Vegans and the Quest for Sanity

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article entitled “Vegans and the Quest for Purity”, Harold Fromm attempts to paint veganism as an inconsistent, unnecessary, and downright annoying movement. As a long-time vegan and trained ecologist, I feel the need to respond to some of his strange claims.

I became a vegetarian in 1989 and stopped consuming almost all animal products in 1992. Throughout the half of my life that I have been a vegan, my reasons for doing so have fluctuated, allowing me to understand most of the rationales that underlie the vegan movement. When I first became a vegan, my concern was almost completely for the welfare of animals: as I came to better understand the nature of the meat-producing industry, it became hard to justify eating foods that required such harsh subjugation of sentient creatures, especially given that I could survive well without these foods. As I felt the changes in my health that came with the elimination of animal products, I also came to appreciate that choosing to be vegan could be justified on the very personal basis of long-term health. But what really has convinced me to maintain my veganism stems not from concern for myself or concern for the welfare of animals but concern for my fellow human beings and the ecosystems on which we rely for survival.

Ecologically, human consumption of meat no longer makes sense. Like so many critics before him, Fromm delights in pointing out that human beings are both culturally and biologically evolved to raise and consume animals. But what he fails to mention is that this practice is inherently wasteful. The amount of land required to raise animal foods is four- to ten-times the acreage required to raise a comparable amount of plant food. Similarly, raising animal foods releases a disproportionately large amount of greenhouse gas emissions when compared with the emissions associated with raising animal foods. This sort of inefficiency was not problematic for our ancestors, who solved the problem of waste by simply expanding their geographical range. We no longer live in a world with room to expand, and so we face a new choice: increase the efficiency of the way we live, or live with the present and future injustices caused by consuming our ecological resources faster than they can be replenished. What we need is a cultural shift away from unsustainable eating habits, and the vegan movement is part of this shift.

Fromm also tries to discredit the vegan movement for its concern for the welfare of animals. Using a reductio ad absurdum argument, he points out that doing harm to other organisms is inherently part of living. If not animals, it is the plants and even the microorganisms that suffer. It is hard to believe that such an argument could still be leveled, but given that it was I will point out its inherent problems. First and perhaps foremost it bears noting that Fromm’s argument can be taken about as far as one might want to take it. For his own purposes, the fact that I kill millions of bacteria every time that I brush my teeth is sufficient argument against caring whether a cow is raised in a tiny cage for its entire life so that I can eat a steak. But why stop there? Is it not entirely reasonable to push further? Why not justify all manner of cruelty based on the tooth brush argument? After all, because I kill bacteria all the time, why should I feel the least bit bad about committing genocide? “Genocide on whom?”, you ask, but does it really matter? By Fromm’s argument all forms of cruelty and death are equivalent, and their presence as part of biological existence pretty much frees us to draw the line wherever we please.

The truth of the matter is that we do make distinctions between the suffering of different living organisms. The death of some organisms is part of our existence, but our choices are not limited to either committing suicide or committing wholesale murder. In fact we decide where we draw the line by our actions, and what bothers Fromm about vegans is that they grapple more actively with where this line should be drawn. In many human cultures, the line has been drawn at the interface between humans and other animals. But as slavery and other forms of human exploitation demonstrate, the line between humans and animals is not always respected. For most vegans concerned with animal welfare, the question of where to draw the line has to do with suffering, specifically the suffering experienced by organisms with nervous systems. The fields of animal behavior and neuroscience have increasingly unveiled the workings of nervous systems, giving us some sense of how other animals experience the world. What is clear is that there is no single line marking where animal suffering ends.

