Tim

This phenomenon will be familiar to omnivores,vegetarians and vegans alike .. a group will bond and gang up to argue with a vegan or chime in about why its ok to devour and enslave non-human animals, I’ve been on the receiving end many times and felt alone and backed in a corner as any serious and logical points I make are met with jokes and then more inane questions and hypothetical situations that are only setups for more ridicule.
I’ve noticed though that people seem to like reassuring themselves that they are morally sound in their animal consumption by establishing a jury of their peers but Im writing today to argue that they do not have any peers !!!

Being from a workplace with roughly 80 staff and usually a large portion of those in or near the staffroom during lunch,my own lunch options often attract attention.
With mention of tempeh,seitan,quinoa,nutritional yeast and T.V.P. I’m usually presented with an almost complete tableful of blank stares.
The next step in the equation(perhaps I could whip up a flowchart!)  is either a comment about how healthy it sounds,how I might lack iron or how tricky it must be to find food – these are usually smokescreens to move onto the disclaimer usually its a self deprecating “I could never be that disciplined” or “I could never go without animal part/product X.”
On occasion someone will try to diffuse the tension or actually turn any embarrassment back onto me by cracking jokes or recommending I see a psychologist.
I invariably end up trying not to look red in the face and attempting to finish my lunch while screening out the circular rota of comments that affirm that I’m not quite normal and everyone eating animal is on the same page.

On quieter days I’ve talked to staff on a one to one basis and gotten a fair span of the differing opinions on animal use and abuse.
I’ve heard of some appalled at whaling, some horrified by jumps racing,some who have seen “Babe” and stopped eating pork (Cause thats the most compelling reason !?!).
These all appear to be subsets of a standard western view of which animals are immune to being slaughtered/consumed i.e. “Cats and Dogs are for patting;chickens,cows,pigs and sheep are for eating;horses and greyhounds are for racing; and insects are for stepping on.”
The variation depends on the individual background, for example, those whose family traditionally gamble know of and are quite fine with horse racing,the conditions it keeps horses in,the danger to the animals and the thousands of horses who are slaughtered for not being fast enough, they are generally unphased by the clearly visible horrors of jumps racing because they are well aware of the greater suffering behind closed doors that is the price for a horse racing industry.
Families with backgrounds in show jumping are often under illusions about horse welfare,the supposed wish of horses to interact with humans, run and jump under whip encouragement etc but are usually not as familiar with the darker side of these industries and the impact use has on a horses well being and ability to express natural behaviours.
There are variations as many as there are staff members,soft spots for cats and cows, empathy for pigs and monkeys,sympathy for dolphins and whales and many more combinations that are based on their own upbringing rather than any long hard look at why we use,enslave,custom breed and slaughter animals or how we should apply ethics to them.
An objective thought,an examination of our views and practices would reveal there is no consistent measure amongst omnivores of what makes an animal “food-worthy.”

Conduct a questionaire amongst peers , ask them is it ok to kick a cat,dog,cow,sheep,chimp or whale,ask them how they sit with debeaking a chicken,parrot,emu or see if they think its ok to use a horse,bull,gorilla,pig,possum or kangaroo for racing (bearing in mind the thousands who didnt make the cut would be turned into meat) and you will observe dissent and disagreement.
The above mentioned hypothetical practices may seem comical but are a much softer representation of the practices being used in our racing,meat,dairy,poultry,pet ,leather,wool,silk and honey industries to name but a few.

Veganism is not an ascetic, spiritual movement, it is not a sentimental movement,it is not a meaningless subset of vegetarianism, rather,Veganism seeks to consistently address the oppression of sentient beings regardless of whether they have pedigree,feathers,fur,wool,fitness,obedience, blubber, endearing appearance or are of little exploitable utility to humans. It makes sense and indicts the varying reasons omnivores have for their particular flavours of use & abuse as unnecessary and unjustifiable.

If you care for any animals of the above descriptions I urge you to acknowledge the parallels and extend compassion in a logical manner, through Veganism.

Existing Vegans, take heart, soldier on,Team Omnivore is a construct, have patience and appeal to the capacity of our fellow humans for compassion rather than the capacity to ignore information that is a call to change.

Tim

Hi readers,I’m so happy with the state of blogging in the sphere of animal rights here in 2009.
A number of theorists,philosophers and all manner of animal rights activists are blogging,podcasting,vodcasting and creating fantastic resources
In light of this I’m starting a monthly (at LEAST!) feature showcasing some of the best abolitionist perspectives we’ve come across (the ethereal blend bloggers) so these fantastic articles and other writings get a wider audience.

