Veganism in the News

I've been MIA for the past few weeks with a house-guest from out of the country. Expect some blog updates in the upcoming week on a variety of topics, including an update on what some other abolitionists have been up to recently. In the interim:

School Cafeterias More Vegan-Friendly

In a brief article in SUNY at Geneseo's paper The Lamron, self-described vegan student Eve Anderson described how her fears of a french fries diet while away at college were quashed by the variety of offerings at various locations on her campus for vegans. From raw fruits and vegetables to meat substitutes in ordinarily animal-based wraps and "peanut butter and apple" panini" to hot vegan soup, Anderson found herself pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to eat a well-balanced diet as a vegan on her campus this year. Anderson focuses on diet in her article, but given that her article deals specifically with the availability of animal product free food on her campus, it's not clear that Anderson has jumped on the "veganism by mouth" trend.

I think that articles like these are encouraging and I hope that vegans who read this blog and who are at college or university this year take some time to write to their own school papers about the ethics of consuming animals and of why veganism is the right choice and that you speak to your cafeteria managers or your student council representatives about increasing vegan options on campus so that everyone can get a chance to see that you don't need to use animals to eat delicious healthy food while at school. I also hope that vegans who read this blog and who are students take those opportunities, either in their student papers or while talking to their representatives to discuss how other animal products in items other than food can easily -- and should -- be avoided. Please take some time to talk to others about veganism.

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Just Another Food Choice?

Seattle Weekly's chief mocker of vegans and animal rights activists, Jason Sheehan, wrote a piece yesterday to purportedly highlight a so-called "intelligent debate" concerning the ethics of using animals for food he wishes to encourage (and apparently facilitate) in his "From the Gut" series. Sheehan recently wrote about a CNN interview with chef Tim Love, in which Love promotes meat-eating by giving five facetious reasons to not stop eating animal flesh. Among other things, Love called vegetarians and vegans "preachy" (adding, of course, that he was just "kidding" and insisting that "[s]ome of [his] best friends are vegetarian" -- and then going on to call vegetarians and vegans "holier-than-thou"). Love defends meat-eating, insisting that it "provides much-needed protein, iron and amino acids" (all available from plant-based sources, of course) and then making comments like:

If I want to eat meat, let me eat it in peace. Nobody is forcing you to be a vegetarian, so why are you trying to force us?

He also tells readers that meat tastes better than vegetables and that they'd "get a lot of funny looks if [they] tried roasting a pumpkin at a tailgate instead of a pig. Essentially, Love puts animal flesh on par with with any plant-based food, emphasizing the current status quo by which it's considered quite normal to eat the body parts of slaughtered sentient non-humans.

Seattle Weekly's Sheehan took off running with this (i.e. spotted the potential to further mock those who weigh the ethics of animal use more seriously) to provide an additional ten reasons people should not stop eating animals. He then provides two reader responses arguing for and against "vegetarianism" and presents them as reasonable and equally worthwhile to consider in their logic and validity. Sadly, the supposedly "pro-" animal opinion focuses on vegetarianism, stopping short of veganism. The reader, "Herbivore", first argues against eating animal flesh for environmental and human health reasons and then delves into animal suffering and factory farming, mentioning animal intelligence and then focusing on animal use that involves slaughter. Herbivore's arguing against the ethics of animal slaughter is followed-up with a list of "the vast array of vegetarian" options available for humans to eat, including "[b]ean burritos, mushroom pizza, pasta with pesto sauce" -- all dishes customarily made using dairy and with no mention made by Herbivore of animal-free versions of them.

So, the "pro-" animal argument in Sheehan's piece is, unfortunately, not really arguing against animal use, but just arguing for human benefits and against some forms of animal treatment. It's a shame that the "either/or" presented by Sheehan is firmly lodged in perpetuating speciesism either way you look at it. Given that so many large groups in the animal advocacy movement fail to promote actually not using non-human animals at all, it should be no surprised that "some" use of animals would be presented in mainstream media as an extreme stance. Sheehan asks for further "intelligent" reader comments to this supposed debate, but the truth is that the debate is not about animal use, but about how far we should moderate animal use while continuing to engage in it. Arguing either side of it, of course, fails to take the interests and rights of non-human animals seriously and misses the point altogether that veganism should be the moral baseline. For more information on this, please visit Prof. Gary L. Francione's Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website.

On Speciesism and Commodification

"Speciesism is wrong because, like racism, sexism, and homophobia, it excludes sentient beings from full membership in the moral community based on an irrelevant characteristic. Race, sex, sexual orientation, and species are all irrelevant to the capacity to be harmed.

But the rejection of speciesism on this ground implies the rejection of discrimination based on race, sex, or sexual orientation. It is unacceptable to perpetuate the commodification of one group for the benefit of another. Commodification involves treating the other—whether a woman, person of color, gay or lesbian, or nonhuman—as an object, as something rather than as someone."

-- Prof. Gary L. Francione, "The State of the Movement" (2007-01-24)

Bad Reputations

Rock icon Joan Jett has been a celebrity mouthpiece for PETA for years. She's also often misrepresented in the media and by animal advocacy groups as being vegan, even though she consistently shows up at public events wearing her trademark leather pants and other leather clothing. She set the record straight about her non-veganism recently in an article in the New York Observer:

"If not wearing leather would stop animals from getting eaten, then I'd stop wearing leather tomorrow," said Ms. Jett, who recently released a greatest-hits album and a new book and is played by Kristen Stewart in a new movie, The Runaways. "At least I can sit there and thank the dead cow for letting me wear its skin."

The non-human animal enslaved and slaughtered and whose skin Jett continues to wear to maintain her rock 'n' roll image doesn't care whether his or her parts ended up in her body or on her body (or "its" parts, as Jett might prefer to say). It's not how we use non-humans that is significant; what's wrong is that we use them at all.

