Since When Is Self-Preservation Ethical Eating?

Scanning through things in the news early this morning, I found yet another article that seeks to blend interest in supporting local farmers and in eating healthily with the idea of not harming animals. This new "conscientious consumer" fad has lumped so many things in together that they've become interchangeable to some as they're each given equal moral weight. It's enough to make you dizzy to read these pieces like this one from Tuesday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Take, for instance, the 20-year-old described as the first exemplar of conscientious eating who "doesn't want to hurt anything or anyone as she goes about her life" so she eats meat from "animals who are raised on the range, not in a cage". According to the article:

For decades, ethical eating was largely limited to vegetarians and vegans, who don't eat milk or dairy in addition to forgoing meat. But the movement has grown to include many kinds of foodists.

Their reasons are many: Some want to improve their health. Others hope to sustain the environment or to stop the mistreatment of animals. And a growing number of people hope to support local growers and businesses, rather than out-of-state — or even out-of-the-country — conglomerates.

So, how is it that wanting to improve your health makes you an ethical eater? I always thought that was just about self-preservation. And although I've certainly understood some of the ideals behind the locavorist tendency to buy from area farmers, I can't help but sense that it's turning into this whole us vs. them mentality, where it's no longer so much about protecting the environment anymore as it is about not supporting outsiders. But I digress...

The article goes on for the next few paragraphs to talk about people's interest in buying fresh local produce for health reasons. I glimpsed the word "vegan" for the second time in the article, only to find them describing a token vegan couple who run a vegan deli:

The Menseys chose to give up meat and its byproducts after learning more about the antibiotics and steroids used in some animals. Mensey said they both want to take care of the "best investment" they have on the planet, their bodies.

What does wanting to avoid polluting your body with chemicals have to do with veganism, honestly? I guess I'd hoped that in an article that's purportedly about ethical eating that someone--anyone--would have thought to actually discuss not consuming animal products at all for ethical reasons, rather than talk about veganism in terms of self-motivated health concerns, which really aren't what veganism is about. The article drones on about Oprah, healthier eating, organic foods, eating locally and includes a quote from some guy who "aspires to be more of a vegetarian" but who eats fish and chicken, because "'[i]f you eat meat that's high in fat, it's not good for you'". It's not exactly "good" for the party being eaten, either.

I thought that maybe there'd finally be some focus on animal ethics upon reading the title of the article's next section, "Treatment of Farm Animals", but then read its first paragraph:

Another factor is the environment. Rhodes believes a lot of land that is used to grow grains for animals in confinement could be used to grow crops to help curb worldwide hunger.

Aha! So it's wrong to confine animals since they eat up grain that could be used to feed hungry humans. Got it. The article then quotes a token vegetarian who is "opposed to concentrated feedlot operations" and quotes him as saying something about carrots not suffering when they're eaten. This vegetarian goes on to quip about his friends who are "devoted carnivores" and how he juxtaposes himself with them as someone who's thought about what he eats, while they have not. I can't help but think that he hasn't really thought things through, since if you really think about what you eat, not eating animals or their products at all (and the ethics of not doing so because they have an interest in not being eaten or enslaved) should, at the very least, be some sort of consideration on your radar, shouldn't it? At least, you'd think that it would have gotten a passing mention in a newspaper article about ethical eating. But who's really thinking these days, anyway?

What to Eat

Once again, hours away from lunch, I find myself glancing through the latest posts of some of my favourite concocters of tasty vegan eats. I do so bravely, clutching a section of pink grapefruit while itching for ideas of what to make for dinner this week.

I'm always on the lookout for veggie burger recipes and cookbook author Bryanna Clark Grogan offered one up on her Notes from the Vegan Feast Kitchen blog last week, just in time for Canada Day and 4th of July celebrations. Bryanna shared some suggestions for making grillable kebabs, as well as two recipes for barbecue sauce and her Mushroom-Tempeh Burgers. I'm definitely going to give the burgers a try this weekend if I can fire up my feeble little Hibachi.

