Vegan Before Six Turns Into "Vegan at Lunchtime"

I really wish that Mark Bittman would just get over his obsession with clinging to the word 'vegan'. I really do. A few weeks ago, I wrote about his public proclamation that his mostly plant-based (i.e. omnivorous) diet had led to his supposed protein deficiency. In today's "Bitten", Mr. Needs-To-Get-a-Dictionary slippery sloped himself into what he describes as yet another type of veganism. Yes, folks: Once upon a time, according to Mark Bittman, you could be a "vegan before six". Today, according to Mark Bittman, a meal that includes animal-based ingredients can be called "almost-vegan". And why fish sauce? "I swear it made the dish – though it would have been okay without it," he wrote. Throwing in a teaspoon of a substance derived from dead animals just for the sake of your tastebuds is about as "almost vegan" as having a chicken's leg with rice and a salad. It sounds as if he's well on his way to soon living out the VBM (vegan between meals) scenario Mary Martin presented in a recent satirical post on her blog.

The truth is that (as Martin points out as well), veganism isn't just about diet. It's ridiculous to call yourself a vegan every single time you put something into your mouth that isn't animal-derived. As Prof. Gary Francione states on his Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website:

Veganism is not merely a matter of diet; it is a moral and political commitment to abolition on the individual level and extends not only to matters of food, but to clothing and other products, and to other personal actions and choices. It is important to recognize that just as an abolitionist with respect to human slavery cannot continue to be a slaveowner, an abolitionist with respect to animal slavery cannot continue to consume or use animal flesh or animal products.

Veganism is also a commitment to nonviolence and it is imperative that the animal rights movement be a movement of peace and nonviolence.

So why is an omni foodie like Mark Bittman, who demonstrates over and over again that he has no concern whatsoever about the plight and enslavement of animals--why is he so obsessed with clinging to a word that stands for the complete opposite of what he represents? Oh, to be a fly on the wall of one of his therapy sessions. Just once and either before or after six. I'm not picky.

(ETA: The answer to my question via Prof. Francione's blog post "In Defense of Bittman".)

Episode 9 of The Vegan News

Part I of Episode 9 of The Vegan News is out today. In it, Adam Kochanowicz travels to Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary in Colorado to talk to Michelle and Chris about the myth of "humane" farming. Listen to Michelle and Chris tell Adam about how all of the sanctuary's residents are former victims of the same types of small-scale farms too often promoted as supposed cruelty-free operations. Aside from letting the animals' stories convince visitors otherwise, Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary volunteers also take the opportunity to educate those who stop by about veganism. Part II of Episode 9 shuld be up tomorrow, so stay tuned for more. In the interim, enjoy Part I:

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.

"Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare: Making the Case"

These are from a talk given by Professor Gary L. Francione on May 11, 2008 in the Brighton Town Lodge, outside of Rochester, NY. Here are Parts 1 through 5. The volume is a little on the low side, especially in Part 1.

ETA: While looking for more information on this talk, filmed by Rochester Indymedia, I found a transcript of it here, for those who are interested.

"Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare: Making the Case" - Second Half

These are from a talk given by Professor Gary L. Francione on May 11, 2008 in the Brighton Town Lodge, outside of Rochester, NY. Here are Parts 6 through 10. Once again, the volume is a little low, so you'll need to adjust it on your computer.

New Updates at Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach

I linked to one of Professor Gary L. Francione's recent blog updates in a post below but wanted to draw attention to them in a separate post. "On Vivisection and Violence" discusses violence in the animal rights movement while "Truth, Love and Liberty" discusses hypocrisy in the animal welfare movement, highlighting a recent party thrown by HSUS to promote a boycott of Canadian seafood.

Anonymous Guest Post on Language and Terminology

A My Face Is on Fire reader sent me an email yesterday to comment on the discussions that have been going on pertaining to language and the attempts to co-opt and water down or redefine terms. He said that he didn't know where to stick it in comments to other posts and gave me his permission to just post it outright. I'm going to do that and refrain from commenting. I think that it's worth a read (although I really don't think that I'm as much of a pain in the ass as he states).