Add to all of this that PETA described her as handing out "vegetarian/vegan starter kits" for it in NYC a few months back. Whether PETA was using the terms 'vegetarian' and 'vegan' interchangeably (which is problematic in itself, albeit not surprising from PETA) or unapologetically non-vegan Joan Jett hit the pavement to promote that which she herself opts not to embrace, my head could very well implode trying to peel away the layers of muddled contradictions and moral confusion.

If Jett's inability to "get it" with regards to animal use isn't apparent in the previous quote, how about this one from PETA's GoVeg.com website, where she responds to a question concerning how she feels about people who wear fur?

I believe they are callous and self-involved. With such good-quality imitation fur available for making clothes, etc., there is no reason to torture animals. It’s the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome. Put fur lovers’ legs in a steel trap for a few days, or whack ’em on the head with a club, and maybe they’ll get it.

So eating animals is wrong and wearing their skin with the fur still left on it is worthy of having your leg put "in a steel trap", but wearing that skin is perfectly alright as long as you unhair it first? From Jett's first comment, I am guessing that she assumes that all leather comes from cows raised for human consumption and thus attempts to justify her use of it in that she figures that the cows are dead anyway. This is far from being a given, though.

What's somewhat ironic is that PETA, itself, has a blurb about leather on its site where it states the commonly known fact that leather can come from the skin of a wide variety of non-humans (e.g. cats, alligators, kangaroos, ostriches, and more -- some of them raised specifically for the human use of their skin). PETA points out that since leather is generally not labeled, there's often no way to tell whose skin you're wearing (as if it should matter whose skin it is, honestly). PETA also states on its site that the leather industry is the most economically important by-product of the meat industry, helping to prop it up financially. What PETA doesn't mention is that the skin of calves helps prop up the dairy industry even more so -- whether taken after they are slaughtered to become "veal", or taken from the fetal calves of spent pregnant dairy cows at the time of slaughter. Providing demand for a cow's skin ensures the continued profitability of the beef and dairy industries -- dots which Jett, unfortunately, fails to connect. What's most important to remember, though, is that condoning the occasional use of some parts of some non-human animals for human pleasure merely perpetuates the status quo -- that animals are things for us to use. Is that really the best way to advocate for them?

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For more information about PETA and the many dots it miserably fails to connect, itself...

Please check out Dan Cudahy's Unpopular Vegan Essays blog here.

Visit Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach to read Prof. Gary L. Francione's articles on how PETA kills animals and has been killing animals for a while, and on Ingrid Newkirk's defense of PETA's speciesist and sexist campaigns (and check out a few examples of the sexist campaigns here and here). Also read about how PETA gives awards to animal exploiters like KFC and works with them to make people feel better about continuing to consume animals.

Have a look at previous My Face Is on Fire posts to read about how some of my fellow abolitionists and I got fed up and wrote a letter rejecting those sexist tactics used by groups like PETA in the animal advocacy movement. Also read an example of how PETA profits from animal exploitation, how it misrepresents veganism while promoting the consumption of animal products and finally, how PETA's Bruce Friedrich has shamed vegans for asking waiters about ingredients on restaurant menus.

Got Milk?

Every year around Mother's Day, I notice more vegans and animal rights advocates posting reminders in online message forums, via social networking and on blogs about the forgotten mothers in the dairy industry. I stumbled upon a piece by someone called Jocelyn Hoppa when nosing around online this morning that I initially figured would sound a lot like the other articles in circulation ("On This Mother's Day, Take a Moment and Think of the Plight of Mother Cows"). She writes:

Generally, once the mother cow gives birth, her baby is taken away from her. Can you imagine? Apparently mother cows bellow for days looking for their babies. Then, the mothers are hooked up and milked, which is cold and painful—a very different experience from that if she were nurturing her young. Then, after enduring this for years, they get turned into cheap hamburger.

And then she even offers up health-related concerns about consuming dairy products:

If a story like this does inspire you to give up dairy, you should know that humans do not necessarily need to consume dairy for health. Calcium is found in plenty of plant foods, like leafy greens, sesame seeds (again, who knew?), fortified juices and cereals. A lot of people make the case that dairy products actually make us less healthy, because the saturated fat clogs our arteries and also its protein has an acidic nature that aggravates osteoporosis. Which certainly contradicts the notion of drinking milk for calcium for stronger bones.

She spends most of the article communicating that she thinks that cows are mistreated and that dairy is unhealthy, yet also throws in the following:

I'm not vegan or anything, but this is a horrifying depiction of a process that, up until reading this note, I knew very little about. Why I ever thought cows just produced such large quantities of milk without having a ton of babies is beyond me.

So, never minding the part where she's managed to overcome her previous understanding of how mammals spontaneously produce milk out of thin air, after all of this: "I'm not vegan or anything"? At the very least, you'd half-expect her to express an intention to go vegan, but it doesn't happen. Obviously, presenting someone with welfarist arguments (involving what she, herself, calls "horrifying" facts about the treatment of nonhumans) and information concerning the unhealthiness of consuming their flesh or secretions don't quite do the trick. Adding further weight to my hunch is the first comment left in response to her article, in which someone recommends Jonathan Safran Foer's beautifully written piece of garbage, Eating Animals, to supposedly learn more about how the treatment of non-humans in "factory farming" is actually "much worse". It's no real surprise that the commentator adds to this that dairy (the discussion of which is pretty much omitted in non-vegan Foer's book) is the "least of [her] worries".

So how best, then, to educate others about veganism? Talk to them about the right all sentient animals have to not be used as things; focus on how their sentience leaves them with an interest in living out their own lives as individuals -- not as our property. It's important to know all of the ancillary reasons that consuming the flesh or secretions of other animals is wrong, but it's crucial to know and understand the most important reason. Start at the root by educating yourself about animal rights by reading Gary L. Francione's Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or Your Dog.

For more information on abolitionist animal rights, please visit the Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website.