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Sinead from kitchen dancing posted a recipe a few days ago that included two of my favourite foods: beets and lentils. Her recipe for Lentil and Beet Salad calls for mustard, so she threw in a recipe for a homemade whiskey mustard for it. It looks like a really simple recipe that would taste anything but simple.

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I should also note that veganf has a really neat bento blog called Disposable Ardvaarks Inc.. Along with recipe ideas, including this recent post from last week for garlic scapes (Garlic Scape Infusion, Garlic Scape and White Bean Hummus and Potato Salad with Avocado and Garlic Scapes -- does it get any better?). If the recipes won't get you, the gorgeous photos she takes of the dishes she somehow manages to find time to assemble for her vegan family of six will leave you absolutely amazed.

Gilmer Dairy Farm's Edopt-a-Cow Program

A friend tipped me off to an eye-roller of a program being run by a place called Gilmer Dairy Farm that's being geared towards kids and their teachers. The program is called Edopt-a-Cow and it allows individuals or classrooms to "adopt" a cow and follow her "calving schedules" and machine-like milk production (they call it her "Cowography") and to view her pedigree. Take, for example, nearly-seven-year-old Kathy Sue, otherwise affectionately known as GDF #234. Kathy Sue's been successfully impregnated a whopping five times in her almost nine years, each time having her calves taken from her so that her almost 100,000 pounds of milk could be sold off to humans who don't need it.

The point of this program seems obvious. Under the guise of giving kids a close up and personal view of dairy production, it actually gives the whole thing a cold and detached spin. The cow becomes a machine with a cute nickname. No mention is made of the fate of her offspring or of the cruelty inherent of her being separated from each one so that the milk she produces to nourish him or her is taken from from her until her very last drop is produced and she is forcibly impregnated again. Gilmer Dairy Farm, however, presents the program as a teaching aide that helps kids learn to create charts and plot graphs, how to write business letters and most hypocritically, to "use the [cow's] pedigree to help teach the students about their family trees". Everybody knows that breeding programs are all about family, after all. Of course, no dairy propaganda--er, program--would be complete without a whole whack of educational links designed to make kids think that dairy farms are full of love and sweetness. I'm guessing that the Edopt-a-Cow program conveniently leaves out the fate that awaits Kathy Sue once she's too old to birth any more babies.

Although this page is from the NZ Dairy Cruelty website, the same information applies to cows in other countries like the U.S. and Canada concerning the ordinary lives of dairy cows. If you're concerned about the plight of animals humans raise for their flesh, but still consume milk products while reassuring yourself that there is less harm inherent in the dairy industry, think again. These sentient non-humans undergo immense suffering at various points in their lives. It is impossible to deny the repeated violations of the interest each one of those cows has to live a life that does not involve being enslaved, forcibly impregnated, having her offspring taken from her just after birth, and in the end, led off to slaughter.

There is no logical manner in which someone who chooses not to eat animals for ethical reasons can defend continuing to consume dairy. If you are merely seeking to somehow remove yourself from the cycle of animal slaughter, then every single male calf taken from its mother that ends up on someone's dinner plate is testimony to the fact that you're failing miserably. Furthermore, to promote vegetarianism where dairy consumption is presented (or defended) as one step further along the ethical path towards veganism is wrong-headed and speciesist.

For further information on resources to go dairy-free, visit the Go Dairy Free website or do a simple Google search for alternatives to dairy. Do Kathy Sue and others like her a favour--go vegan!

Links on My Face Is on Fire

I'm just scrawling a quick note to say that I'll be purging and reorganizing the links in the right sidebar over the next week. Some of the categories overlap and I need to find a way to put some order into them. If you have a vegan or abolitionist animal rights site or blog you think would be a good fit and would like to do a link swap, please drop me a line at m.of.the.maritimes at gmail.com.

