weakens our power to effect change and reinforces the mythology that vegans are unreasonable, fanatical extremists who should be either avoided at all costs or mercilessly mocked. When this happens, the message is lost.
“It’s a start” gets us nowhere. If animal welfare were the Olympics, these million false starts would result in disqualifications, and they have gotten us no closer to the finish line of abolishing animal use. If you want to be an effective vegan advocate, there is only one truly effective start:
A non-vegan once asked me, “Isn’t it hard being vegan?”
OK, it wasn’t “once” and it wasn’t “a” non-vegan – I’ve been asked many times by many non-vegans, some out of well-meaning curiosity and some who were looking to poke holes in the foundation of my ethical stance to abstain, wherever possible, from meat, dairy, eggs, honey, leather, wool and all other products of animal exploitation. My answer always starts with “No”. Sometimes it ends there and we go our separate ways, but more often than not I will take the time to explain just how easy it was (and still is) for me to choose to live vegan once I understood the injustices involved in turning a cow into a steak, a chicken into a cutlet, a pig into bacon and a baby calf into a suede jacket, to list but a few examples of the tyrannies humans force on vulnerable individuals of other species.
A good question to ask non-vegans who believe living vegan is “hard” is, “Who told you that?” In my experience, it’s never a vegan who tells someone that living vegan is hard… because it isn’t. It’s usually someone or some company with a product to sell that counts on such misinformation to keep consumers from thinking critically about veganism and the moral obligation it entails. Stretching one’s arm 6 inches beyond the cow’s milk to reach the almond milk, for example, is not a difficulty – it’s a minor inconvenience and slight change in a habit pattern that will become a new habit when practiced for a short while. Shopping for affordable non-leather shoes may take a little more time that simply buying ones made from the skins of dead animals, but this is again only a minor inconvenience and one easily overcome. In my experience, this is true of nearly all shifts from using products of animal exploitation to living vegan and, once new habits are in place, everything is easy again.
If there is anything “hard” about living vegan, it’s dealing with the cognitive dissonance of non-vegans.
Just another day at the office…
Non-vegans. They come one at a time. They come in groups. Sometimes I feel like Bruce Lee entering a room full of black belt warriors and having to defend myself against their simultaneous assaults. They come online, at work, at the grocery store, in restaurants… sometimes I’m surprised they don’t come knocking on my door when passing my house and spying the vegan bumper stickers on my car (usually, those random doorknockers are Jehovah’s Witnesses wanting to share their “good news” with me. Want to know my definition of fair trade? Graciously accepting some of their literature and handing them some clear, consistent vegan information in return after discussing why veganism needs to be the moral baseline for our treatment of all sentient beings. That’s the best news I know).
As a recovering non-vegan (more of an anti-vegan when I really think about it), I get it. I was the classic, stereotypical animal product consumer, waving hamburgers under my vegetarian friends’ noses, snarkily asking my PeTA-supporting former boss where the “People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans” pamphlets were and thinking up clever ways to derail their veg-trains. I understand where non-vegans are coming from and why many, but by no means all, behave as they do toward vegans:
I was unable to diagnose, recognize and deal with my fears back then. Instead, I acted out in denial and avoidance of those uncomfortable feelings. Somewhere inside, probably near the pounds of undigested red meat rotting in my intestines, I understood that every hamburger begins with a cow begging for her life. I knew something dreadfully awful was happening to veal calves and it wasn’t, as I so cleverly rationalized (and I’m not proud of this, though I was at the time), “the only life they know anyway so, since they have no frame of reference for what a happy life is, why does it matter? And if their lives are so bad, it’s actually merciful that we slaughter them so young and put them out of their misery. We’re doing them a favor!” I knew that chickens didn’t “sacrifice” themselves to become the nuggets I was eating twenty at a sitting. I knew… and I denied. And I defended. And I attacked. Those were the methods I employed to keep from hearing, understanding and – worse – feeling the truth about animal exploitation and my complicity in it. I kept the truth a comfortable distance away and drowned out the voice of my conscience with pseudo-intellectual rationalizations and justifications that, as I now know, were mere fabrications of my frightened ego.