What Other Abolitionists Have Been Doing

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a long overdue list of some recent activities in which various abolitionists have been engaging. I'd meant to post a second part to it later that week, but got side-tracked, so I'm going to throw in a few things now, but will then stick to monthly updates.

So?

Prof. Gary L. Francione recently posted an excellent critique of HSUS' "Save a Seal Today" campaign on the Opposing Views website. The fundraising campaign calls for a boycott of Canadian seafood products to pressure the Canadian government to end the annual seal hunt. The message this campaign sends out is that the interests of "cute" seals matter more than the interests of all other regularly exploited sea animals, since HSUS more or less tells us that 1) it's OK to continue to consume all other sea animals as long as they don't come from Canada, and that 2) as soon as the seal hunt ends, it's OK to go back to consuming other Canadian sea animals. Most significantly, though, the messaged conveyed is that HSUS--with its annual budget of $150 million--somehow needs more money.

Read more about it here in the original piece on Opposing Views, and join the discussion.

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Sam Tucker, host of Food for Though Radio (among many, many other things), has been updating a Flickr photo set of images of foods he customarily eats. Of it, he writes:

Whenever I talk to anyone about veganism, one of the most common questions I get asked is "what do you eat?". They assume that by the time you've taken out meat, dairy, eggs, honey and other animal products off your plate, all there will be left to eat is some dry salad and lentils.

I have set this set up to bust that myth, and to prove that there are plenty of delicious foods available to vegans. I use ingredients available here in New Zealand.

You can check out his photo set here: "What This Vegan Eats".

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Vincent J. Guihan, subject of this somewhat shady and speculative Facebook page, weighed in on the recent buzz over the Slate piece by Christopher Cox proclaiming that it's perfectly justifiable for vegans to eat oysters. In "Of oysters and education: why a rights-based approach to vegan education makes sense", Guihan explains why arguing for veganism using environmental reasons or by focusing on animal suffering (i.e. their treatment) is ineffective, including that

the general secrets are out: we use animals; they suffer because we do; it is typically very bad for the environment when we do. The advocacy problem is that, historically, most people have not really cared enough to change their lives and go vegan in light of these reasons.

Guihan then calls for an emphasis on rights-based abolitionist vegan education, and particularly on community organisation to mobilize the sort of meaningful and long-lasting social change that will really make a difference to all victims of exploitation, humans and non-humans alike. To find out what you can do to help, please visit the Animal Emancipation discussion forum.

What Other Abolitionists Have Been Doing

This is something I should do much more often, and will try to feature at least monthly from now on. There is so much being done right now to promote vegan education and abolitionist animal rights all over the world. I often share links to other abolitionists' blog updates or new projects on Twitter and Facebook, but think that having a monthly rundown in one spot of some highlights would be beneficial. There's more room this way for me to provide context where it's warranted, and it makes it easier for others to weigh in and discuss what's being shared. I'll start with a few mentions today, but will post many more later in the week.

So, where to start?

Prof. Gary L. Francione has a new book coming out in May. The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation was co-written with Prof. Robert Garner of the University of Leicester (U.K.), and will be published by Columbia University Press. In the first section of the book, Prof. Francione defends an abolitionist approach to animal rights; in the second half, Prof. Garner defends the new welfarist approach (what Garner calls "protectionist"). I'll post the exact release date as soon as it's revealed (or you can go right to the source by keeping an eye on the Abolitionist Approach website, or by following the man himself on Twitter). Prof. Francione's also been busy updating his site with various essays over this past month:

• "Veganism: Just Another Way of Reducing Suffering or a Fundamental Principle of Justice & Nonviolence?"

• "Eight Animals" was about an AOL news story on the shockingly high number of animals relinquished to its shelters killed by PeTA.
  

• "Partners in Exploitation" was an essay on various animal welfare organizations' rubber-stamping the so-called "humane" consumption of animals and in doing so, merely effectively perpetuating the status quo by making consumers feel more comfortable about continuing to consume and otherwise use non-human animals.
  

• "Euphoria? For Whom?" was an elaboration upon the previous essay. This one singled out a group called Humane Farm Animal Care and how it misleads the public, through its certification or labelling program, into thinking that dairy cows can lead delightfully happy lives as they're enslaved and used for their secretions.

• "Singer Approves Again of Animal Exploitation; Drayson on Vivisection in the UK" was about Peter Singer's now fairly consistent public condoning of animal use, and on the rise of vivisection in the UK.

Prof. Francione also recorded and shared his 16th Abolitionist Approach Commentary podcast this month. A short while ago on Twitter, he had asked people to submit questions to him for the podcast and in this commentary, he responded to those concerning single-issue campaigns, as well as "with the issue about why many of those who promote violence are opposed to the abolitionist approach". You can listen to it here.

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Along with participating in ARZone's Live Guest Chat as a featured guest on March 9 (and later being invited to join its moderation team), Dan Cudahy wrote a couple of pieces for his popular Unpopular Vegan Essays blog:

• "Basic Economics and Four Types of Advocacy" compared and contrasted advocacy focused on supply vs. demand and / or welfarism vs. veganism.

• "On Veganism and Being Fully Human" provided some insight--written quite beautifully and succinctly--into how accepting or rejecting speciesism qualifies the traits we customarily understand or present as typifying what it means to be "human".
  

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Kerry Wyler set up a Facebook page for Vegan Maine, to promote abolitionist animal rights through creative and non-violent vegan education in the state of Maine.

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Elizabeth Collins recently recorded and made available Episode 54 of her New Zealand Vegan Podcast! In it, she talks about her street activism with fellow-abolitionist William Paul. She also mentions Veganicious Barbara Degrande's brand new podcast and highlights a couple of new YouTube videos by Ben Frost, which feature him performing his songs "I Am Someone - A Call for Veganism" and "Killed for Taste, Loved for Companionship - The Notes of Moral Schizophrenia".

