A New Look at Veganism
By Miranda Robbins and Victor Tsou
Revised: May 27, 2008

Disclaimer: This document represents our personal views and not those of our employer.

This is a copy of the talk we gave at the May 24, 2008 Vegans for Action meeting. We welcome your feedback; you may contact us at vegans4action (at) yahoo (dot) com.

---

Honesty

For us, being honest with ourselves and with others is very important. Not just in our personal lives, but also in every interaction we have on a daily basis. Our integrity is the one thing that we have when we die. It is the one thing that cannot be taken from us. And in the case of our activism, communicating with others about the true reason why we are vegan is the way to maintain our integrity. So, before we can talk to others about veganism, we have to be honest with ourselves about the reason we are vegan. Especially since we are speaking to others about a fundamentally moral issue. A personal example: I once leafleted on Easter Sunday to churchgoers using materials from the Christian Veg Association. I did not become a vegan for Christian reasons and I am not vegan today for Christian reasons. So when I spoke with people that day about veganism, I was not being entirely honest and it felt really bad to me. If I were being honest, I would have used non-Christian literature and spoken about use without consent because my opposition to all forms of oppression is the reason why I am vegan. Likewise, if I speak to others about the environmental or health benefits of a plant-based diet, I am not being totally honest and am compromising my integrity. Even though I want to be healthy and want to preserve our environment, those are not the reasons that I am vegan. What I have learned is that once we know why we are vegan, speaking from that place of understanding is the only honest way to speak with others about being vegan. Otherwise, we are compromising our message and ourselves.

---

Problems

There is a dominant way of thinking about veganism and we believe this thinking has led to what we see as serious problems in the current state of animal activism. We'll cover the progression of ideas and then talk about another way of looking at veganism that we thnk doesn't have these problems.

Suffering and Cruelty

Many vegans cite the suffering of animals as the reason they are vegan. Closely related to this is the notion of cruelty. If you read vegan books and articles and websites, you'll see the words suffering and cruelty over and over again. But is this the reason why people are vegan? Would you eat an animal if you knew that he or she lived a life free of suffering? For example, a pig who was treated well and was killed while sleeping so you could eat him or her? Would you eat that pig? If you wouldn't eat that pig, then I suggest to you that suffering is not the reason you are vegan. There is something deeper that bothers you about eating animals.

When you speak with people about veganism, do you ask them to stop eating animals regardless of whether they suffered or stop eating only animals who suffered? Does this mesh with what you want for yourself? If not, why is one unacceptable for you but acceptable for others?

Factory Farming

With suffering as a foundation for veganism, many vegans naturally choose to focus on factory farming, the source of the largest amount of suffering by animals today. And so, again, vegan literature is full of references to factory farming and all the cruel practices that come along with it. Would you eat an animal who did not come from a factory farm? If so, do you? If you would not eat, say, meat purchased at the farmer's market, then I suggest to you that factory farming is not the issue. There is something deeper that bothers you about eating animals.

When you speak with people about veganism, do you ask them to stop eating animals regardless of the source or stop eating only animals from factory farms? Does this mesh with what you want for yourself? If not, why is one unacceptable for you but acceptable for others?

Welfare

Focusing on the practices of factory farming, vegans have started thinking about the ways that these practices may be changed to make the lives of the animals a little less horrific. And so a number of welfare campaigns have emerged pushing for reforms in farming practices. For example, the battery cage has been the target of much recent activity. Vegans tell others that battery cages are cruel and encourage others to instead buy cage free eggs. Now, would you eat eggs if they came from a cage-free facility?

When you speak with people about veganism, do you ask them to stop eating all eggs or stop eating only battery cage eggs? Does this mesh with what you want for yourself? If not, why is one unacceptable for you but acceptable for others?

Disappearance of Veganism

Working on welfare campaigns that encourage people to buy ?humane? animal products, vegans have stopped talking about veganism. This is only logical, as welfare reforms are incompatible with veganism. Welfare asks for reforming the system of killing animals whereas veganism asks for an end to the killing.

The general attitude seems to be that veganism is too much to expect from others, so let's instead ask people to do what we think they'd be willing to do, like switching to cage free eggs or reducing meat consumption. We would never say something like: ?Racism against African Americans is unacceptable, but we'll let racism against Latinos slide because being completely against racism is too hard.? So why are we saying just that with speciesism?

If we want people to go vegan, we need to ask them to go vegan. If we ask people to switch to cage-free eggs, they switch to cage-free eggs. They're not going to go vegan. If we ask people to go lacto-ovo vegetarian, they go lacto-ovo vegetarian. They're not going to go vegan. If we ask people to go vegan, they to go vegan. What's so scary about telling people up front what we really want from them?