When I deal with non-vegans now, especially in terms of vegan education, I try to meet them where they are, remembering that I once stood where they stand – blinded and misguided by a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine that would have us believe we need to eat animals to survive (false), that we would suffer and maybe die if we didn’t (false), that animals were put on Earth to serve us – the “superior race/top of the food chain/most advanced species” in the history of the planet (false) and on and on. I remember that I too was once afraid to take a stand for my ethical beliefs in a society that marginalizes, ridicules, bullies and berates those who swim against the current of cruelty and go against the grain of gluttony, afraid to be looked at as “abnormal”, afraid to no longer be accepted by those who engage in behaviors I now consider morally unacceptable…
So I do my best to let them know how it was for me, what happened to cause me to change and what it’s like for me now. I let them know that making the choice to live vegan is the single best choice I’ve ever made and that living vegan is the best action I’ve ever taken. I let them know that it’s best to follow one’s ethics instead of one’s palate. I let them know that veganism is not a diet, a fad, a lifestyle or a phase – it is one’s personal commitment to a social justice movement that seeks to dismantle speciesism, the most egregious and deadly form of oppression on the planet today. I let them know that every argument against veganism is an argument in favor of slavery, bullying, misery and horrible, needless death. I let them know that if they believe animals matter morally at all, then living vegan is the only rational response. I let them know that living vegan is as easy as making the decision to withdraw support from and cease complicity in a worldwide system of animal exploitation. I let them know that vegan food is nutritious, delicious and all one needs to survive and thrive in optimum health.
And I let them know that I, and millions of other vegans, are here to offer education, informationand supportif they are willing to put their fears aside and embrace that which they already believe in – justice for all.
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
“I’ll tell you something, Berger – you can go a day without food and a day without water, but you can’t go a day without a good rationalization” – Wayne K. Johnson, educator, New Baltimore, NY circa 1988
I once overheard a store employee remark to her coworker she isn’t going to tell her children “all the bad things” she’s heard about Sea World (“Like how they keep whales in too-small tanks for years and years” *rolls eyes indignantly*) so as to not “ruin the experience” for them. I commented, “Well, kids oughtta know the truth, right?” and she replied with the following rationalization that I could actually see her struggling to create on the fly:
“No… they need to, uh… meet them in person, um… so they can fall in love with them, uh… and want to protect them. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight, that’s a great idea. The logic is infallible. Let’s take the kids to see enslaved animals held prisoner 23 hours a day in tanks that for you and I would essentially equate to bathtubs who are then trotted out and forced to perform unnatural acts while being rewarded with food that is otherwise withheld from them in order to get them to engage in said acts in the first place – and PAY their captors to continue this abuse. Yup, that’s sure to instantly turn any child into an environmentally-conscious marine biologist hell-bent on ensuring marine mammals are protected, if they can see past the exciting, cleverly packaged “entertainment” of it all. That, or they’ll want to take home a stuffed orca and ask when they can come see the pretty dolphins again.
And who’s making what sacrifice here, aside from you sacrificing your ethics if you believe the “bad things” you already seem to know about this organization you’re about to support? Are you suggesting the current Sea World slaves are “sacrificing” their freedom so your children can see this, become enlightened and protect future generations of marine mammals? I think even a rabid, speciesiest utilitarian like Peter Singer would find that to be a stretch worthy of the most flexible Tibetan yogi. In fact, I think it’s an example of the Head Up One’s Own Ass pose.
By analogy, would anyone take their kids on a field trip to visit a group of sex slaves – and pay their traffickers for the privilege – so that, having witnessed the “sacrifices” being made, their kids will have epiphanies and start crusading for human rights?
I’m not a parent, but I believe that part of responsible parenting is to model appropriate, ethical behavior and instill a sense of justice and morality in one’s children. Allowing them to watch and participate in events where individuals of any species are exploited seems to be the exact opposite of those ideals. If you wouldn’t bring your children to a cockfight, then you shouldn’t bring them to Sea World (or any marine park), or the circus, or the zoo. Further, I’m of the belief that parents should be educating their children from as early an age as possible that individuals of other species are exactly that: individualswho should be afforded, at the very least, the right not to be treated as property and/or disposable, replaceable resources to satisfy human pleasures and conveniences.