If you haven't yet checked out the New Zealand Vegan Podcast, do so now--there's a wealth of information and interviews to be enjoyed. Also check out the numerous links her blog provides to sites and presentations by abolitionist vegan activists around the world.

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Check back in later this week for more updates on what other abolitionists have been doing and remember:

No Emily, Veganism Isn't Just About You or Me

A self-described vegan called Emily Weingarten wrote a fairly negative review of Bob and Jenna Torres' Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World for the AnnArbour.com website yesterday ("We're vegans, not freaks"). I admit (with a small amount of embarrassment) that I have not yet read the book. It's been on my "must read" list since I first stumbled across their Vegan Freak Radio podcast a few years back. The podcast was where I first learned about abolitionist animal rights and Bob and Jenna were the first two vegans I'd ever heard discussing veganism as anything other than a "personal choice". I had spent years wandering about in various online vegetarian communities where vegans were often labeled "extremists" and where vegans having the audacity to talk about veganism were often chided for hurting others' feelings by suggesting (or even rudely asserting) that consuming dairy or eggs or using any other animal product was wrong. Hearing Bob and Jenna's podcast was a relief; Bob and Jenna's were the first two voices I'd ever heard presenting veganism as the absolute least we can do if we're serious about the rights and interests of nonhuman animals, and they did so in this matter-of-fact way that made veganism sound normal and the consumption and use of nonhuman animals sound extremist.

Their podcast also led me to the serious and earnest study of Prof. Gary Francione's writings and of his abolitionist approach to animal rights, which has the sort of clarity that left me sorry I hadn't had it pointed out to me sooner, so that I wouldn't have wasted years fooling myself into thinking I was doing enough for animals. (It's kind of funny and completely coincidental, actually, that with the exception of a brief mention of my interest in Prof. Francione's work a few months beforehand, my first actual post discussing it in any way was almost exactly two years ago.)

So why am I writing about a review of a book by a couple whose advocacy literally changed my life, when I haven't in fact read it? It's not so much what Weingarten said about the book itself that I want to address, as much as what she makes obvious feeds into what she's said. Before she dives into that, Weingarten says of the Torres' book that

Vegan Freak is a sort of vegan manifesto in which the authors [...] attempt to instill vigor and commitment into already-vegans and inspire non-vegans to take on the lifestyle. There isn’t anything wrong with this. Sometimes the only way for vegans to get respect is to be able to eloquently state their reasons for being vegan and to be consistent in their diet and lifestyle.

After what to many might sound a fair and reasonable statement, Weingarten continues, throwing in the "however" which is the raison d'être for her entire piece: "Inspiring others to be vegan is OK, so long as it doesn’t go too far." What could she mean by "too far"? She provides one example of it in pretty explicit detail when she states that it's not her intention to focus on that particular example of it:

I don’t want to write a blog entry criticizing Vegan Freak because the authors spend so much time criticizing anyone who is not vegan and using a variety of other negative tones such as cursing profusely and making bad sexual jokes.

Now, I don't want to write a blog post criticizing Weingarten for criticizing Vegan Freak's authors for engaging in what she views as their unacceptable behaviour or delivery, partially because she cites no specific examples of it (and I haven't read the book). Most importantly, though, since I haven't read the book and since humour and tone are such subjective things I could get lost in trying to deconstruct what she means by "criticizing anyone who is not vegan" and discussing the thousands of increments between words like "tasteful" and "prudish" that would come up in discussing language use and sexual references. Instead, I want to focus on the remainder of Weingarten's review, which isn't so much a review of the book, as it is a lecture on appropriate behaviour for vegans--her own "manifesto" of sorts.

Weingarten writes, first, that "[a]ny reasons for being vegan are great, so long as they are motivated by a desire to create some sort of positive change." I sort of agree with that. I mean, environmental and health factors are certainly valid motivators to go vegan, for a variety of complex reasons. She writes this, however, as if wanting to criticize the Torres' focus on what is ultimately the most important reason anyone should have to stop using nonhuman animals--the basic immorality of using them at all. It's a tiny shaming, really, that could be overlooked if not for the fact that it becomes a recurring theme in her piece. She goes on to emphasize the "green" factor further in a second point by making the mistake of creating a false dichotomy, asserting that "[e]nvironmental vegans are just as valuable as ethical vegans". As seen in a recent essay on the Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website, it's not an either/or situation ("Veganism: Morality, Health, and the Environment"). For further reading on veganism, animal rights and environmentalism, do check out Vincent Guihan's essay from last August on his We Other Animals blog ("I would throw 1000 ancient redwoods out of the lifeboat to save one kitten! It's not because I'm bad; it's because plants aren't sentient").

Weingarten really goes downhill from there. Her third point is "Veganism is about you", and in it--never mind the wrongheaded title of the point itself--she makes two errors. The first is that she more or less contradicts a statement made in her first point, where she asserted that one's reasons to go vegan should not be selfish ones--that they should not be "vain". In explaining her third point, she writes about veganism being about making yourself feel better and reassures her readers that "[i]t’s OK to be proud of yourself for making these personal choices". So... it both should and shouldn't be about patting yourself on the back. Her second error involves trying to redefine "veganism" to include the option of deliberately choosing to use animal products; if you have any doubt of how "personal" she feels these "choices" are, note this particularly confusing statement:

Being vegan might also make you consider how the clothes you wear make you feel, and you might stop wearing leather, wool, and silk.

I'd like to think that Weingarten slipped and actually knows that "being vegan" means that you don't wear leather, wool and silk--not just that "you might stop wearing" them. Maybe her slip-up was due to the fact that those words were mostly filler leading up to the bona fide punch of her point (i.e. another otherwise easily overlooked tiny shaming of the Torres' or of other vocal vegans that just adds to the small pile that is her recurring finger-wagging theme) where Weingarten reminds vegans to act with "modesty and humility around non-vegans". (Disapointingly, though, Weingarten does indeed go on to further illustrate her confusion about what is meant by "veganism" a bit later in the piece.)