Instead, there is a continuum of conscious experience created by variations in the nervous systems of different creatures, and while we might not be able to truly depict what a cow feels when it is being slaughtered or how a chicken experiences being crammed into a tiny cage with dozens of its own kind, we have some sense of the analogy between the consciousness of humans and that which is probably experienced by other animals. Do mussels experience angst at being pulled from the mud en route to the plate? Probably not, but the question of where to draw the line is difficult, because even mollusks, endowed as they are with a nervous system, feel pain upon cooking or consumption. Vegans look at this uncertain continuum of potential suffering and invoke the precautionary principle: if there is a chance that I might be causing pain to an organism, I will err on the side of minimizing my impact. Plants represent a morally-acceptable source of sustenance because they don’t have nervous systems. Is this morally failsafe? Probably not. But it is much more defensible than simply choosing not to care about the suffering of other organisms.

Fromm’s main criticism of veganism is that it is a form of extremism. This criticism can only be made credible by turning the vegan movement into a caricature of its true self. Far from being self-righteously certain of where they draw the line with their diets, most vegans I know grapple with the difficult question of how far to go. Pushing from one side is society, whose norms and offerings make consuming animal products an easy and obvious choice. Pushing from the other side are nagging concerns about the ethics of participating in a global industry that does far more harm than the alternative. Veganism, which actually represents a diversity of practices, generally means minimizing the amount of animal products consumed. Most people would not call themselves vegan if they eat cheese, and yet there are a few vegans who feel that one is only vegan if no animal products of any kind support one’s lifestyle. Fromm seems to think that this latter form is the only form of veganism, but this is hardly true. One of the most interesting aspects of Fromm’s article is that he seems to classify vegetarians as a completely different species. Somehow, because they sit in the middle, vegetarians get a pass from being accused of being extremists (this might be because Fromm’s own understanding of vegetarianism seems pretty muddled). But for vegetarians a serious dilemma remains: if the killing of animals for food is acceptable, why is the exploitation of animals for food okay? If there is a point that I agree with in Fromm’s critique, it is that no one is innocent of having an impact on the welfare of other organisms or the ecosystems they compose. But why pick on the people who most dramatically attempt to reduce their impact?

There certainly was a time when my embrace of veganism was externalized and I might have come off as self-righteous. I have no defense of this period in my life, but I do have some sympathy for the person I was at the time. Choosing to reject a paradigmatic social practice is a burden, and I think that most self-righteous vegans are psyching themselves up to sustain the resistance to convenient social pressures rather than trying to alienate their friends and family. Eventually would-be vegans either come to peace with the burdens and joys of their rebellion or they give it up, and so their period of necessary self-righteousness ends. Reading Fromm’s critique, I would guess that it is exposure to this kind of “beginner’s self-righteousness” that has raised his hackles. Perhaps if he made the effort to approach vegans with a more mature and committed perspective, his reaction might have been more nuanced.

I admit that I have become a less-extreme vegan over the years. Some of this softening of my “extremism” I am proud of, some I am not. While I still think that “avoiding all animal products” is a better rule of thumb than more wishy-washy rationalizations of some forms of animal suffering over others, I now try to take into account all impacts when deciding whether or not to consume animal products. For instance, I have decided that a good pair of leather shoes, well-made and timeless, are better than the half-dozen cheaply-made and short-lived synthetic leather shoes that I used to buy for a comparable period of use. This is a clear violation of the vegan credo, but I think that it is one that makes sense. What I am less proud of is my easing of my vegan food rules: out of my own home I will now eat foods that I know have small amounts of milk and egg in them. My only (weak) justification of this moderation is that I live in a society where it is inconvenient to fret over every single animal-based ingredient. When I read critiques like Fromm’s, I actually feel more ashamed for my moderation-in-the-name-of-convenience, because I cannot justify being less extreme simply because I use our current over-exploitative society as a point of reference. No society that used itself as its only point of reference has changed for the better.

As we head further into the century during which the human species will reach its carrying capacity, we need to make some decisions about how we will live. Relying on past practices will not suffice, because we live in a world that has changed. We have to draw a line. What animals can we treat poorly? How much damage to the environment is acceptable? We have faced such questions before, questions that required cultural change that is inevitably uncomfortable and challenging. When Fromm suggests to the vegan that she may be “alienating potential friends who may find you more trouble than you’re worth”, what I hear most clearly is cultural resistance to progressive ideals. Choose your past injustice: there were always those who rebelled and were criticized for their rebellion by those made uncomfortable by an unfamiliar perspective. Is this reactionary position the one that will lead us through our species’ most perilous century?