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I spent many years working as a technical publications writer and manager and, after a career change, attended graduate school to become a professional librarian in academia. One of the challenges of writing, editing, indexing, publishing, classifying, abstracting, and archiving any document is description – what is a document about, what is the document’s subject coverage. And a critical part of any successful description effort is controlling the vocabulary. In information science, this comes under the heading of Authority Control. In short, that means consistently using the same word or phrase, spelled the same way, to mean the same concept. Other terms may be narrower, broader, synonymous, closely related, or deprecated, and authority control is how information professionals define and regulate the specific usage of terms and their relationships to each other.

When attempting to find a document and retrieve it by subject or concept, you would want the person who described the document to be precise and accurate in their use of terminology. Similarly, you would also want the same level of attention to detail from the person who wrote the index for the document. Respectively, the words they chose are the proxies for the whole document and the concepts found within. Vocabulary matters.

Vocabulary has both denotation and connotation and influences your cognitive maps. And by extension, your world view. In her blog, Mylène has addressed this area of concern over and over again. So, who controls the words and their meanings? Who has authority control? Unfortunately, to our everlasting annoyance, us information professionals’ work is very much ex post facto. We describe what is, not drive what will be. So, no matter how amazingly precise and accurate our use of terminology is, we can only ever be descriptive, never prescriptive.

To illustrate my point, I present some quick thought exercises:

Which is the correct usage: Black, Negro, Colored, African-American, or African American?

Which is the correct abbreviation for electronic mail?
email
e-mail
E-mail
Email
E-Mail
EMail
eMail
e-Mail

What exactly is the distinction between twitter and tweet?

You can choose the word and spelling and meaning you think is most correct, but who is the final authority: a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a writing style guide, a glossary? Okay, but what source of authority did the writers of those documents use then? Anyone can invent a term or appropriate an existing one to mean something new or different. Thought leaders, like Gary Francione for example, develop a new term and concept, or may appropriate one, to articulate a new and different way to view the world. However, it does not get into a recognized authority as such until someone decides there is a wide community or societal consensus on the usage of that term. For example, somebody decided at the New York Times what term and usage was the correct one for United States citizens of African continental ancestry. Actually, the NYT has made that choice more than once, as their interpretation of the correct term and usage has changed many times in the history of the publication. Often, this was ahead of such changes in most other publications, including dictionaries and encyclopedias. Where the NYT has led, many publications followed – the NYT became an authority for other publications. You get the idea.

So, back to Mylène, her blog, and her crusade for authority control. If an author gets a cookbook published with word the “vegan” in the title and the content of said cookbook is not vegan, then the term becomes diluted and the connotation shifts a little. If that happens enough times, the denotation of the term may eventually become essentially useless in common usage. Conversely, if the usage of the term “vegan” is consistent in publications, it can enter into, and maintain its integrity within, the common lexicon. At that point, the consensus will mob those who violate the integrity of the term. Until that happens, interested parties have to keep after authors and publications to meet a standard of integrity and to accept sometimes nascent authorities on terms and usage.

Be assured, that PR firms understand this dynamic intimately. The easiest way to disrupt this process is to corrupt the authority source that everyone accepts. Control the vocabulary, control the meaning.

And that, whether she knows it or not, is why Mylène is such a pain in the ass to authors and publications that don’t bother to do their homework, or have been co-opted, and end up releasing sloppy, slovenly and/or skewed words to the public that misrepresent the form and function of vegan abolitionism. Mylène is a mob of one, and I look forward to the day when she can retire from the authority control business and hand the effort over to librarians and info geeks like me, who select, categorize, classify, and compartmentalize so that the public can quickly and effectively find the high-quality information that they want by looking up words and concepts that say what they mean and mean what they say.

Special Update on Latest Vegan Freak Radio Podcast

Bob Torres just mentioned on Twitter that "audio problems" have delayed the release of the latest episode of Vegan Freak Radio. Stay tuned for updates, or follow Bob on Twitter @veganfreak for the latest news.

ETA: It's up now.

Peter Singer and the Catering of HSUS Events

The Arkansas Times published a review today of a new restaurant in the city of Hillcrest. Calling it a "burger joint" with a menu that makes it seem like a "gastropub", the article describes it as

the latest among, suddenly, many practicing a gourmet, organic brand of localism. Which is to say, its meat is “grass fed”; its produce and bread local, and its condiments, fries and just about everything else house-made. Michael Pollan's sphere of influence knows no bounds.