Eva Batt and What Other Abolitionists Have Been Discussing Lately

A little over a week ago, Nathan Schneider of the Vegan Abolitionist blog "resurrect[ed] a bit of vegan history by posting an essay by early vegan advocate and longtime Vegan Society member Eva Batt. Batt wrote "Why Veganism?" in 1964, around 10 years after she'd gone vegan herself, and close to 20 years after the term was first coined by the Vegan Society's founders. Today, 45 years after the essay was written, some of its facts concerning food or animal usage may be a bit dated, as practices have changed over the years. Worth nothing, though, is that in 45 years, some of the more heinous practices in so-called "animal husbandery" have not changed at all. For instance, while describing the failings inherent in following a lacto-vegetarian diet, Batt wrote:

If, however, we were to compare degrees of cruelty, it would be clearly seen that of all the "food animals" the cow suffers far more than beef cattle. For the whole of her life, this soft-eyed, docile animal is regarded siply as a milk machine. She is kept going with drugs and "steamed up" with hormones, injected with anitbiotics, and still has to suffer the horrors of the slaughterhouse when she has at last become unprofitable.

Overall, much of what she wrote is still valid and the spirit in which she wrote it is more than significant. It's a piece of history in the vegan movement, but it's also a call to eschew the use of all animals which still resonates today.

Elizabeth Collins of the NZ Vegan Podcast wrote about Nathan's blog post on her own blog a few days ago and read the piece aloud on her most recent podcast, reflecting upon the points in the essay that she felt were most relevant and on how she feels it would make an effective introductory essay on veganism for many non-vegans. In her post, she also pointed out that Adam Kochanowicz (of Abolition Vegans) discusses Batt's essay in Episode 7 of his Vegan News video podcast. Please check out what Elizabeth and Adam had to say about Bett's essay and take the time to have a look at the piece itself.

My Face Is on Fire Is on Twitter!

After discussing it a bit with a fellow blogger yesterday, I've decided to take the plunge. If anything, it's a good way to stay on top of what my favourite abolitionist vegans are doing. It's also a fantastic way to keep my ear to the ground for the latest news.

So, I can be found here. Please feel free to follow at your own risk (and definitely feel free to post your own Twitter profile links in the comments below).

Oh My Poor Bones!

So yesterday, the results of yet another study into "vegetarianism" and its impact on bone density were released. This one is apparently a bit more comprehensive, involving the results of several studies. According to a piece about it on the Australian Science Alert website called "Vegan Bones a Bit Less Dense":

Researchers in Australia and Vietnam searched all peer-reviewed literature on the subject, selecting nine studies for analysis. The nine studies compared bone mineral density (BMD) of meat eaters and vegetarians from around the world, including 2749 men and women.

Their results showed that people on vegetarian diets have BMD roughly 5 per cent lower than non-vegetarians.

The article quotes one of the leaders of the study, Professor Tuan Nguyen, as reassuring people that

"Many studies tell us, for example, that countries with a high rate of vegetable consumption have a low risk of hip fracture. This implies that vegetable consumption is good for bone health.”

“Other studies have highlighted lower BMD measurements among vegetarians and have come to the opposite conclusion.”

“The truth, of course, encompasses many dietary and lifestyle factors. While BMD is important, it is not the only thing that contributes to fracture risk.”

Now, although the piece on the study is called "Vegan Bones a Bit Less Dense", the piece goes on to use the term "vegetarian" in describing the subjects of the mere 9 out of 922 peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic that Professor Nguyen's group found worth of including in their own results--less than 10 per cent of previous studies done on the topic. His group ended up looking at results for subjects who followed a number of supposed types of vegetarianism, including in their definition of the term those popular "vegetarians" who eat animals:

The term ‘vegetarian diet’ included 4 types of vegetarian diet: semi-vegetarian (excluding meat); lactoovovegetarian (excluding meat and seafood); lactovegetarian (excluding meat, seafood and eggs but not milk and dairy products); and vegan (excluding all foods of animal origin).

In conclusion, Nguyen emphasized that the difference in bone density between meat eaters and vegans is "small" and that "whether the difference translates into increased fracture risk has yet to be resolved".

Another story about this study, again out of Australia, quotes Nguyen as stating outright that "the study found vegans were no more likely to be treated for bone fractures than non-vegans" and that vegans tend to be healthier, living longer and with lower rates of hypertension and heart disease. So basically, a vegan's bones may be 5% less dense than those of an omni, but there's no conclusive evidence that this means anything whatsoever in terms of a higher incidence of breaking said bones (in fact, the opposite may be true) or of the development of osteoporosis, and furthermore, vegans tend to live longer by avoiding one of the major killers in Western society--heart disease.