When we educate people that enslaving non-human animals and treating them as property is morally reprehensible, we begin to dismantle speciesism and change the paradigm that makes the use of animals for human desires acceptable. This paradigm shift begins with vegan education because, when individuals begin to live vegan, they quickly cease complicity in supporting all forms of animal slavery.
I’m ashamed to say I made none of these comments to this individual (beyond my initial comment) as I knew with 100% certainty that I was, at that moment, incapable of forming any statements that would have come out kind in any way. It’s said that discretion is the better part of valor, but I can’t help feeling this was a missed opportunity to educate, or at least offer some valuable information to this individual. In the moment, I was seemingly without the ability to find my way from verbal assault mode to education mode, so I chose neither. I’m not proud of that choice, but it’s the one I made… this time.
Perhaps I’ll see this person again and take the opportunity to further the conversation. Until then…
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
The victimization that results in the consumption of animals is the most devaluing form of subjugation imaginable, as it involves paying someone to overpower and kill an individual (unless one does it oneself), then cutting one’s victims into little pieces, swallowing them, physically turning them into shit and flushing them down toilets.
Calling someone a “piece of shit” is one thing, but nothing says “You have no value whatsoever” like turning another individual into actual shit.
Always remember that it’s not just the animals humans use as food that’s at issue – all animal use for human pleasure and convenience is morally unjustifiable. As we dismantle speciesism through educating people to live vegan, we move closer to the abolition of this and all other forms of oppression that spring from the myth of human supremacy.
You can stop participating in the theft of others’ dignity, freedom and lives right here, right now by starting your vegan life today.
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
[NOTE: I plan to update this essay from time to time to include more feedback from individuals who have responded positively to South Florida Vegan Education Group’s (SFVEG) ongoing public education efforts. Stay tuned – it’ll be worth it! 🙂 ]
SFVEG President Elena Brodskaya – vegan education in action!
After ten years of engaging in single-issue animal welfare campaigns, I have zero evidence to suggest that any action I took in that time helped influence a single person to begin living vegan. One reason is that most, if not all, of those campaigns are organized by large donation-based animal welfare charities (you’ve heard of them even if you’re not vegan – their expensive marketing budgets have seen to that) whose primary agenda is notto influence people to live vegan but rather to ensure the continuation of a steady stream of donor dollars from their largely non-vegan donor base by being careful not to alienate them. This is achieved by actively avoiding using the word “vegan” (or downplaying it, or being vague about its meaning and importance) and certainly not presenting veganism as the moral baseline for our treatment of individuals of other species.
Since I refocused my advocacy and, with co-founder Elena Brodskaya, that of South Florida Vegan Education Group (SFVEG) and committed to engaging in clear, consistent, unequiVOCAL abolitionist vegan education, we keep receiving feedback that people are committing to living vegan as a direct result of our conversations, presentations and associated work. I don’t have the words to express how gratifying and humbling it feels to know that what we do actually makes a positive and meaningful difference in the world.
Here are some examples we’ve compiled of feedback we’ve received:
Shared with permission
Shared with permission
[here’s an update from 8/10/16] Shared with permission
2018 update – shared with permissionShared with permission
Shared with permission
Thank you to all who support me and our group in these endeavors, and a special thanks to my friends Ramonafor gently (ok, not so gently 😉 ) shaming me into opening my vegan mouth on Facebook and Colin Wright for gently (ok, not so gently 😉 ) nudging me out of the black hole of welfarism and being the first to point me toward abolitionism. I am deeply indebted to you both.
Lastly, but mostly, thank you to my love, Elena Brodskaya, for walking this path hand-in-hand with me and for being my greatest influence and inspiration, my constant sounding board and for gently (yes, so very gently <3 ) letting me know when I need to come back from some tangent I’m on and get back on the path.