Weingarten's issues with vocal vegans who choose to educate others about veganism become even more apparent as she goes on to explain that since the "whole world isn't going to stop eating meat" and we "cannot expect our entire society to adopt a vegan lifestyle when meat and dairy are central components of most Americans’ diets", we apparently need to 1) manage our expectations of others' behaviour and (hey, since everybody else is doing it anyway, and we don't want to look like unreasonable extremist "freaks" or anything) 2) change our own behaviour to better adapt to the expectations of others that we be more like them when it comes either consuming or not consuming animal products. Weingarten's opinion of vegan advocacy is summed up when she says:

What we can do is support the people who are interested in learning more about vegan lifestyle and possibly becoming vegan without alienating ourselves by projecting our vegan philosophies on others who may not be interested at all.

Let me translate: Go be vegan in the world and if someone happens to notice and to express curiosity about it, great, but otherwise, shut your pie-hole about it, because telling people that using animals is wrong is preachy and rude. Have any doubts about Weingarten's opinion being that avoiding being rude to your fellow humans trumps the rights and interests of animals? Read on:

Yes, the dairy industry can be just as cruel and unethical as the meat industry, but vegetarians and vegans have many common values, and as vegans, we must respect that in order to be respected.

She admits that although consuming dairy is unethical that to obtain respect, vegans in turn need to "respect" (i.e. turn a blind eye to the fact) that vegetarians continue to engage in this unethical behaviour and opt to exploit animals since we apparently have "common values" (which obviously exclude those values that lead vegans to refrain from continuing to voluntarily and knowingly use animals as things). But according to Weingarten, in yet another little shaming, merely voicing the obvious truth would be disrespectful.

Furthermore, one's so-called "personal choice", as Weingarten so adamantly described it, suddenly becomes a public and political one when faced with whether to leave aside our ethics to instead consume animal products offered to us by others. According to Weingarten, it seems that non-vegans are emotional messes incapable of processing someone's being consistent about his or her ethics; suddenly, the "no, thank you" involving eating animals or their secretions becomes a selfish choice. To illustrate this, Weingarten, the self-described vegan, writes:

It might make me a speciest [sic] to say this, but people are much more important to me than animals. So if on my birthday, someone makes or buys me a non-vegan cake, I’m going to have a slice to avoid offending that person or causing hurt feelings.

So, on top of not talking to non-vegans about veganism, lest you offend them, being a really good vegan also means eating animal parts or secretions, lest you "offend" that non-vegan by refusing to do so. Yet, strangely, at the beginning of her piece, Weingarten herself wrote that

Sometimes the only way for vegans to get respect is to be able to eloquently state their reasons for being vegan and to be consistent in their diet and lifestyle.

Weingarten then wraps up her piece by going back to the book and claiming that it lacks the "compassion, humility, peacefulness that is [sic] inherent to a vegan lifestyle". The truth is, though, that Weingarten's article displays a lack of the sort of consistency, logic and understanding (most notably of veganism, itself) that are inherent to actually being able to comment with any sort of authority (or sense, really) on veganism or on how vegans should behave in the world.

Her piece isn't so much written in good faith as it is a passive-aggressive reprimand of vegans who don't stay in the vegan closet. It ends up conveying a sense that vegans are outcasts who should keep their veganism to themselves unless asked (although if vegans should hide their veganism, one is left to wonder how non-vegans would even think to ask about it). It conveys that that vegans should keep their veganism to themselves, even if it means compromising their ethics to avoid hurting the feelings of those who choose to keep treating nonhuman animals as things for human use and enjoyment. I don't know about you, but I think that we owe nonhuman animals more than to agree to behave as if it's somehow improper to assert that it's wrong to use them as our property. Weingarten, on the other hand, makes it clear that she thinks that we owe nonhuman animals less. That, in fact, is a shame.

THE WORLD IS VEGAN! If you want it.

Yesterday, Prof. Gary L. Francione wrote on his Abolitionist Approach website about setting up a virtual billboard to "spread the message that nonviolence against our nonhuman brothers and sisters is possible—if we want it". To do so:

Send this message on all your social message boards and ask your friends to send it on theirs. Text your friends and ask them to text their friends. Add this message to your signature line on your emails. Let’s start a friendly wave of creative, nonviolent vegan education.

Today, the remarkably multi-talented Vincent Guihan (who writes the We Other Animals blog and maintains the abolitionist Animal Emancipation discussion forum) created some banners that can be used for this very purpose. You can find them here (along with their HTML code) and re-post or distribute them freely.

Take the opportunity to share your vegan story when you do, or to talk to people about how easy--and right--it is to go vegan!

Why Veganism Needs to be the Moral Baseline

Here's a short 2008 interview on Animal World with Prof. Gary L. Francione discussing why veganism needs to be the moral baseline of the animal rights movement.

A Closer Look at Animal Rights from Gary L. Francione on Vimeo.

What Other Abolitionists Have Been Saying

I've been too busy over the past couple of weeks to keep up with the sort of posting I'd ordinarily like to be doing. That being said, expect a nice lengthy abolitionist's review of on-again, off-again vegetarian Jonathan Safran Foer's now famous animal welfare tome Eating Animals sometime over the next week and a half. Fellow-abolitionists, on the other hand, have been keeping busy and I figured that I'd take the opportunity to spotlight what a few have been up to:

Just a short while after Bucknell University's Gary Steiner ended up on the receiving of criticism from meat lovers and animal welfarists alike for his op-ed piece on veganism in the New York Times ("Animal, Vegetable, Miserable", Nov. 21), Prof. Gary L. Francione invited him to participate in his Aboltionist Approach Commentary podcast. In it, they discuss Steiner's guest editorial and the reactions to it, as well as discuss the abysmal failure of welfare reform in general. Dan Cudahy recently posted on his Unpopular Vegan Essays blog in response to welfarist Erik Marcus' short attack of the Steiner piece.