What vegans demand through their actions is a more sane, sustainable world. We make a crucial connection that is often missed in western societies: that the actions of individuals scale up, and have aggregate effects that may not be morally acceptable. While being vegan strictly for one’s own health is not inspired by this “our actions extend beyond us” realization, the other two rationales for being vegan do. For some the unacceptable scaled-up consequences of animal consumption relate to the miserable lives that conscious creatures must endure under our system of industrial food production. For others, it is the aggregate inefficiency of eating high on the food chain, which propagates a disparity in how many ecological resources each person consumes, that makes veganism an attractive choice. Whichever their rationale, most vegans deserve to be lauded for the other-oriented basis of their decision to abstain from eating meat. In an increasingly over-exploited world, it is the decision to continue to eat foods that create disproportionate havoc that ought to be labeled as extreme.

Read in proper context, Fromm’s article is intellectually unremarkable. In fact, it trots out some of the same weak and futile arguments against veganism that have been used to disparage dissident movements for centuries. Certainly anyone who has been vegan for even a very short time can easily identify and disarm its main attacks, but it is difficult to determine what the reason for publishing such a rant would be. Fromm’s article was itself a reaction to a New York Times editorial entitled “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable”, so perhaps The Chronicle chose to publish this rant as a way of being “fair and balanced”. But given how utterly devoid Fromm’s article is of valuable or even thought-provoking ideas, I have to wonder whether the publication of his rant does not reflect a greater bias on the part of our academic profession. Though I wish it were otherwise, I have met far too many academics who enjoy debating issues of environmental justice or ecological sustainability over a good steak. We sometimes tend to be a bunch of self-righteous know-it-alls, and many of us entered the academic professions because we like demonstrating (almost constantly) that we are right. What I have learned from years of choosing an alternative diet based on ethical choices is that many, many thinking people would rather talk their ethics than live their ethics. That so many ecologists — who have no excuse for not knowing better — are omnivores surprised me long ago and now just serves as a reminder that old habits sometimes survive the onslaught of new knowledge.

I am rather happy to report that people like Fromm are in a slowly-fading majority. As a graduate student I quickly learned to expect my professors to be meat-eaters and my fellow graduate students to be vegetarians; while this trend was not absolute, it was a pretty reliable rule-of-thumb. At the most recent Ecological Society of America meeting I was pleased to see that much less meat and a whole lot more vegetarian fare was being offered, presumably in response to increased demand for meat-free food. It is true that veganism is more extreme than vegetarianism or omnivory, but its rise stems from an overall trend among educated people away from foods with dramatically greater social and environmental impact. As leaders within the world where knowledge is meant to spur progressive action, we as academics should laud the vegan vanguard rather than rail against the positive change it heralds.

If there is a charge that I would like to leveled against the vegan movement, it is that it has a naive tendency to believe in the power of lifestyle activism. While it is admirable and ethical to “drop out” from social practices that are unjust or unsustainable, the reality is that individual actions alone will not bring an end to these practices. I like being vegan because of the example that I set for others, and I know that my example has converted others to at least reducing their meat consumption, but I also now realize that this sort of cultural osmosis is too slow and perhaps too feeble. What we really need is a movement demanding dietary change through change in policy. My demands would be pretty simple: just end all of the subsidies that make meat-eating artificially cheap. This includes direct subsidies, such as farm subsidies and tax breaks that subtract from the cost of producing meat, as well as indirect subsidies that enable the animal industry to externalize the environmental costs associated with meat production. If an understanding of the injustices associated with meat eating can convert individuals to being vegan, those individuals ought to mobilize to change the policies that favor the consumption of animal products.