If you’re not vegan: please ask yourself why and then ask yourself whether your answer(s) would hold up and be justified if the helpless victims from whom you receive palate pleasure and other benefits were human. If you feel they would, let’s talk about that. If you feel they wouldn’t, let’s talk about that, too. Either way, I’m truly interested to hear your thoughts and have a discussion. Really. For realz. No kiddin’ around. Mean it.
If you are vegan, I’ll leave you with this: clear, consistent, unequivocal abolitionist vegan education works, and it’s far more effective than engaging in campaigns that profess to have the best interest of animals in mind, yet in reality exist to serve their own ends through endless self-promotion, donation solicitation and putting out small fires while ignoring the larger source of the blaze that’s been burning the world to the ground for centuries. Sadly, when we work to reduce – but not eliminate – animal suffering (as is the hallmark of the welfarist organizations), there’s an unintended consequence — non-vegans keep eating animals, only now with a clearer conscience and no reason nor desire to ever stop. If you’re afraid to be direct and honest about veganism, I challenge you to move through the fear and do what you know is right. After all, your “fear” is nothing compared to the real fears being felt right now by the animals we all want to save. To operate from fear in this light helps no one. In fact, as a form of enabling, it only serves to cause more unnecessary suffering to all involved.
From my heart to yours, thank you for listening.
Peacelovevegan,
Keith
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
“Become vegan and the world says you’re extreme. Become abolitionist vegan and vegans say you’re extreme” – Keith Berger
When I began living vegan in 2004, I immediately began involving myself in every bit of animal rights activism I could find, feeling a passionate, desperate need to “do something” about the horrors and injustices I suddenly understood were taking place all around me and all around the world. I didn’t know where to start and I couldn’t see where or how it all might end – all I knew is that I had to get involved and start making a difference. I continued engaging in various avenues of activism, hoping to educate people that, for example, to attend animal circuses is to directly support slavery and abuse. I wrote letters to editors and was published. I took part in city council meetings to have circuses banned. I removed countless discount circus coupons from local businesses and took down circus advertisements. I attended demonstrations, held signs, passed out leaflets and engaged circus-goers in groups and one-to-one on their way in and out of the arena, giving them the best I had in what little time was available, which was often no longer than a few seconds. I stood and watched, with tears in my eyes, the Parade of Slaves as burly men armed with bullhooks marched dispirited elephants through parking lots and into the next performance. Was this effective? Possibly, but if the effect was merely to open a person’s eyes to one specific type of abuse and convince her/him to tear up their tickets and take the kids home only so they could get to their neighbor’s barbecue and eat the burnt corpses of dead animals or stop at McDonald’s a few hours earlier, then my definition of “effective” needed an overhaul. Where was the message that making the choice to live vegan was the real answer to ending animal exploitation? Were we all hoping the people we challenged outside the circus (including the circus employees themselves) would go home, research these issues and be moved to change their lives and, in doing so, change the world? That was doubtful, especially considering that, as I looked around at my fellow activists, very few were vegan and many didn’t even seem open to the message of living vegan when we brought it up. They were “just here to help the poor elephants”.
When I began reading Professor Gary Francione’s* work regarding the abolitionist approach to animal rights, my eyes, mind and heart opened even wider and my definition of “effective” did indeed begin to change.
[*please read our Disclaimerregarding the mention of individuals and/or groups not necessarily endorsed by or affiliated with this site, our group or its members.]
The animal rights movement abounds with myriad single-issue campaigns (SICs) – circuses, gestation crates, fur farms, vivisection, “humane” slaughter methods, whales, orcas, dolphins, cat and dog meat… the list is endless – that serve to be most effective at doing one thing: reducing the effectiveness of our movement by sending us scurrying in a thousand (a conservative estimate) different directions and thereby preventing us from presenting a unified, unequivocal message that, if we truly believe in and desire liberty and justice for all, veganism must be the moral baseline for our behavior toward non-human animals. Start there, and the rest of the issues will begin to fall away. Continue on the present course and be divided and conquered. Giving support to welfarist organizations that treat veganism like an afterthought or a nice, but unattainable, ideal (or worse – denigrate it as a quest for “personal purity”) is a misuse of valuable time, energy, money and resources.
