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.

Veganism in the Media

Food writer Jason Sheehan got a passing mention on My Face Is on Fire last November when he pumped his fist in the air and grunted something about wanting to eat a cow. I read another one of his pieces today, this one in Seattle Weekly ("Two (Seriously TWO) Suggestions for Vegan BBQ"). In it, he goads vegans in his area for not having been able to meet his challenge to find him a restaurant that serves a non-animal-based product identical to the flesh of barbecued pigs. Of course, Sheehan's set-up is merely an excuse to disparage vegans and to engage in a fair bit of name-calling and insult slinging:

You guys suck.

No, for reals. The OTHER reason for me posing this challenge to Seattle's meatless community was that I was sick of getting Gestapo'ed by the vegan Fun Police every time I wrote about getting a little pig in me. I was sick of all the ridiculous comments by militant jerk-offs trolling around the site and trying to convert people like a bunch of pasty, Moosewood Cookbook-toting missionaries. I was sick of people talking all about the "delicious vegetarian alternatives" to pulled pork, a rack of ribs and some brisket without ever, you know...mentioning a single fucking one. This was my olive branch--my attempt at reaching across the divide and trying to walk a mile in the hemp sandals of my tofu-loving brethren.

Sheehan basically sets up a no-win scenario by more or less conveying that unless someone can find him an identical product that isn't animal-based, that they should shut the hell up and let him continue to eat barbecued pigs:

I think it's time for you to stop pretending there are actual options for vegan 'cue out there and let me and my friends all eat our pig in peace. After all, it's not like we come to your parties and mock you for eating carrots.

Of course, arguing that one should be allowed to engage in a specific immoral activity unless a nearly identical substitute for it can be provided is ridiculous. Consider how much sense it would (not) make if Sheehan had a habit of punching his neighbour's 4-year-old daily and expressed pleasure at doing so, and then issued a challenge to those who don't punch 4-year-olds (and who advocate that others don't punch 4-year-olds) to find him a nearly identical non-animal-based substitute to that 4-year-old, so that he could punch it and be left feeling the same amount of pleasure. If you failed to come up with an adequate substitute for Sheehan, would it make sense for him to claim victory and assert his right to continue punching that 4-year-old neighbour's kid "in peace"?

Any vegan will happily tell you that there are thousands of nutritious and satisfying meals that can be assembled without animal products and without direct substitutes or analogues for those animal products. I suspect, however, that Sheehan's rant had very little to do with actually wanting to find the perfect fake pig flesh, but more to do with fine-tuning his vegan-bashing.

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How could I resist a title like "What is a Vegan or Vegetarian -- How to Become One"? The article was published yesterday on Allvoices, which I think is sort of like The Examiner in that any member of the general public can become a regular contributor, with monetary compensation hinging on the number of hits the article gets, rather than on any actual expertise of the writer. In this case, considering that writer Kelly Woodcox's other recent piece for Allvoices was a story on how Angelina Jolie got into "tip top perfect shape for her new movie", I couldn't help but feel a little cynical before I had even started to read her piece.

Although she sets vegetarianism apart from veganism at the beginning of her article, Woodcox begins by defining veganism strictly in terms of diet. Then, sharing a story with her readers about a "vegetarian" she once met who explained her reasons for having become a vegetarian, Woodcox illustrates how she is completely clueless about animal rights issues and particularly of what's involved in the dairy or egg industries (the same could, of course, be said about the vegetarian she mentions or of anyone who chooses to continue consuming eggs and dairy):

I heard a vegetarian say one time that she parked her car at a field and watched the cows. She said, “After watching the cows and how they interacted with with each other, and also just plainly looking into their eyes, I just knew I could never eat an animal again”. She does however eat bi-products of the animals because it does not harm the animal. Meaning she will eat eggs and dairy.

Let me repeat that: "She does however eat bi-products of the animals because it does not harm the animal. Meaning she will eat eggs and dairy." Right. Because cows scamper freely in fields, then spontaneously produce milk and then walk themselves over to buckets into which they giddily squirt their milk and when finished, they go scamper some more. Right? Wrong! To suggest that using animals for their secretions does not harm animals is inane.

The article goes downhill from there, if you can imagine that. She mentions those who cite passages from the Bible to justify their vegetarianism and goes on to say that "people in the Bible did start eating meat with God's approval" and then goes on about how some say that God doesn't exist, but that they've yet to prove it. She writes about how most vegetarians and vegans apparently eat organic food, implying that they're motivated by health reasons and suggests ways to go about obtaining it more cheaply. She also asserts that soy is important for (vegetarians or) vegans and that they need to get used to the taste of soy products:

Another thing you should do if you want to be a vegetarian or vegan is acquire a taste for soy products. They are actually very good and good for you. You just need to eat them until you like them. Once you do it for awhile you will more than likely end up liking them.

The rest of the article is mostly babbling, really. One gets the impression that in a last-ditch effort to meet a word count, she decided to weave whatever she could into her article, regardless of whether it was on-topic. She argues that people--vegan or not--should drink more water and then ends by plugging a friend's bio-feedback business in Indiana. What bio-feedback has to do with ascertaining what is or isn't a vegan or how to become one is lost on me, but what can I say? 'Tis the internet where anyone (present blogger included) can write about anything. Here's hoping that discerning vegan and potentially-vegan readers will be smart enough to avoid garbage like Allvoices when seeking out information about veganism and animal rights.

Bits and Pieces

Seattle's Jones Soda, best known for manufacturing a Thanksgiving-themed turkey-flavoured soda in recent past, has decided to carry on their tradition this year--with a vegan twist. Check your store shelves soon for Jones' vegan-friendly Tofurkey & Gravy soda. (I'll weigh in with a 'blech', although if the kind folks at Jones want to send me a sample, I'll be glad to post a review.)

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Denver food critic Jason Sheehan weighed in this week with his assessment of ethical eating (and particularly on "that whole NOT EATING MEAT thing, which is just right the fuck out"):

As for me, I'll be down the street drinking beer and eating tacos, because for all this talk about animal rights and ecological consequences, there's still a part of me -- a big part of me -- that has all the food-morality of a blood-mad shark, that refuses to entertain notions of animal ethics when the dinner rush is coming in, that just looks at a cow and thinks, "Hmm, dinner..."

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A story that's been making the rounds since an article first appeared about it on the BBC's website is that Windsor Castle will be holding its first ever vegan banquet tomorrow. Prince Philip is co-hosting a multi-faith conference and to keep matters simple in terms of various religions dietary restrictions, a decision was made to put on a completely plant-based feast. You can see the menu for yourself here. It sounds absolutely delicious.