Five bucks says that by this time next week, the US media will have jumped on this, regardless, with milk industry types and their public relations people (think Center for Consumer Freedom) reinterpreting the results for their own agenda and praising the benefits of dairy, while warning people of the dire consequences of following an animal-free diet. Five bucks, I tell ya.

Wayne Pacelle of HSUS Makes It Clear That He's No Abolitionist

Just yesterday, AgriTalk (aka the "talk radio program for rural America and agriculture") aired an interview with Wayne Pacelle, a self-described vegan and the President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). For those of you who may have been rooting for HSUS, keeping your fingers crossed and hoping that maybe the animal slaughter industry's labelling of Pacelle or HSUS as having a so-called "vegan agenda" held the slightest bit of promise in terms of ending the use of animals in agriculture, please listen to this podcast.

The fact that Pacelle and HSUS have been standing firmly in the new welfarist camp was (yet again) made more than clear. In the interview, host Mike Adams of AgriTalk asked Pacelle where HSUS stood with regards to animal rights or animal welfare and Pacelle responded.

Adams: We have had a lot questions about where you come down on animal rights and welfare. The livestock industry and people I know believe in the humane treatment of animals. There is a difference between animal welfare and animal rights. How do you define the two? Are they same or different?

Pacelle: We at the Humane Society of the United States don’t talk about animal rights, but human responsibility. That places us more with the comments that you represent from the agriculture community. In almost al of our campaigns and activities, whether it’s Prop 2 in California or prior ballot measures in Florida or Arizona, or in our Hallmark/Westland investigation, where we exposed the terrible mistreatment at a cull cow slaughter plant of the spent dairy cows, or in some other campaigns, those fit squarely in the realm of animal welfare. They relate not whether animals should be used for food, but how they are treated during production, transport and slaughter. [...] We’ll have some disagreements depending on what your orientation is, but I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim that our work is moving in the direction of eliminating animal agriculture as some of the folks in the industry keep repeating.

Pacelle goes on to assert that it's his

core belief that Americans are going to continue to eat meat, milk and egg products. That is the way it is. These are long-standing cultural practices. Our diet has been at work for a long time with people and it will not change certainly not overnight and it’s not going to change over a decade or 50 years.

In the remainder of the interview, when asked about his veganism, Pacelle makes it clear that it's his personal choice and that it has no impact upon and nor does it reflect HSUS or its policies. He goes even further to emphasize how, in fact, very few of HSUS' volunteer board of directors are even vegetarian, as if not eating animals somehow leaves you incompetent to help determine their best interest. When asked if he's stated that he wishes to put an end to all sport hunting, he denies it firmly and then dodges a question about whether he opposes hunting in general, stating that HSUS merely focuses on its "worst abuses" such as "canned hunts, bear baiting, contest shoots, shooting of endangered species [and] pure trophy hunting". When asked if he supports the closure of zoos, he says no. He even calls farming a "noble profession". You can read a transcript of the interview here.

I think it's important for vegans to be aware of these facts--of this reality. It concerns me when members of the vegan community come out in support of organisations like HSUS, defending them for making supposed small inroads for animal rights. The truth is that organisations like HSUS do absolutely nothing to benefit animal rights. They collect donations from the guilty and wage minor public relations campaigns. What they accomplish isn't merely insufficient; it actually sets animal rights considerations further back. These campaigns invariably end up making those same people who donate feel better about maintaining the status quo concerning society's treatment of non-human animals as property. Is that what the vegan community really wants? Is this man who the vegan community really wants to champion?

Will Potter Speaking at "Animal Law: Working With the Grassroots" Conference

Here's a talk given by Will Potter from the Green Is The New Red website mentioned in my previous post today. His bit was at the "Animal Law: Working With the Grassroots" conference at the University of Washington in May of 2008, in which he was a member of the "Representation of Activists" panel. In it, he elaborates upon the "Green Scare" by explaining how the US government--in part through the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)--has come to vilify and attack environmentalist and animal rights activists, right down to your average vegan potluck attendee.