Summary of Problems

All of this is built upon the foundation of suffering. This foundation leads to a focus on factory farming which leads to asking for welfare reforms which leads to the disappearance of veganism as a core value. Each step follows naturally and logically from the previous one.

But each of these arguments is flawed in our eyes. When we ask people to stop eating animals because of the suffering, we are implicitly saying that eating animals who did not suffer is acceptable. When we ask people to stop eating animals because factory farm conditions are so bad, we are implicitly saying that eating animals from non-factory farms is acceptable. When we ask people to stop buying battery-cage eggs because the hens have no room to move, we are implicitly saying that eating free range eggs is acceptable.

And now we have vegans explicitly asking people to buy cage-free eggs. A recent newsletter from an animal rights group asked their members to encourage others to purchase cage-free eggs. So vegans are now promoting eating eggs. We think this is a sign that we've gone down the wrong path and it's time to regain our ethical footing. We think a large part of the problem is that we've been thinking about veganism in the wrong way and that building upon the foundation of suffering leads to problems we have ignored for too long.

---

How we view veganism

For us, veganism is active opposition to all forms of oppression, human and non-human. By oppression, we mean an individual or group using their position of power to do something to another without their consent, and this includes oppression based on characteristics like species, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability and age. So, again, for us veganism is active opposition to all forms of oppression, human and non-human.

Understanding what veganism means to us has enabled us to speak to others with greater honesty about veganism. Since both Victor and I are vegan as a response to oppression, we talk to others about veganism within the framework of oppression. When someone asks me why I am vegan, I say, ?I choose to be vegan because animal agriculture is a system of oppression. When you purchase animal products or their derivatives, you are increasing the demand for those products and thus, supporting that system.?

Speaking to others about oppression allows them to see the big picture, rather than just components of the big picture. If they bring up family farms, I talk about use without consent. If they talk about humane meat, I talk about use without consent. Speaking within the framework of oppression, we always keep our bearings because there are no holes in the argument as there are with factory farming, suffering, welfare, or even health and environment arguments.

If we break down our interactions with others, we find that we are merely giving and receiving information. When I speak to others about veganism, I am giving them information and then letting them do what they will with that information. From an honesty standpoint, I see a difference between just presenting information, and convincing a person of something. In other words, when we attempt to convince others, we are attaching a motive to the information, thereby deviating from the information so that there is a removal from the purity of the information. Speaking honestly requires that we separate the motive from the data. In this way, we are getting our message out without compromising our integrity.

So, to be sure that we are communicating honestly with others, we try to keep our message true to our hearts and our delivery free of motive. The truth is the most powerful information we can convey. In our experience, people will listen to- and process- the truth when delivered in this manner.

---

Outro

When I became vegan, I read through everything I could find on the subject. Everything I read said suffering is the problem, cruelty is the problem, factory farming is the problem. That made sense to me, they've obviously thought about it a lot more than I have, and I took their view as our own.

We've spent a lot of time in a lot of different places speaking with a lot of people about veganism. And when I spoke to skeptical omnivores with suffering as a starting point, I found myself time and again in a position where I could either admit that, logically, eating animals from local farms is okay, eating cage-free eggs is okay, I could either admit that or lose my credibility in the discussion by admitting that, no, suffering was not really what it was about, what I really wanted was for people to stop using animals completely. This was a basic source of tension and fear underlying all my interactions with the public. Judging from the emails of other people doing public, person to person outreach, my experience is not unique.

Realizing the impossibility of reconciling suffering as a foundation for veganism with our basic belief that animals do not exist for us to use was a big breakthrough. It made no sense to speak to others from a framework, one formulated by somebody else, no less, that doesn't validate our basic belief.

Now that I speak from the framework of veganism as the active opposition to oppression, that underlying tension is gone. I feel very confident in my activism today because I am speaking in accordance with how I feel. I think the way we go about our activism reflects our values. In my personal life, I strive to be direct and honest in my communication and I operate the same way in my activism.

We presented a definition of veganism as the active opposition of oppression. It's not so important for us that you take this definition as your own, but it is important for us that we, as a community, start being much more honest both to ourselves and to the public. We feel it's important that we really understand why we are vegan and not just blindly accept what the leaders in the community say.

We think we've found a way of formulating veganism that is true to what we really believe. We hope you'll think critically about both your current ideas about veganism and about what you've heard this afternoon and find your own truth. Thank you.