It seems that this new locavore fast-food lovers haven features an item that's been eliciting snickers from across the board:

The Peter Singer ($9), named, cheekily, for the “Animal Liberation” author, stands out in particular. It starts with what must be the answer to Miller's kitchen quest to find the ideal patty — a half-pound slab of ground lamb, pork, beef and roasted garlic. That comes topped with roasted tomatoes, basil mozzarella and basil mayo and on, as all the House's burgers are, a Boulevard Bread Co. bun.

Whether or not the intention was to take a good poke at him, any serious animal rights advocate familiar with the increasingly public slippery sloping of Singer's opinions and influence since the publication of his unfortunately misnamed book, Animal Liberation, can appreciate the actual lack of irony in it.

Maybe if they get on board with HSUS' "Saves the Seals" campaign, they'll get to cater the organization's next fundraiser! They can find out all about HSUS' requirements for such things right here in Professor Gary L. Francione's recent blog post on his Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website.

Adam Kochanowicz Interview w/Gary L. Francione: Update

The last two installments of Adam Kochanowicz's recent interview with Professor Gary L. Francione are now available. Part three can be heard via Adam's Vegan Examiner article here. You can also hear all four installments by visiting the audio resources section of Professor Francione's Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach website.

Bob Torres, who produces the Vegan Freak Radio podcast with his wife Jenna, tweeted earlier this evening to announce that a new show will be released sometime tomorrow morning, featuring an appearance by Professor Francione. You can follow both Bob (@veganfreak) or Jenna (@pleather) on Twitter. You'll find the podcast on the Vegan Freak Radio website, along with many of Bob and Jenna's previous shows.

On Consistency

Vincent Guihan at We Other Animals wrote something today that anyone and everyone involved in animal advocacy needs to read. An excerpt:

They'll know us not by our words but by our works,and if our works promote a kinder, gentler slavery rather than an immediate, unconditional and unequivocal end to that slavery, then regardless of what we tell ourselves or others, there is no meaningful difference between "liberation" and "exploitation".

The rest of it is here.

N.B.: For a stellar example of a complete lack of consistency, check out this story about HSUS' "Save the Seals" cocktail reception, held at a swanky DC restaurant called Policy to promote their boycott of Canadian "seafood". Then check out the restaurant's menu, which aside from featuring a wide variety of all types of animal flesh and excretions also happens to feature PEI mussels. (The link to the original story about the HSUS reception was obtained from a tweet by Professor Gary L. Francione. You can follow him on Twitter @garylfrancione.)

Because Vegans Eat, Too

I've said it before: I don't cook as much as I used to these days, but I still read cookbooks voraciously and still spend a lot of time keeping track of what sorts of things some of the vegans I know (and even some of those I don't know) are whipping up.

For instance, mihl over at seitan is my motor posted a recipe today for Penne with Creamy and Hot Pasta Sauce that's a near-perfect balance of 'health' and 'comfort' food.

A couple of days ago, the folks at Hungry Hungry Veganos shared an idea for an easy-to-make Portabello Mmmmushroom Sammie that sounds like the perfect quick-fix lunch when you don't want to get in over your head stirring pots and pans.

Speaking of mushrooms (and noodles, if not pasta), Sinead at Kitchen Dancing posted a recipe a few days ago for Smoked Shitake Slurp. Break out the chopsticks!

(And now--after tormenting myself sifting through these blogs, with all of their amazing food photos--it's time for lunch...)

Supply and Demand: Enabling the Cycle of Slaughter of Nonhumans

I read some blog posts earlier today by someone who'd commented here recently in a discussion concerning the difference between welfarism and abolitionism. The individual decided to set up a blog to comment further on some of the points raised and debated, coming to the conclusion that

[I]t’s not the capitalist followers of big business that are to blame (i.e., furriers, factory farmers, vivisectionists, etc.). It’s not welfarist organizations whose operations only thrive because their “non-profit disguised as for-profit” business model thrives the best within the capitalist structure - take down PETA, and some other welfarist organization will rise up to take its place, following along the same lines as mink farms and animal labs, in which the dissolution of one (farm or lab) will inevitably lead to another that takes its place. And, finally, it is not the individual who is at ultimate fault; we have all been brainwashed daily to believe that the food we eat is not a moral wrong.