This essay deals with one such SIC I see every week and the speciesism behind it: Meatless Monday.
The problem is not how we exploit animals – the problem is thatwe exploit animals in the first place, so the solution is not to reduce animal abuse; it’s to eliminate animal use… and that solution lies in educating people to live vegan.
If you’re a bank robber and one day realize that robbing banks is morally wrong, you don’t seek better ways to rob banks – you just stop robbing them (unless you’re determined to be a criminal and are willing to pay the consequences if caught, or a sociopath and can’t determine right from wrong). To paraphrase the Roman philosopher Seneca’s wise words, there’s no point in trying to find the right way to do a wrong thing.
According to my research, the idea of Meatless Monday began nearly 100 years in the United States as a way to ration food to help with the war effort. It was revived in 2003, according to www.meatlessmonday.com, as a “public health awareness campaign” in order to address “…the prevalence of preventable illnesses associated with excessive meat consumption.” On their “Why Meatless?” page, in 11 paragraphs and 796 words, there is nothingthat speaks about the suffering, confinement, enslavement and slaughter of the non-human animals the campaign is suggesting people abstain from eating one day a week. This campaign is clearly not part of any social justice movement intended to help abolish the property status of animals, nor to help any animal in any way – unless that animal is of the human variety and wants to optimize her/his health, as its stated aim is to help humans lower their risk of contracting preventable chronic diseases linked with the consumption of animal products (heart disease, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease, to name a few). In short, Meatless Monday is rooted in the same self-centered egotism, speciesism and myth of human supremacy that allows humans the self-proclaimed “right” to destroy the lives of non-human animals wantonly and with no regard to their well-being or feelings.
Even though it’s clear that the Meatless Monday campaign has nothing to do with helping to bring an end to the exploitation of non-human animals (even though some people claim every meatless meal “saves” x-number of animals, as if skipping a hamburger results in, somewhere, a cow being magically transported from a slaughterhouse to a sanctuary) , many vegans and high-profile celebrity vegans lend their name to and continue to support this campaign, rationalizing that it is “part of the journey” toward veganism. Some seem to believe it’s necessary to encourage non-vegans to take “baby steps” and that “every little bit helps”. It’s my contention that one does not encourage another to practice ethical behavior only when personally convenient or in accordance with some arbitrary set of rules. Coddling those who continue to exploit others when they are well aware that their choices and behaviors condemn individuals to miserable lives and horrific deaths is simply unacceptable. We would never suggest that serial killers take “baby steps” and observe Murder-Free Mondays, would we? Of course not. We would explain to them why their behavior is wrong (assuming they didn’t already know) and demand they stop at once or face dire consequences. What consequences do we impose on those who pay others to do their killing for them so they can dine on the carcasses of animals? None… but Nature does (see preventable chronic diseases listed above).
While people are taking “baby steps” toward living vegan, billions of innocent babies continue to suffer and die each year. Given the opportunity, would those baby-steppers be willing to baby-step through a slaughterhouse and look those suffering individuals on Death Row in their haunted eyes and tell them “Gee, I think living vegan is a great idea for some people, I’m working on going vegan but I need more time, I’m just not ready, it’s such a big change to make, my family wouldn’t understand, I’m really sorry but you’ll be dead and eaten by the time I make a commitment to justice instead of my own selfishness”? Would anyone be willing to take that kind of personal responsibility for their unwillingness to spare someone’s life at the expense of their own palate pleasure? Supporting animal exploitation 6 days a week instead of 7 is like supporting spousal abuse 85% of the time instead of 100%. Who does that??
Perpetrators who want to get away with what they can whenever they can, that’s who.