Animal Rights Activist Jailed at Secretive US Prison on Democracy Now!

Andrew Stepanian was jailed in a secretive US prison known as a Communication Management Unit (CMU) after being sentenced to three years under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), a recent post-9/11 act criticized by everyone from the ACLU to animal welfare and animal rights groups for its inclusion and criminalizing through broad strokes of legitimate civil disobedience.

On Thursday, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed Stepanian about his imprisonment, and discussed his case--along with the serious concerns regarding the existence of CMUs and the enforcement of the AETA--with Stepanian's lawyer, as well as with Will Potter who runs the Green Is The New Red blog. Incidentally, Potter's blog is a must-read for anyone in the environmentalism or animal rights movements. It focuses on the real-life repercussions of the Green Scare, comparing the US government's focus on environmentalist and animal rights activists to the Communist witch hunts of the 40s and 50s.

A transcript of the interview and discussion can be found here.

So So Vegan - DJ Weekly

I couldn't help but giggle at this little bit of satire.

Must-Reads: Unpopular Vegan Essays

In his Unpopular Vegan Essays blog, Dan Cudahy wrote an excellent piece contrasting the rights-based abolitionist approach to new welfarism. He clarifies what importance either side places on veganism, with abolitionists using it as their absolute moral baseline, and new welfarists embracing it as more of a tool (e.g. to boycott the animal slaughter industry). Dan explains how, among other things, new welfarists are missing the point and wasting valuable time and resources hitting the industry where it's already strong with public relations and marketing campaigns, while neglecting to make a significant effort to engage in the most effective form of activism--educating people about veganism.

Podcasts

I got up this morning, fixed myself a cup of coffee and some leftover chickpea vegetable hash and sat down at the computer to have breakfast while catching up on some of my favourite podcasts. I noticed a new show from cookbook author Dino Sarma's Alternative Vegan podcast and had a listen. I love this podcast, particularly because Dino tends to focus on using the very basics for vegan cooking. There's no room for expensive processed vegan substitutes in his kitchen, nor is there room for meat substitutes like tofu, tempeh and seitan. Instead, he uses fresh produce, legumes and nuts to create tasty dishes that often reflect his South Asian roots and his love of improvisational cooking. His recent show focuses on how to roast chickpeas and the different things you can do with them, leaving you antsy to go roast and use your own. Check out his blog and pick up his book, too.

Even Non-Meat Eaters Endorse the Eating of Animals

My early morning read pretty much clinched it for me today that people need a stronger grounding in both semantics and basic logic. Yesterday I heard about lacto-vegetarians wanting to call themselves lactovegans; today, I read that the writer of a column called "Vegetarianismism" is now calling people who eat meat "fellow vegetarian[s]". What's next, really? (This is going to be a little long.)

Max Fisher, The Atlantic's token vegetarian foodie, has now gone on record as 1) endorsing the eating of animals and 2) conflating vegetarianism with the eating of animals. In his piece from Wednesday called "The Case for Semitarianism", Fisher revisits ethical relativism with that same delight recent Pollanite foodies have been oozing while oohing and aahing over their hands-on involvement in the slaughter of some non-human or another. In Fisher's case, his oohing is over someone else's participation in the slaughter of a pig. Fisher uses terms like "beautiful" to describe how the Greeks have (here comes the euphemism) "celebrated pork". He immerses himself completely in his Pollan-gasm, writing:

I looked at the bright, smiling faces in Aglaia's photo as they held the severed head of the pig and resisted my knee-jerk reaction that meat is "wrong." I thought how silly it would be to tell these people to eat tofu instead, and what a loss to Greek culture, to all culture, it would be if they did. Food is absolutely central to the cultures that make the world so interesting, and that food includes meat

then invites us all to "understand why the cost of universal vegetarianism would be perhaps too high". Heaven forbid that we wipe the gleeful expressions off the faces of those Greek children during photo ops with severed heads--that would just be plain ol' mean.

Fisher does admit that this fixation on meat is "bad for the animals who die to produce it", but I guess that how bad it is for the animals isn't a particularly weighty or relevant concern for him, since his solution is that there should be "compromise" and that some animals are just going to have to be collateral damage so that humans can still cater to their taste buds and indulge themselves in their bloodlust.

