The Real "Fervor of the Vegan": A Response to The Atlantic, Part 2

See part 1 here. This second part covers the issue of the "sacrifice" of being vegan, the "personal choice" argument, and non-vegans' defensive reactions to vegans.
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Max astutely acknowledges in the post that many omnivores' and lacto-ovo vegetarians' automatically hostile responses to veganism and vegans are actually about their own feelings of guilt or discomfort over what they continue to participate in; vegans are proof and a reminder that they don't have to participate but that they choose to: Max came to realize, "I resent vegans. I resent that their mere, if rare, existence calls attention to the hypocrisy underlying the vegetarianism so central to my daily life." The hypocrisy he is referring to is, he points out, his knowledge of the cruelties involved in dairy and egg production but his continued consumption of both nonetheless, even though he cites ethical reasons for eating a vegetarian diet. (And I'd like to point out to Max, as I've pointed out to readers of this blog on numerous occasions, that these cruelties are not confined to "factory farming," as he repeatedly implies.)

But despite what he recognizes, Max compares the "sacrifice" of transitioning from vegetarianism to veganism, of leaving dairy cheese off his pizza (for the record, I found myself enjoying pizza more once the cheese was gone), with living "without electricity in Guiana for a year." And that's both silly and insulting to those who do live with real hardships or do make real, difficult sacrifices in order to do something positive in this world.

Giving up dairy for ethical reasons, particularly when there are non-animal-based substitutes for so many animal products, does not compare to the changes or choices Max refers to. In the grand scheme, simply abstaining from foods steeped in cruelty--simply choosing to not take part in cruel, unnecessary, unethical practices--is a vegan cakewalk. It's not about actively going out and doing or changing something as much as it's about just not participating in something that's inconsistent with your ethics, if your ethics include compassion and nonviolence. Most people (i.e., people who aren't raising and killing animals for a living) don't have to uproot their life, home, or entire way of life to go vegan; they just have to open their minds and hearts, do some research, and change their grocery list and eating habits.

I raised these issues surrounding his "sacrifice" comparison in our exchange, and Max replied that he intended the original comparison to reflect his pre-revelation thinking--that is, his thinking prior to realizing why many omnivores and vegetarians, including him, often react as they do to vegans--and that, for space considerations, he'd had to cut some material that may have clarified this. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but that's not how the post in finished form comes across. It comes across as perpetuating the idea that veganism is a grand-scale sacrifice that's just too hard for most people to make. It isn't. People from grade-school kids to senior citizens and from NYC dwellers to residents of rural Midwestern farming towns successfully go vegan every day. It's not prohibitively difficult.

It is also not true, Max, that "diet, like any personal choice, is just that--personal." When for that choice, billions of sentient animals must die horrible deaths after suffering in ways unimaginable to most of us lucky enough to be humans, it is not just a "personal choice." It is not the same as choosing to buy a Ford or a Toyota, to live in a small town or the city. It is a choice with direct, real, life-and-death consequences for the animals who have no choice in the matter. It is a choice between unnecessarily killing for selfish pleasure and not killing, out of compassion. It is no more "just" a personal choice than forcing children into sweatshops is "just" a personal choice. Individuals suffer tremendously. Individuals die. All unnecessarily, for other individuals' pleasure. And that's why vegans aren't "content" with your reasoning that because you like cheese, you must eat cheese; "it tastes good; I like it" is not a justification for mass suffering and unnecessary death.

Max, you are clearly a compassionate, thoughtful person. And veganism is not "more than [you're] able to do." It may be more than you choose to do, but it is not more than you can do. Come to the Animal Rights 2009 conference with me this year. I mean this. Attend the sessions. Eat the delicious vegan food. And walk around and ask the hundreds of participants how many of them once said, "Oh, I could never be vegan--that's too extreme. And I just couldn't give up cheese." I certainly said it. Most vegans (likely all vegans) I know said or thought it. But it isn't extreme, and it isn't a sacrifice--and most look back on the decision as one of the best decisions, if not the best, of their life. 

There's something else you'll hear from the majority of vegans--it's what I've heard from every single vegan I've ever engaged in conversation on this topic of sacrifice and variety and the pleasures of food: All of us end up eating a more varied, more diverse, more flavorful diet once vegan. We explore foods and flavors previously unknown or underused. There is no sacrifice, no deprivation. Eating becomes more exciting and pleasurable than ever before, not only because of the exploration of new foods and flavors but also because of the knowledge of why we're eating as we do, because of the joy and peace that comes with knowing that how you're living is now in line with what you feel and know, because of knowing that you are part of the compassionate solution now, not a part of the suffering and killing. You gain so very much more than you give up.

"Live and let live. Eat and let eat," Max concluded. But animals should be included in that "let." You can live and live well and eat and eat well while letting your fellow animals live too. Go vegan.

(Photo of a sanctuary turkey with young visitors by Flickr user Chad Fust)