There are those who support the baby-step “journeys” of non-vegans to become vegan – some of which take 2-3 decades – and suggest we should “give them a break, they will eventually arrive”. While I understand that not every person will go vegan overnight (though many of us have), we vegans must remain clear that this is their choice and not our suggestion, remaining unequivocal that anything less than embracing veganism as the moral baseline for our treatment of individuals of other species is to continue being complicit in animal exploitation and needless death. For the animals who suffer and die waiting for “eventually” to happen, “eventually” is unacceptable and arrives much too late. If we see a woman being raped, we don’t go help her “eventually”, nor do we wait for the rapist to complete his “journey” to living a rape-free life, asking him to maybe rape a little less every day and applauding him when he goes a whole day without raping anyone. What drives some people to accept such an unacceptable double-standard when the victims are non-human animals? The answer is speciesism, the most egregious and deadly form of racism in existence on our planet today.
Veganism should be the starting point on a journey to live as ethically as possible, not some future goal to attain when one is finally ready to live nonviolently.
Some ask why this same debate repeats every “Meatless” Monday, so here’s why – because every Monday, some people take a mere 16 hours off from participating in an endless worldwide animal holocaust and actually seem to believe this is somehow commendable and effective. During the Holocaust, I’m sure all the Nazis took naps now and then. That didn’t help their victims at all because, after nap time was over, the terrorism and killing continued. The sad reality of this ineffectual campaign is that every Meaningless Monday is immediately followed by a Return to Terrorism Tuesday and a We Keep Killing Wednesday. Imagine if there were campaigns for Rape-Free Fridays or Child Abuse-Free Thursdays. Should we applaud those well-intentioned baby steps too, or shouldn’t we base our work on creating Exploitation-Free EveryDay?
If we, as vegans, can’t commit to a 100% effort toward clear, consistent, unequivocal vegan education, how do we expect non-vegans to commit to a 100% vegan life when, by engaging in and promoting SICs, we’re essentially giving them permission to exploit animals most, but not all, of the time? Would you tell a heroin addict to only shoot dope every other day (and thereby continue to cause himself harm and support the livelihood of his drug dealer and his dealer’s dealer), or would you suggest total abstinence?
Baby steps are for babies. I challenge my fellow vegans to be the adults we are and stop making the unacceptable seem acceptable. This is known as enabling and, the sooner it stops, the sooner real change begins. If you’re already vegan, please stop making it OK for others to continue destroying the lives of non-human animals by lending your support to half-measures like Meatless Monday and the other useless, ineffective and counter-productive single-issue campaigns promoted by animal welfarist organizations that treat “vegan” like a dirty word. Instead, let’s focus our efforts on clear, consistent vegan education wherever and whenever we can, being unequivocal about the idea of veganism as the moral baseline for our treatment of the animals with whom we share this small planet.
Live vegan. Educate others. Start now, here’s how:
Speciesism, analogous with racism and sexism, can be defined as a double standard created by humans placing higher moral value on some individual animals over other individual animals, based solely on the morally irrelevant criterion of species membership.
As I sat in a recent lecture about weight stigma and body shaming, listening to the speakers discuss the intersectionality of various forms of oppression, I waited for them to mention the elephant in the room, speciesism… and they never did. That’s when I realized:
Speciesism isn’t just an elephant in the room. It’s much more than that. It’s a cow, a pig, a chicken, a fish, a turkey, a lamb… and it’s much more than that. The fact is, there are billions of land animals and countless sea animals in the room and NO ONE is talking about them. NO ONE is acknowledging them and their basic right to live free from exploitation, objectification and commodification. NO ONE is thinking of these individuals as anything more than disposable, replaceable “things” – objects to be used, like the chairs in which we sit – to satisfy some fleeting desire or convenience. Instead, they’re eating their exploited remains and wearing skins, furs and feathers ripped from their dead bodies (and, in many cases, their still-living bodies).
I will admit that there is an error in my comments above. I say that no one is talking about, acknowledging or thinking about these individuals, but this is untrue.
Vegans are talking about, acknowledging and thinking about these individuals and their right to an autonomous life and, more importantly, we’re doing something about the speciesismpervasive in our society that demands the continued exploitation, enslavement and execution of non-human animals for morally unjustifiable reasons. Some vegans are simply abstaining from participating in those injustices, as that is the least they can do as a moral obligation. Others, especially abolitionist vegans, are actively educating the public through various creative means about their engagement in and support of speciesism and letting them know that the simplest and most immediate action one can take to stop the violent oppression and exploitation of the most vulnerable members of our global society – non-human individuals – is to start living vegan.
