Should Vegans Endorse Meatless Monday?

Over the course of the past year, I've read about and have occasionally referenced the hot trend that's currently being promoted by foodies, environmentalists and even some animal welfare organizations. It's called "Meatless Monday" and is a revisiting of the voluntary rationing encouraged by the US government during the war years. In 2003, the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health jumped on it to start a public health awareness campaign. Clicking through the "Meatless Monday" website, it becomes obvious that the campaign's sole purpose is indeed to promote better human health. The site spells it out clearly in its FAQ section that the campaign isn't about promoting veganism or vegetarianism--it's about "moderation". The regular consumption of eggs is touted as nutritionally desirable and the consumption of low-fat dairy and fish are also presented as being nutritionally sound options. In fact, the consumption of fish is even encouraged.

So who's supporting this movement? Foodies like Michael Pollan have promoted it and it's even been endorsed by self-described vegan authors with a penchant for Paris exceptions. Kathy Freston, Oprah's once-upon-a-time fad vegan cleanse guru, also promotes it, adding a 'tsk' or two for those who don't eat the flesh of nonhuman animals and who aren't themselves supportive of the campaign:

I know that some vegetarians pooh pooh Meatless Monday as not enough. I'm sympathetic to that view, but I think it's unnecessarily strident. For people who think that going totally vegetarian is too challenging, the Meatless Monday campaign offers a gentle entrée into the idea of eating without eating animals. My hope is that people will use the campaign as a stepping stone -- first one meatless day per week, then three, then five, then seven. As we lean into meatless eating -- switching out more and more meat meals for meatless meals -- we end up feeling better, both physically and ethically.

Is it necessarily true, however, that cutting back on eating the flesh of nonhuman animals one day a week will lead to someone's "switching out more and more meat meals for meatless meals"? Prof. Gary L. Francione argues effectively against touting vegetarianism as some sort of gateway to veganism, as have others.

Furthermore, is it not misleading to present the not eating of the flesh of nonhuman animals as being somehow more ethically significant than not consuming their products (e.g. dairy, eggs, honey) or not buying clothing made using their flesh or fur? It seems to be a change that's really more a shuffling around that just reinforces the view and treatment of nonhuman animals and their products as commodities, rather than an actual step forward in any sense. For instance, an omni friend of mine emailed me this morning with a link to a news article about the campaign, telling me excitedly that she intends to stop eating "meat" on Mondays. Since she knows that I'm a vegan, she said that she'd thought that I would be happy to hear it and would be glad about what she called her "small contribution towards veganism". When I asked her why she had decided to hop aboard the bandwagon, however, she told me that it was mostly due to environmental concerns.

So, what was on her plate today? She had an egg omelette for breakfast this morning, a Greek salad for lunch, and was planning to have a frozen cheese pizza for dinner. Sure, she's not having a hamburger today, but that's little consolation for the chicken enslaved to produce the eggs for her omelette, the goat confined and impregnated to make the feta cheese for her salad, and the cow confined and impregnated to make the cheese for her pizza. It's also little consolation for the chicks, goats and calves considered "by-products" of these processes who are either slaughtered if male, or reinserted into the whole cycle if female. When she expressed her disappointment that I wasn't applauding her decision, I started to explain to her that I don't view eating a steak as being any more ethically problematic than eating a dairy ice cream cone. She then asserted to me that she was "doing [her] part" and that I should at least agree that it was better than nothing. Is it really, though? Is it better to let someone think that eating cheese is more ethical than eating fried chicken, or that not eating nonhuman animals on a Monday makes eating them somehow more alright the rest of the week?

Regardless of Freston's 'tsk', I have to say that it troubles me to see fellow vegans advocating the "Meatless Monday" campaign, especially when they attempt to argue on ethical grounds that it will somehow lead to less nonhuman animals being harmed or consumed. To begin with, the idea of promoting it feels too much like managing a lottery for nonhuman animals. Got the winning ticket? Lucky you (although it's not so lucky for the the animals whose flesh will be consumed from Tuesday through Sunday)! It's important to remember that the campaign isn't "Animal-Free Monday" and that it completely side-steps the issue of animals enslaved for their "products"; I simply can't accept this as being, in any way, a productive component of anything resembling vegan education. So why are vegans endorsing it?