Adam Kochanowicz of The Vegan News also recently finished tweaking and uploading all seven parts of his recent interview with Prof. Francione at Rutgers University. You can watch the entire thing here at the Vegan FM website.

The word on Twitter from Bob Torres (aka @veganfreak) is that the updated version of Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World (co-written by Bob and his wife Jenna Torres) has finally left the printers and is on its way to stores at this very moment. You can also order it here (it is apparently shipping out on December 15).

Shocking People into Short-Term Change (a.k.a. Animal Advocacy Fail)

Samantha Friedman, writing for Boston's Daily Free Press, took the opportunity today to explain (in a really, really roundabout manner, I'll admit) why nonviolent vegan education is the only sensible method to use to lead people to commit themselves to living the remainder of their lives without exploiting nonhuman animals. What Prof. Gary L. Francione describes as "blood and guts" advocacy can sometimes miss the mark altogether. As Friedman writes:

PETA, also known as People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, is responsible for the reason I can no longer stomach a beef gyro. You see, PETA has conducted an array of investigations on the management of slaughterhouses throughout the United States, and I was lucky enough to learn about their studies. Given little time for mental preparation, my health class began showing clips of animals all mutilated in the process of mass meat distribution. Before that, my theory was, “If you don’t have to meet it, then why can’t you eat it?” However, this video greatly challenged my ability to continue turning the other cheek. I realized that these helpless chickens and cows had families, careers and homes, all beyond our understanding.

Friedman then proceeds to write about her ensuing period of vegetarianism and how she spent all of it drooling all over herself with her near-madness-inducing cravings for the flesh of dead animals. Until the day a turkey pecked her and purportedly gave her an excuse to eat turkeys again. I'd hate to see what she'd do if a toddler slapped her shin or her cat stepped on her arm in her sleep.

Now, obviously Friedman's piece is none-too-serious. I suspect that she wrote it with her fork firmly lodged in her cheek, bent on writing something titillating in time for Thanksgiving. However, I thought that her PETA example provided a good opportunity to address the issue of using violent imagery to discourage people from maintaining the daily habits that leave them, in turn, participating in the cycle of violence that is the continued exploitation of nonhuman animals. As Prof. Francione points out in his piece "A Comment on 'Blood and Guts' Advocacy", there are many ways in which using violent imagery becomes problematic when one is engaging in animal advocacy. First, you risk alienating some people (thus losing the opportunity to educate them about veganism) since some will flat-out refuse to look at the images and shut themselves off altogether. On the other hand, thanks to overexposure to graphic imagery on the telly, at the movies and so on, attempting to shock people out of consuming animals could be met with a shrug of indifference.

The most problematic aspect of using graphic imagery to advocate for animals, however, is that it can often turn the focus away from use and instead leave it on treatment, as if the fact that nonhuman animals were being raised to be slaughtered would somehow be more acceptable if the images were of "happy" animals. Take, for instance the Humane Society of the United States' (HSUS) recent investigation into the treatment of calves at Bushway Packing, Inc., where they claim to have discovered signs of "shocking" cruelty at this one location. As Wayne Pacelle states in his A Humane Nation blog:

It’s always deeply disturbing to see the mistreatment of animals, but there’s something even worse when the victims are babies and seem so utterly vulnerable and frightened.

The footage is indeed shocking, but it's not exactly breaking news. Every single nonhuman animal bred and raised for human consumption is forced to live an existence that is "disturbing", where he or she is deprived of living a life according to his or her own interests; every single nonhuman animal bred and raised for human consumption is merely shuffled and shoved according to whatever is most convenient and cost-efficient until the day comes when his or her life is taken. And what for? To end up with pieces of his or her cooked flesh on a plate. Every single animal bred into slavery as part of a cycle that leads to his or her consumption by humans is "utterly vulnerable and frightened". This is not the exception--it is the norm.

So HSUS presents its "shocking footage" and instead of taking the opportunity to inform the general public that this is, indeed, the status quo for most animals we call "food" and to press for the general public to disengage itself from this cycle--to stop providing the demand that perpetuates this cycle of slaughter, it uses footage such as this to prompt people to continue funding its anti-cruelty campaigns seeking to regulate what is ultimately the continued use of animals. As Prof. Gary L. Francione has illustrated and explained repeatedly over the years, regulating the treatment of nonhuman animals is beside the point:

We certainly ought to make clear to the public the nature of the treatment of the animals we consume. But we also should make it clear that this system cannot be fixed in any way that would address the fundamental moral concerns. We should not promote the idea that some of this is “abuse” and some is not. It’s all abuse. It’s all morally unjustifiable. We should never use the word “humane” to describe any component of this machine of violence, torture and death.

There is really no such thing as "humane" treatment and images such as those captured by HSUS in this (and numerous other investigations) are the bona fide norm, and not exceptions that can somehow be "fixed" by HSUS or any other welfarist or new welfarist organisation. As Prof. Francione states, "We have got to get away from this fantasy that it is possible ever to produce animal products without torture. It’s impossible. [...] Consuming animals necessarily means that we support torture."

The bottom line is that violent video footage may shock some people into making changes in their lives, but those changes may be the wrong ones. And even if they are the right ones, there's no guarantee that the shock won't wear off sooner than later, particularly if the imagery ends up associated with treatment instead of use, and that any false-impression given that treatment has improved won't lull humans back into that same sort complacency that allowed them to turn a blind eye to the cycle perpetuated by their initial demand in the first place. The truth is that many welfarist groups use violent imagery as a tool to emphasize the need for further regulation of the continued use of animals and that the general public is most often exposed to those images within that context and with that subtext.