Speciesism, rooted inthe myth of human supremacy, begets all other forms of oppression toward the vulnerable that we see running rampant on our planet today.
We believe the abolition and dismantling of speciesism are integral in starting the chain of conscious evolution that will lead to the end of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism and the like.
The application of speciesism provides a blueprint for all other forms of exploitation, as what we would do to the most vulnerable members of our global society – non-human individuals – we would then find ways to do to those less vulnerable but still able to be dominated and oppressed (it is no accident that the techniques employed in the mass extermination of millions of humans in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s were born in slaughterhouses). Conversely, the dismantling of speciesism, through living vegan and educating others to live vegan, gives us a blueprint for treating all individuals as we ourselves wish to be treated – with fairness, justice and the right to live autonomous lives, free from the enslavement of more powerful “others”.
If you oppose at least one form of violent oppression because you recognize it is morally wrong, then to live in integrity requires opposing all forms of violent oppression because they are all morally wrong. Speciesism, simply by virtue of having the largest number of victims and the highest death toll worldwide, is the most egregious form of violent oppression our world has ever known. It’s time to dismantle speciesism, and the way to do that, again, is through living vegan and educating others to live vegan.
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My name is Keith and I hope you’ll read this essay.
You are not here by accident, mistake or coincidence. There is a reason you have found this page. I’m asking your attention for only a few minutes and hoping you’ll seek to answer the three questions at the end of this essay.
What is it that opens a closed mind and lets in the light? What image, word or sound softens a heart hardened by societal norms, traditions and expectations and allows fairness and justice to flow? What is the catalyst for one person to change?
I’d like to tell you mine.
I was a staunch meat, dairy, egg and honey eater from as far back as I can remember. I wore leather, wool, silk and used other products derived from the bodies of animals. I used products that involved animal testing and contained animal secretions. I enjoyed various forms of entertainment that involved the use of animals. In short, I did what it seemed everyone around me did – the things society taught me were acceptable – and I did these things without a second thought. When I was too ignorant to know that McDonald’s “food” ought to have quote marks around it, I would routinely order 2 Big Macs, a 20-piece McNugget and a chocolate milkshake and have one Big Mac devoured by the time my lunch companions reached the table with their orders. I ate at every steakhouse I could find, identified my mom’s pork chops as my favorite food on the planet and greedily consumed every type of animal flesh that came my way, from alligator to ostrich, never once giving a second thought to what the consequences of this type of blind consumption were to my health, the health of the planet and – least of all but most importantly– the freedom and lives of the animals I was eating. After all, they were already dead, so I had no part to play in any of that… right?
I mean, it’s not as if my consumption of and demand for animal products for eating, wearing and other uses was a direct contributing factor in supporting a worldwide system of unjust animal enslavement, abuse, torture, suffering, neglect, indignity and, ultimately, the mercilessly brutal taking of their lives… right?
Wrong.
In 2004 when my cousins sat me down to eat a delicious home-cooked vegan meal and watch Peaceable Kingdom, a beautiful documentary that gently challenged me to examine my beliefs about animals – only hours before which I had defiantly declared, “I’m not drinking your vegan Kool-Aid, so don’t get your hopes up” – I became aware in 70 minutes of what I’d been blind to my entire life: I was complicit in a well-hidden, cruelly concealed worldwide atrocity that was, to my mind and the minds of many others (including Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer) nothing short of an animal holocaust [noun – “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”; Middle English: from Old French holocauste, via late Latin from Greek holokauston, from holos ‘whole’ + kaustos ‘burned’] bearing similarities to the human Holocaust including but not limited to the stark, overcrowded housing conditions, merciless brutality and the increasingly efficient methods of killing, but differing wildly in terms of sheer numbers. In fact, there are six million animals slaughtered for food globally every hour of every day. Six million per hour – the equivalent of the estimated death toll of Jewish people in the human Holocaust every… sixty…minutes.