Predictably, he quotes New York Times foodie Mark Bittman who recently co-opted the term vegan to help promote his book and latest food fad) and uses this as his stepping-stone to advocate the occasional eating of animals. He calls this "mitigated meat". As if the name-dropping, bandwagon-hopping and euphemisms weren't annoying enough, he then redefines the term vegetarian by providing the example of a "lifelong vegetarian [sic] friend [who] allows herself meat on holidays and special occasions". (One has to wonder whether Fisher extends this own redefining of the term to himself, since he frequently reminds his readers that he's a vegetarian.)

So what to do? According to Fisher, it depends on whether you view animal flesh as "an indulgence similar to alcohol: a social norm harmless in careful moderation" or if you view it as being "more like cigarettes--a harmful vice at any level". I guess that viewing it as the product of the torture and slaughter of a sentient creature isn't an option anymore. It's either naughty to eat animals, or naughty and unhealthy. It's all about us and not about them. Fisher's take (and introduction of yet another foodie term crafted to make people feel hip and lovely about eating animals)?

For me, the latter view makes sense, though that has a bit to do with my addictive personality (I can either eat three burgers a week or no burgers at all) as well as my moral qualms. But I see no problems--ethical, dietary, or culinary--with what I like to call semitarianism: A diet of sometimes vegetarianism, sometimes omnivorism.

So now I wonder, just how much meat do you have to eat and how many times a day do you have to eat it to qualify as an omnivore? 'Cause it seems to me that by definition, if you eat it at all, that makes you an omnivore. Is it just me, or does it seems as though foodies would like to make the word taboo, without actually condemning the eating of animals itself?

In asserting that he sees no ethical problems inherent in eating animals, Fisher contradicts what he'd written earlier about his own vegetarianism stemming from how he'd "long thought that eating a (once) living thing seemed fundamentally immoral". Fisher takes his philosophical meanderings further off-track by contrasting his proposed new "semitarianism" to (another foodie term for omnivorism) flexitarianism, stating that his new form of vegetarianism "is borne out of philosophical conviction, and that conviction is no less legitimate for food-lovers who abstain from meat one day a week or all seven". Furthermore, sounding more like Palin than Pollan, he asks all vegetarians and vegans to "recall that even the most fervently ethics-based vegetarianism isn't really about an ideological purity of all-or-nothing, us-versus-them purism activist groups foster".

Fisher then explains that what vegetarianism and veganism are all about is reducing animal suffering and he absolves humans of any sense of agency or accountability by reassuring us that "[w]hether one person gives up meat or three people cut out a third, it's all the same to the cow, and it should be the same to us". So if someone kicks me in the shin hard enough to bruise it or three people kick me in the shin a little less hard to produce the same bruising, should it be all the same to me? More importantly, should it be all the same to them?

Lactovegan? Looks Like Someone's Yanking Chains

For those of you who follow Hungry Hungry Veganos on Twitter, you'll have read about this already today. It seems that someone has taken it upon himself (or herself) to set up a blog called lactovegan.com which is self-described as representing "compassion and consciousness". Supposedly born of the blogger's frustration with constantly having to explain himself while eating out and trying to describe his lacto-vegetarian dietary preferences, the blog instead introduces a completely contradictory and confusing term into the mix. What's that old saying? Two wrongs don't make a right?

You don't take a situation where to correct confusion over a term used to describe you, you introduce an even more confusing (and, by definition in this case, impossible) term to try to correct it. As is described in the blogger's initial post back in February:

Why invent a new term? In American society, the term vegan is very well understood. But, everybody has their own definition of vegetarianism. Depending upon indivdual [sic] interpretation, a vegetarian food may include dairy, eggs or fish. To overcome this vagueness in description of individuals who do not consume meat, eggs, fish etc. but do consume veggies and dairy, we use the term lactovegan.

Um, right. The term "vegetarian" isn't open to individual interpretation to the point where it includes eating animals (i.e. fish). Neither is the term "vegan" open to interpretation. If someone applauds the fact that in American society "the term vegan is very well understood", why would that person then feel compelled to go out of his (or her) way to co-opt the term to misrepresent and mangle it and make it "vague" as well?