The current paradigm can only be shifted by making people understand why it needs to be shifted. The only meaningful, unequivocal and lasting manner in which to convey to people how and why sentient nonhumans have the same right not to be treated as things as sentient humans is through nonviolent and creative vegan education. You cannot rely on images alone without explanation, and for advocates seeking the abolition of the use of nonhuman animals to really make a difference in the lives of thos nonhuman animals, that explanation needs to address the immorality of using animals as things in the first place.

The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights

There seems to be a hell of a lot of confusion among animal advocates about what it means to promote and support the abolition of the exploitation of animals. The abolitionist approach to animal rights, as developed by Prof. Gary L. Francione, makes it quite clear that regulating the use of animals in no ways leads to the abolition of their use. Furthermore, regulating their use ultimately does more harm than good, by reinforcing the belief held by industries and most of the general public that nonhuman animals are ours to use in the first place--that they're our property, as well as by making people feel better about continuing to consume them.

This slide show presentation, taken from the The Abolitionist Approach website clarifies what indeed is meant by "an abolitionist approach to animal rights":

Theory of Animal Rights from Gary L. Francione on Vimeo.

On the Abolitionist Approach

"Veganism is an act of nonviolent defiance. It is our statement that we reject the notion that animal are things and that we regard sentient nonhumans as moral persons with the fundamental moral right not to be treated as the property or resources of humans.

If you are not vegan, go vegan. It’s easy. It’s better for your health. It’s better for the planet. But, most importantly, it is the morally right thing to do.

You can become an abolitionist today. Right now. Right this second. You do not need a big organization or expensive campaign. You do not need to sit naked in a cage. You do not need any leaders to tell you what to do. You just need to say no to violence and let that refusal to cooperate with oppression start with what you put in and on your body."

-- Prof. Gary L. Francione

Read the rest of it here ("Some Thoughts on the Abolitionist Approach") in the latest blog update on Prof. Francione's Abolitionist Approach website. You can also read it on the Opposting Views website and leave comments.

Montreal's Vegan Day Fashion Show Host Sets Things Straight

Some people have been mentioning here and there on the interwebs that November 1 is World Vegan Day. Of course, I'd like to think that every day should be world vegan day, but I can be a little demanding that way (and after all, we need to set aside days for things like International Talk Like a Pirate Day or World Math Day). Maybe the truth is that something like taking the interests of animals seriously should be an 'everyday' thing and that it doesn't really need one single annual 'day' to be promoted. That being said, World Vegan Day is actually a celebration of the anniversary of the creation of the Vegan Society, which I think is indeed worthy of celebration.

So, I came across an opinion piece this morning by a woman called Nat Lauzon, a writer and radio host. She was writing about how she'll be hosting Montreal's World Vegan Fashion Show on November 1. I figured that this would likely go either of two ways: It would either be an upbeat fluffy pro-vegan piece or be a confessional of sorts. As it turns out, it's mostly just a lot of pro-welfarist assertions mixed in with the--at one point overtly hostile--perpetuation of stereotypes of people who take the rights of animals seriously.

Lauzon starts off with a typical and confusing cred vs. confessional bit. You know the one, where someone asserts that she's made some sort of change in her life that somehow proves that she has some sort of compassion towards nonhuman animals ("[w]hen I was 16 I read a book about how animals are slaughtered for human consumption. Shortly after that [...] I stopped eating red meat") and has some sort of credibility with regards to speaking about animal issues, but then self-identifies as being a hypocrite and self-flagellates mildly for show by expressing that she either a) feels guilty or b) acknowledges that she at least maybe-sorta-almost should. Yeah, that bit. Sometimes, instead of expressing guilt or the sense that there should or could be guilt, it all ends up getting brushed off by pointing out that majority rule trumps critical thinking:

I guess some might call me a hypocrite considering the genesis of my "white meat only" decision. What's the difference between a cow or a chicken being slaughtered? None really, but I've obviously swaddled myself in some form of ignorant bliss all these years. I'll admit it. And I bet I'm not the only one. I think we'd think differently about that slab of meat if it didn't come already cleaned and tidily sealed on a square of styrofoam. When it's all packaged up like that, it looks a lot less...well, breathe-y.

So, she seems to be challenging people to call her a hypocrite, then forgives herself for her self-swaddling and then to emphasize how forgiveable she actually is, points out that she's just like everyone else who tends to disconnect animals from those sterile little packages in which their parts are sold at the store.

Feigning surprise at her non-vegan self being asked to host the event, she then justifies her interest in hosting it as being that the proceeds go to an SPCA fund for a single issue campaign involving puppy mills:

I've seen first hand the cruelty that is often leveled against innocent animals in the name of profit. I've been outraged by the shoddy enforcement of punishment for offenders. So anything I can do to help that cause, I will.

Then Lauzon goes on to justify (vaguely) why the shows organizers would have involved her--a non-vegan--in the first place:

If you think about it, what better crowd would vegans want to attract to such an event than meat eaters? After all, this is the demographic that vegans are aiming to inform!

So, we have it established that in Lauzon's world, cute puppies trump chickens, pigs, fish and any other nonhuman who doesn't moo, and that she, as a meat eater, is just the perfect sort that vegan activists would want to reel in and educate. Or is she?

Lauzon then does that other bit that those in the media who seem to be promoting veganism invariably end up doing. You know that one, too -- the one where the reasons for being vegan are identified as having almost nothing to do with simply and ordinarily taking the interests of animals seriously, in and of itself. She points out that "all" of the pro-veganism arguments are "sound" to her but ignores the very definition of of veganism as put forth by the Vegan Society whose anniversary is, in fact, being celebrated by World Vegan Day. Her arguments for veganism include that veganism makes you feel / look better, makes you healthier, helps the environment and redirects grain from cows to the world's hungry humans. And what of concern for animal rights?