I had no idea, on any conscious level, that nearly 10 billionland animals and countless sea animals are killed for food every year in the country I call home and in even greater numbers abroad. I had no conscious awareness that my choices about the food I ate, the clothes I wore and the products I used were directly responsible for the unimaginable suffering and death of countless individuals of other species. At the end of the film, I had cried more than once and could only sit and mutter, “I had no idea… I had no idea…” and desperately wonder what I could do to stop supporting this nightmare. The answer was simple – start living vegan. Change what I can where I stand, right now.
In truth, it wasn’t the sheer numbers that affected me – it was the individuals. I can’t imagine what six million or ten billion of anything actually looks like, but looking into the terrified eyes of one calf being torn away forever from her mother, one pig in the slaughter line watching his companions hung by their feet and having their throats slit, one baby chick having her beak seared off with a hot blade, one dog being skinned – ALIVE – and thrown in a pile of dying, mutilated dogs, one cow struggling valiantly to evade the man trying to shoot her in the head with the captive bolt gun… that’s what haunted me. The eyes.
Eyes like yours and mine. Eyes that rolled in their sockets in pain and anguish. Eyes that screamed and cried and pleaded. Eyes that, if they could speak in words, would say, “Why are you doing this to me? What have I done? I don’t understand. Please stop. You don’t have to do this”. And though there were no words, I understood the language conveyed by those eyes and I could not pretend to not understand. I saw the pain, I saw the fear, I saw the misery, I saw the hope and the life drain from those eyes, I saw defeat… and I was affected.
At that moment, when my closed mind opened, the light inside turned on and my heart spoke louder than my stomach, I knew I had been changed forever and that I could no longer participate in the system I now understood for what it was. It was then that I began to live vegan – to eschew, wherever possible and practicable, the use of products of animal exploitation and to educate others where and when I could about how they too could stop promoting this injustice. I hadn’t known till then that there was another choice available – a choice to live a vegan life – and once I knew, I couldn’t un-know.
This footage is not graphic, but it tells a haunting story in three and a half minutes:
My only regret about living vegan is that I didn’t have – or didn’t pay attention to – information that would have gotten me there sooner.
Veganism is a way of living that affords other individuals the dignity, freedom and right to live their lives free from intentional harm and from being treated as the property of others. It is the spiritual principle of Live and Let Live extended beyond one’s own species. It is a selfless act in a world overrun with selfishness. It is putting aside one’s entitlement in favor of allowing other individuals to enjoy life in their own ways. It is stepping out of an ego-driven, fear-based life into the light of Love. It is the conscious choice to stop hurting others and, in so doing, to stop hurting oneself and the world we all share. It is a social justice movement that aims to bring an end to the most violent, egregious and deadly form of oppression on the planet: speciesism.
Speciesism, analogous with racism and sexism, can be defined as a double standard created by humans placing higher moral value on some individual animals over other individual animals, based solely on the morally irrelevant criterion of species membership.
Veganism is not some sort of moral “high ground”, but rather a recognition of and respect for equality between individuals. As my friend Michele McCowan so eloquently put it, “I don’t feel superior because I’m vegan. The truth is I am vegan because I don’t feel superior to others.”
To define veganism as simply as possible, I take you to the source:
“The word ‘veganism’ denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practical — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.” – Vegan Society, 1979
Now that you’ve read what might be some new information (or had some existing information reinforced), I ask you to answer the following three questions:
What is it that might open yourmind and let in the light? What image, word or sound might soften yourheart and allow fairness and justice to flow? What might be yourcatalyst for change?
If you have even the slightest interest in living vegan or learning more about veganism, here are great places to start:
[I encourage all readers to click the blue links embedded in this essay and explore the information on those sites. Also, please read our Disclaimerregarding external sites, organizations, individuals, etc.]
Conversely, if you want people to take a firm stand against injustice and oppression toward vulnerable sentient beings by first ending their participation in it, educate them about veganism as our minimum moral obligation toward the non-humans with whom we share this planet. In this way, we move closer to 
Veganism is not some sort of moral “high ground”, but rather a recognition of and respect for equality between individuals. As my friend