Maybe I'm naive, but I can't help but think that this person's just out to yank chains. Then again, more stupid things have happened.

Sleep Well, Old Friend

Tarwater and his brother Monzo came to live with me when they were 11 months old. A few years ago, Monzo died of complications from hyperthyroidism. Yesterday, Tarwater left me at the age of 15-3/4. I'll love him and miss him forever.

Where Community and Cruelty Collide

Someone I met earlier this year who'd been asking me about my veganism and my reasons to support an abolitionist approach to animal rights left me a little perplexed a short while ago upon my own questioning him about the reasons he chooses to keep consuming animals. This person was an intelligent omnivore who'd had great love for the companion animals with whom he'd once shared his life. He struck me as being incredibly perceptive and empathetic towards people and far from being callous. He'd communicated to me that he could never bring himself to watch videos about factory farming because they'd make him hate people, but insisted that he'd already seen plenty of imagery of the harms inflicted on animals and was indeed aware of what went on in factory farming and understood, theoretically, why a logical step for vegans would be to want to see the abolition of all use, regardless of the degree of harm inflicted upon the animals.

He told me that the only difference between us in how we treat others around us is how far we each choose to extend our "circle of community". For instance, he pointed out that his community extends to most people (excluding those deemed threats to himself or his circle of community) and to non-human animals in his care, or in the care of those in his circle of community. Those non-human animals, he explained, would obviously include friends' companion animals. When I presented him with the theoretical scenario of my having a small sanctuary with rescued chickens, pigs, cows, et al. (i.e. animals he would usually designate as "food"), he asserted that by being in my care, they'd also be part of his community.

I pointed out to him that there were two ways of looking at his incorporation of non-human animals into his community. On one hand, it seemed that he acknowledged non-human animals as the property of the human members of his community (i.e. animals "in their care"). The other way of looking at this would be to say that he is willing to extend his community to those others the members of his circle of community include in their own respective circles. Since he asserted that my own circle of community extends to all non-human animals, though, this would have meant that by virtue of his including me in his own circle, he'd need to treat all non-human animals as members of his community, thereby ceasing to use them as means to an end. When he denied feeling the need to extend his own circle thus, it became clear that the former of my interpretations of his inclusion of non-human animals in his community was the valid interpretation.

The whole conversation drilled home to me yet again how wrong-headed it is for activists to focus on lessening harms to animals people use, while allowing the consideration of animals as property to continue to be the status quo. Until we get people thinking differently about non-humans, the degree of suffering to which they're subjected will be completely irrelevant to many, even if it's the stuff of token gestures for others.

Max, Stop Pulling on My Pigtails, Will Ya?

Yesterday, The Atlantic's "Vegeterianismism" writer Max Fisher tweeted about his latest article--this one focusing on what he assesses as vegetarians' proper behaviour. In his tweet, he linked to my blog post from a month ago, where I'd commented on his own piece where he'd directed a fair amount of hostility at vegans for not being hypocrites about their ethics when it comes to consuming animals. The funny thing is that in his tweet, he described my original piece as "hate mail". I certainly don't hate dear Mr. Fisher, nor have I ever mailed him. But I certainly have an appreciation of how easy it could be for some to misunderstand very basic points. And I digress...

In "Risotto, Not Rhetoric (or Red Meat)", Max Fisher starts off in a self-deprecatory manner by describing what a lousy cook he was after first having become a vegetarian. He also shares how obnoxiously preachy he feels he was at the time, trying to "shame others" into shunning meat. Fisher states his point quite clearly that preaching is "hypocritical" and that he's "always found it amusing that vegetarians can be so concerned about the well-being of animals and yet quite ready to shame their own parents". He then goes on to express how the only real way to spread the vegetarian word is by focusing on the "joy" inherent in it, and not "the harm of others". That's kind of like saying that you should try to convince people to not smoke by conveying to them the joy of breathing (for instance), while avoiding any mention of lung cancer, emphysema, or stroke.