The night is not to shove some extremist animal rights mandate down your throat. No one's gonna throw red paint on you. In fact, it's not even entirely about veganism, per se. It's about cruelty-free alternatives as a general rule. To demonstrate that there ARE alternatives to the way we live. Easy, accessible, beautiful, environmentally-friendly and cruelty-free alternatives! Whether you make the choice to not wear fur or leather. Whether you buy cruelty-free make-up. Whether you replace milk with soy. There are small things we can do every day to make our world a better place for all it's [sic] living creatures. You don't have to change your entire life, just how you think about spending your dollar.

So yeah... It's not even entirely about veganism, per se. It's not even about promoting animal rights, because only violent nutjobs do that, according to Lauzon. Instead, according to its omnivorous host, Montreal's Vegan Fashion Show to mark World Vegan Day is about making "small" changes and getting you to change "how you think about spending your dollar". Choosing to not spend that dollar to support animal exploitation, however, is optional.

For more information on what veganism is or isn't all about, check out these recent blog posts:

• Prof. Gary L. Francione's "Some Thoughts on the Meaning of 'Vegan'" at the Abolitionist Approach website,
  

• Vincent J. Guihan's "Doo00dz, are free range veal, flea circuses, second-hand leather shoes, horseback riding, honey or placenta vegan? What veganism is and is not" at his We Other Animals blog, and
  

• Dan Cudahy's "The Definitions of 'Veganism' and 'Vegan'" at his Unpopular Vegan Essays blog.

Who's Confused?

It seems that Bailey Norwood, Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University, has taken it upon himself to shed some light on the question of whether we are, in fact, generally morally confused about nonhuman animals and of whether speciesism is at the root of this confusion. Hell, he may even have put an end to the ongoing debate over whether we should view nonhuman animals in terms of their use or do so in terms of their treatment. According to Norwood's thinking, both would miss the point altogether. He claims there's no moral confusion as long as we understand that we should think of nonhuman animals in terms of their purpose:

I treat pigs one way because their "purpose" is to provide me with food and I treat my dog differently because her "purpose" is to provide me with companionship. One may say that I am immoral, but one cannot say that I am in anyway confused. I know exactly what I am doing. People largely base their decisions on how to treat animals not based on a moral philosophy or animals' IQs, but the purpose of the animal.

In all seriousness, though: Norwood wrote the above as part of a blog post reaction to Prof. Gary L. Francione's podcast commentary "An Up-Close and Personal Encounter with Moral Schizophrenia" of a few weeks ago, in which he'd described his encounter with some hunters who'd stopped to help a deer who had been struck by a car, and how this encounter illustrated the nonsensical manner in which we choose to assess one nonhuman animal species versus another. At least I can agree with one thing Norwood states and that is that I suppose one may indeed say that he's immoral. I mean, one can say or write anything on the internet, no? As for whether or not he's fit to assess whether or not he's confused, I think that I'll leave that up to readers to judge for themselves.

Thoughts?

Using Violence to Stop the Violence?

"The essence of nonviolence is love. Out of love and the willingness to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Nonviolence is not a dogma; it is a process." -- Thich Nhat Hanh

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about violence over the past week. I mean, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about human violence--over and above the violent acts humans already commit against nonhumans every single day for the sake of human pleasure. There are some in the animal advocacy movement who believe that the only way to bring about the end of the everyday violent acts humans commit against nonhumans is to, in turn, commit violent acts against those humans. Considering that (depending on whose survey you read) a mere 1.5-2.5% or so of the population of the United States, for instance, self-identifies as vegan and claims to abstain from consuming animals in any manner, this basically means that a few individuals making up an ever-so-tiny fragment of that less than 3% want to put the smack down on the other 97%+ of the population to get them to stop killing the over 10 billion animals in the United States alone who are killed each and every year. (Uh, yeah--good luck with that.)

I won't ramble on about why committing violence to end violence is wrongheaded. Abolitionists like Vincent J. Guihan (over at his blog We Other Animals) have already made clear cases for the common-sense, efficacy and logic in using nonviolence and vegan education to effect change for nonhumans. For instance:

As advocates, our work is not a matter of reaction; it is a matter of transformation. We have to struggle to avoid confusing the wallpaper for the walls. We have to struggle to avoid confusing our work pulling down the walls of the house of slavery and violence with building those walls back up again through violent and confrontational behaviour of our own. We can only “tear the house down” by convincing its other builders to join us, not with threats and idiocy, but creative and nonviolent education that calls them to join us in a life that respects the rights of other persons to be free from violence and slavery.

It baffles me, really, that anyone would truly think that using fear and intimidation will change people's hearts and heads to allow the major paradigm shift that is needed to stop the overwhelming majority of us from thinking of nonhuman animals as things that exist solely for our use and pleasure--as our property.

Prof. Gary L. Francione, who has consistently promoted nonviolent vegan education to abolish the exploitation of nonhumans (you can read a couple of his earlier essays here and here), has also re-emphasized the avoidance of violence by vegans and animal rights advocates in his recent responses and reactions to the more recent calls for violence by a very few in the animal advocacy movement. He's done so in his podcast commentary of a few days ago, as well as over on the Opposing Views website and on his Facebook page, where discussions pertaining to the subject have been ongoing for several days on his Facebook profile page. It's on this Facebook page that Prof. Francione recently revealed that he has invited Steve Best, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso and spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Press Office, to a formal (or even an informal) debate on the use of violent or nonviolent approaches in animal advocacy. Although the conditions surrounding it are still being ironed out (and you'll need to visit Prof. Francione's Facebook page to get the dish on those details), it appears that there is indeed a good chance it may happen sooner or later. Stay tuned for more information!

Update: Although Vegan Examiner Adam Kochanowicz reported earlier today that a formal debate would be held on September 18 and would then appear on the Animal Voices talk show, Prof. Francione has since stated that he and Best will, in fact, be having the actual debate in a one-on-one Skype call with no moderation. There has been no information concerning a potential later broadcast as of this time.