Some vegans like dietitian Virginia Messina view Meatless Monday as a good opportunity for advocacy; I agree that it can certainly be used as a springboard, as long as it's not condoned, which honestly just sends out mixed messages about the reasons one should continue to view nonhuman animals as things or property. I'd also like to hope that vegans aren't holding out for that one symbolic single day a week that ethically compartmentalizes the consumption of various parts of nonhumans to educate others: We need to take each and every opportunity we can--not just on Mondays.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson Tackles Veganism -- or Does He?

Years ago, shortly after I first became a vegetarian, I picked up a copy of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals. I remember bringing it up in conversation to omni friend after omni friend and even lending it out to a few. It was overflowing with touching stories that I figured might influence friends and family to take animals more seriously -- to reconsider our treatment of them. I ended up forgetting about him as my attention turned to a more serious study and consideration of animal ethics and I became a vegan . I was intrigued a few days ago when I stumbled upon a reference to Masson online that indicated that he'd written a new book -- this time, about veganism. It's called The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food.

A search of news stories about it only brought up a handful of results, albeit a few of them somewhat impressive. The Washington Post, for instance, has a review of the book that's juxtaposed with Chicago Tribune entertainment writer Mark Caro's "kinder / gentler" exploration of the foie gras industry, The Foie Gras Wars. The much less significant Seattle Weekly's got a blurb on it that starts off with an ill-researched gratuitous stab at veganism (its writer, Brian Miller, uses the term "vegan militia" and defines what he calls the vegan "creed" as "no meat, no eggs, no dairy, sometimes no fish"). Where the book is concerned, Miller obsesses over Masson's comparison of chicken factory farms to concentration camps and on Masson's off-beat history. However, Miller also brings up that he feels Masson's work does not present any new information and that he lacks credentials as an actual philosopher. The review that really got my attention this morning, however, was The New York Times' piece on his book, which contains snippets of interview.

The piece states that -- as I'd known back when I'd read his earlier books in the late 90s -- Masson was raised a vegetarian. What I didn't know is that, according to the Times' piece, "Mr. Masson began eating meat as an adult and became vegan just five years ago". It's strange to think that he would have been writing all of these books touting the complex emotional lives of animals after having himself gone back to eating them; I guess that this is something to research at some point, more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything. What did elicit a raised eyebrow from me, however, was to read Masson present himself as a vegan, then state

“I call myself an aspiring vegan — sometimes I say veganish,” Mr. Masson said. “I make mistakes sometimes.” If he’s at a restaurant and finds out he ate cake made with a bit of butter, he said: “I can live with that. It’s just too weird and too hostile to go ‘blech’ and throw up and say, ‘I can’t believe I just ate that.’ “

But that, Mr. Masson said, is a fairly typical response to accidental dairy consumption by vegans, who will eat nothing produced by or from an animal.

Although not freaking out over having accidentally consumed animal products is understandable, offering up the term "veganish" to describe consuming an animal product through no fault or intention of one's own seems problematic at best. Masson manages to take it one much more damaging step further, though, in the piece's final paragraph, in which he certainly leaves this wee blogger unable and unwilling to give serious consideration to anything further he could possibly have to say about veganism or the ethics of animal consumption:

This summer, Mr. Masson and his wife and sons are going on a bicycling tour of Italy. “I can see a situation where we’ve been riding all day, and we’re going to be hungry and the Italian people are going to give us pasta with cheese and we don’t want to hurt their feelings,” he said. “So I may just not be vegan for two weeks.”

It's Singer's "Paris exception" revisited. In those few sentences, Masson manages to convey that not hurting a human's feelings is more important to him than valueing the lives of non-human animals. In those few sentences, Masson manages to completely undermine much of the work he's published over the past ten years, and he's pretty much left anything he could possibly have to say or write about veganism a bit of a farce. I haven't read his book and after reading what I did this morning, unfortunately, I'm not sure that I'd see any point in doing so.