Fisher then tells a tale that I think is meant to be a success story exemplifying his championed method of avoiding "the V-word" while sneaking vegetarian food into dinner guests. He shares the tale of how he managed to get his unhealthy college professor to give up eating red meat, stating how it was "evidenced by the prodigious amounts of chicken he ate at our regular dinners". Less cows, more chickens? I guess that the "V-word" that should be avoided here is 'victory'. At least where the chickens are concerned.

I'm all for winning people over with their taste buds and happily-filled bellies. Years ago, I worked in in an office where monthly potlucks were the norm and I always took the opportunity to bring a couple of creative vegan dishes to share with colleagues, to give them the chance to get a taste of just how delicious vegan food can be. That being said, I hope that Mr. Fisher isn't actually advocating that those who are serious about what he calls the cause should refrain altogether from ever talking about their reasons for not wanting to use animals. I mean, somewhere between browbeating people over dinner and donning an apron to convert people from eating cows to eating chickens, there's gotta be some grey area, no? At least, let's hope that we can acknowledge a more effective way to help animals.

I particularly appreciated what Professor Gary L. Francione had to say a little over a year ago about the many opportunities that exist to educate people about veganism, and of how "the most effective opportunities are calm, friendly exchanges between two thinking human beings". Talking about ethics isn't tantamount to proselytizing. Sometimes it's just a question of helping people connect the dots. And as Professor Francione writes, "every person who goes vegan is a vital contribution to the nonviolent revolution that will eventually shift the paradigm away from animals as property and toward animals as persons". How one chooses to communicate is indeed essential. It's just as essential, however, that vegans not, in turn, be shamed into not talking about their veganism. After all (and as I hope Mr. Fisher agrees on some level), the ultimate goal is to help the animals--not harm them.

A New Vegan Cookbook (Just Not Really Vegan)

Cookbook author and herbalist Pat Crocker is currently promoting her recent book The Vegan Cook's Bible. I found myself ending up with a somewhat furrowed brow as I read this bit about it via The Canadian Press. In it, Crocker emphasizes that she's "not a strict vegetarian or vegan", but "regularly enjoys [...] dairy products [and] includes a small amount of organic lamb, chicken, beef and fish in her diet once or twice a week". Now, there's no hard and fast rule anywhere that vegan cookbook authors need to be vegan. I mean, even Bryant Terry, whose Vegan Soul Kitchen is all the rage these days in online vegan discussion groups was pretty forthright about his less than enthusiastic take on veganism. In a recent interview with Mother Jones, for instance, he stated that he doesn't "advocate any particular diet for anyone" and "think [s] that's a very personal decision that people have to make".

It still disappointed me, though, to read Crocker's assertions that "cooking without dairy is really difficult" and that "vegans have lost a certain sense of mouth feel and what tastes good and their palates have become accustomed to a pretty bland diet". Cooking without dairy isn't difficult and to assert that vegans have become accustomed to a bland diet is nuts and perpetuates the whole myth that veganism involves a sort of ascetic diet where deprivation rules the day. Whether she really buys into this or is just bullshitting to try to emphasize how super ridiculously tasty her own recipes are compared to the rest of what's out there, we may never know.

I don't have a copy of the book, but this review of it by Roseann Marulli on the SuperVegan site pretty much helped cement my suspicions of it being anything but a bona fide vegan cook's bible. According to the review, in a section of the book on substitutes for white sugar, Crocker suggests using honey. More problematic, though, is that Crocker includes a section on health called the Healthy Body Systems in which she repeatedly advocates the consumption of fish. In a supposedly vegan cookbook. When Marulli asked Crocker about this, Crocker responded by insisting that "'the fact that vegans don't eat fish does not change the fact that fish is an excellent source of, for example, omega3 fatty acids'".

It's one thing to debate the degree to which vegan ethics or politics should be emphasized in vegan cookbooks (and this is something I'd like to wrap my head around down the road in another blog post). On the other hand, to write a book that one feels compelled to call The Vegan Cook's Bible and then fill it with recommendations to eat fish? Um, no. I don't think so, Pat. I'll pass on this one, and hope that other vegans get this heads up before they decide whether to do so, as well.