---

FAQ

Q: Regarding welfare reforms, isn't doing something better than doing nothing?
A: Our options are not limited to working on welfare reforms or doing nothing. Since we have other options, we can look at the other possibilities and decide where we want to spend our limited time. For us, if we have one hour to spend on activism, we would choose to spend that hour doing person to person outreach. In that hour, we are likely to create at least one vegan and therefore save 1,200-1,500 animals from being killed to be eaten. If we were to work instead on welfare reforms, even in the best case, some animals would be treated better before they are killed, but no lives would be spared. For us, we prefer to end the system completely, something which can only happen if we explicitly promote veganism.

In addition, by working on welfare reforms, we send a mixed message by saying eating animals is unacceptable to us, but it is acceptable for others. By doing so, we negate the powerful message that otherwise would be sent by our veganism and reduce veganism from an ethical stance to a personal choice. Our goal is to end the oppression of animals. Welfare campaigns do not share this goal, so it does not feel honest for us to work on these campaigns.

Florida passed a ballot initiative in 2002 banning gestation crates. One of the activists who worked on the campaign to pass the initiative reported that, afterwards, she heard people saying, ?Now I can eat pork again because I know the pigs are treated well.?

Recently, at a vegetarian cafe near our home, we overheard the following: ?Do you eat happy meat? It's meat that was happy until it got killed. My friend and I were driving the other day and we saw a Niman Ranch truck. My friend said, 'They're horrible. They kill things.' And I said, 'But they're happy until they die!'?

We want the killing to end and so we ask people to stop eating animal products. Welfare reforms do not ask people to stop eating animal products and, as you can see from these stories, they actually make people feel better about eating meat.

Q: I am an ethical vegan but I use environmental and health arguments because most people don't care about the oppression of animals. Isn't tailoring the message to fit the audience just smart marketing?
A: There is a difference between changing how we say things to people and changing what we say. If we speak to some people about environmental reasons to be vegan, others about health reasons and still others about ethical reasons, how will anybody know what veganism is actually about? We feel it is important to be consistent with our message. The people we speak with deserve our honesty and we owe it to ourselves to stay true to our reason for being vegan.

For us, speaking about veganism from the standpoint of oppression is not one more tool in our toolbox of reasons to be vegan; rather, it is stating the central reason we are vegan.

If we just keep stating the same message, others will see we're sincere, honest and consistent and when they're ready to receive the message they know they can talk to us about it because we've been saying the same thing. We feel that if our message is true, then that is a powerful enough message and people will respond.

Q: But I do care about global warming and that is one reason why I am vegan.
A: If eating animals was part of the solution to global warming, would you eat them? If not, then we suggest there is something more important that compels you to be vegan and speaking about that more important reason would be more honest. If you would eat animals if it reduced global warming, then speaking about environmental reasons to be vegan makes a lot of sense for you.

Q: What about legislative solutions?
A: Legislation looks appealing, because it looks like a quick fix: Pass a law and animals will automatically be saved. However, like all quick fixes, it is a mirage; there is no going around the slow, grassroots work needed to change people's attitudes about our relationship with animals. Just as the end to legal slavery did not prevent people from being racist, neither will passing 'humane farming' laws prevent people from being speciesist.

Commercial animal exploitation is demand driven. Remove the demand and the exploitation will end. This can only happen if we change the way people think about animals, something that takes time and our personal involvement in the process.

Q: Not everybody is going to go vegan. For those who are not, isn't it better that they eat 'humane meat,' cage-free eggs or other 'humane' alternatives?
A: By supporting the consumption of these animal products, we send a mixed message by saying eating animals is unacceptable to us, but it is acceptable for others. If we wouldn't eat it, why would we promote it for others?

Not everybody is going to go vegan ... overnight. But that doesn't mean that they won't eventually go vegan. We don't need to place so much emphasis on one interaction with a person. It might take several interactions over the course of a few years before it makes sense to them and they decide to go vegan. In the meantime, we believe it is important to stay true to the message of veganism.

We firmly believe that it is not the job of vegans to promote eating animal products. Regardless of the label, every single animal product comes from an animal who was killed.

Instead of promoting the consumption of animal products, we suggest promoting veganism. If people say going vegan is too difficult, we suggest they work up from a few vegan meals a week to full veganism over time. This is very different from suggesting replacing the meat they currently eat with other kinds of meat. The vegan approach promotes veganism, the other promotes eating animal products.

Q: Thinking about veganism in terms of anti-oppression makes sense, but is anybody going to listen to that line of reasoning?
A: This thinking does sound abstract and many people think that others will not respond to it. However, in our experience, people react positively when we speak with them about veganism as a response to oppression. We say, ?I choose to be vegan because animal agriculture is a system of oppression. When you purchase animal products or their derivatives, you are increasing the demand for those products and thus, supporting that system. Being vegan is the best way to take a stand against this system of oppression.?