I found it particularly disconcerting that this commentator would choose to assert that individuals are somehow absolved of any sense of accountability when it comes to consuming animals and perpetuating the cycle into which animals are bred and raised specifically to be slaughtered. Maybe I've read too much Sartre, but I'd like to think that we live our lives at least somewhat deliberately, with every action triggered by a bona fide decision to follow through with that action. Sure, we may sometimes lack sufficient information to make the right decision, but to generalize that "we have all been brainwashed daily to believe that the food we eat is not a moral wrong" side-steps so much.

On his Unpopular Vegan Essays blog, Dan Cudahy wrote about how individuals do perpetuate the cycle, mostly by feeding money into a system that regulates how the animals that continue to be raised to be eaten by them are treated, yet stopping short of making the conscious decision of actually (and effectively) removing themselves from the cycle altogether. As Dan wrote: "We cannot regulate the holocaust. We need to stop it by going vegan and encouraging others to do the same."

How long will we shirk responsibility? How long will we shrug off any sense of accountability? As Dan wrote, "It is a classic circular farce and would be a knee-slapping hilarious example of human stupidity if it were not so tragic." It's up to each and every one of us to work towards stopping the cycle and we need to realize this now.

Connecting the Dots

Last week, a smallish dairy farmer wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper, going on about how "God's law frees people to love unconditionally" and then gushing about how up to 1000 people from the area, as well as from all over Canada, had come together a few months ago to help him in a time of need. Early this spring, there had been a story in my local paper about an event that apparently triggered warm fuzzies. This same dairy farmer's barn had collapsed in the middle of a cold January night. He and his family had managed to get around 20 cows out and then over the course of the next day or two, local firefighters and neighbours came to assist them to free the remaining 70 or so from the fallen structure. The local paper had featured a front page photo of him, smiling broadly and with his face smooshed up to that of one of the cows. People were not, of course, patting themselves on the back for having saved the cows for the cows' own sake; the kumbaya moment had to do with having helped save the farmer's "livelihood". Unconditional love, indeed.

I remember the story well, not just all I could think of at the time was of how these cows were just things with a cash value to the farmer (as well as to the community that pitched in to help him). I also remembered the story because a friend (who knew that I was vegan) had ended up emailing me about it, inviting me to a hamburger and hotdog barbecue that was being held to raise money to help build a new barn. She added in her note that she had figured that even if I chose not to eat anything, I'd be interested in helping the farmer build a new "home" for the cows, and that at the very least, I'd have compassion for the poor man who'd lost the uninsured structure in which the cows had previously resided. I declined the invitation.

I got an email a few days ago from a former coworker who, years and years ago, would take great joy in mocking me for being what she called "a big wuss" for not eating animals (because obviously, bucking the status quo and removing oneself from participating in animal slaughter is a cowardly act). She'd recently obtained my email address from a mutual acquaintance. She mentioned to me that over the years she's "become an animal lover" and has been volunteering at one of the local companion animal shelters, fostering kittens for them. She joked that she hadn't become an "animal rights nut like [me] yet" and added that she fosters the kittens on her small hobby farm--where she also raises chickens and a few goats to fill her family's freezer each fall. She was emailing me, she said, to invite me to a fundraiser for the shelter, adding that she figured that if anyone would be eager to get the word out, it would be me. The fundraiser? Yet another barbecue.

In both of these situations, I took advantage of the opportunity to try to connect some dots by explaining why I would not support the activities in question. In neither of the two cases did the individuals in question get it, because in their minds, certain animals exist to end up on our plates. In their minds, that's just the way it is.

We have a lot of work to do.

Dribs and Drabs in the Media

It's not surprising to find yet another article like this that classifies fish eating as a type of vegetarianism (calling it "pesco-vegetarianism"). It's also no surprise that its author discusses the supposed dangers of vitamin and mineral deficiencies in any diet lacking animal flesh (or other animal products), or that the author describes vegans as "sometimes" consuming honey. The mangling of such stuff in the media has become quite commonplace.

What did catch my eye, however, was that in an article about eschewing the eating of animals, the only reasons given that anybody would choose to do so are "eco- and health-friendly reasons". No mention of ethics. No mention of concerns for animal rights, or even of concerns for animal suffering. It felt like the strangest compartmentalization. Has it really come to this?