Here goes …

“The Vegan News” http://news.vegan.fm/ is a multi segment video news show with a great new interview series on abolitionist theorist and writer Gary Francione ( http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/ )

Part 1
explaining “Moral Schizophrenia” . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO8NXatlQhc&feature=related
Part 2
Gary ties together beautifully sentience and self awareness.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsX5VXN67gQ&feature=related
Part 3
Contrasts the strategies of seeking welfare reform in animal use VS aiming to remove the property status of animals.
References and criticises  PETA as a long term economical benefit to chicken producers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMnc039SpiI
Part 4
Superbly assesses the notion that Lacto-Ovo Vegetarianism is a half step towards or moral alternative to Veganism and looks at the supposed benefit to animals of making concessions like encouraging nonvegans to consumer cage free eggs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwjefuK9JMc&feature=related

-further note : the later segments of this interview are also up now

Who You Callin Vegangelical ?
The Huffington Post is currently featuring a brilliant piece by Ari Solomon http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/who-you-callin-vegangelic_b_290582.html which is not specifically abolitionist but reaffirms that veganism is a notion worthy of discussion and is a robust philosophy regardless of efforts to marginalise it and paint it as a sort of religion or fundamentalism – “So, who’s the real extremist? The person who tries to stop unnecessary suffering by cutting out animal products, or the person who says, “I like the way that tastes, so a sentient being needs suffer and die?”" .
I recommend the article but have to state that I disagree with his notion that there are truly some vegans who are so for environmental or health reasons, I don’t believe that either route leads to veganism without incorporating ethics as the environmental concerns wouldn’t mean omitting donated / recycled animal products like leather jackets etc and health based animal product omission could still include a number of non vegan items,for example, honey as a sweetener, so yes, sorry Ari but I think all actual vegans have concern for animals.
Further reading /additional article by Ari http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/animals-are-stupid_b_336049.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/the-feminists-dilemma_b_306880.html

I can happily say I have so many links I’m gonna have to make this a part 1 !

Tim

This article is dedicated to our readers who have thought about going Vegan but haven’t yet had a catalyst for the transition.

Besides the delicious food there are a number of benefits to taking the challenge

1. For the duration of the challenge your cholesterol intake will be ZERO (that stuff that causes heart attacks and strokes and is responsible for the biggest cause of death in the developed world,)as cholesterol is only found in animal products.
2. Your intake of H.C.A. Carcinogens will be wiped out as these are caused by heating animal products – the creatine that speeds the process up in animal based meals is a byproduct of muscle and thus is entirely absent in a Vegan meal ( see http://www.pcrm.org/newsletter/jun09/carcinogen.html for more info on H.C.As).
3. You will be reducing your water usage in magnitudes.We are encouraged in Australia to limit the duration of our showers but in comparison to a simple clothing or meal choice this is utter folly.
   A 3 minute shower uses around 45 litres of water ( see water usage chart http://www.thisplace.com.au/eco/tt_waterusage.htm ) which is insignificant in comparison to the 16000 litres of water required for a kilogram of beef.
   If you were to have a kilo of soy product you would be saving 14000 litres as soy clocks in at around 2000 litres a kilo.
4. You will reduce your carbon & methane footprint in the most drastic way possible.
   Animal agriculture accounts for 18% of the greenhouse gas emission causing global warming, that is 40% more than the nearest offender,being Vegan is a better move for the planet than swapping your car for a hybrid or living in an electricity free shack – there is no such thing as an animal consuming enviromentalist!
5. People often ignore veganism by saying they only have time for so many causes like world hunger for example but consider this, while eating vegan you will reduce the amount of land needed to sustain you from 3 1/4 acres to just 1/6 of an acre. With such a small proportion of vegans on the planet we simply do not have the landspace to produce enough food for our population in excess of 6 billion but the 19 fold increase in food per head of a vegan world would give us more than enough food supply every individual human on the planet, so much for veganism being misanthropic !
6. Most importantly of all you will reduce the amount of suffering you are commissioning through the products you consume – you will send no male chicks to be shred or gassed to death,you will confine no chicken into a tiny space & pool of excrement,you will submit no pig to having its teeth pulled,tail chopped,ears notched or testicles removed – in fact you will spare cows,chickens,sheep,ducks,calves and pigs from all manner of confinement, cruel farming practices,seperation from offspring/mothers and a fear filled painful death.

If you are willing to try the food aspect of Veganism you could win $1000 dollars Australian.
The Vegan Easy Challenge requires that you eat vegan food for 30 days and it provides a menu of well planned, delicious Vegan dishes to sustain you from Nov 1st – 30th..
The recipes source ingredients that are easy to come by and straightforward to work with.
To enter the competition and get your menu/recipe list send an email to vegan@alv.org.au requesting entry or phone 03 9513 4367

I give this competition personal endorsement as ALV is one of the few abolitionist organisations in our region, they seek to end animal use not make it more palatable (and thus make consumers more comfortable with consuming sentient beings) through welfare reform.
Their website is of particular interest to Victorians for local animal activism and to Australians for information on campaigns or just the straight word on practices that are commonplace in Aussie animal agriculture/animal use(pet breeding etc).
http://Alv.org.au – Animal Liberation Victoria website

Or to register directly http://veganeasy.org/

Disclaimer – The Vegan Easy Challenge requires the applicant to adhere to veganism only in the dietary sense for the 30 days in order to be eligible for the $1000.
Veganism itself is not a diet but an ethical choice to exclude all animal products where possible, for example Vegans do not partake of silk,wool,leather,feathers or fur in addition to food products and components/ingredients of other products that are animal based.
Cheers & good luck from all the Ethereal Blend contributors

Naty

I read a newspaper article this week about how a study has found that some dogs are as intelligent as two year olds.  Imagine that; dogs as intelligent as two year olds! You know who else is as intelligent as two year olds?  Two year olds.

Ok, sarcasm aside, my point is this: so what?  Why are we humans obsessed with comparing the intellectual abilities of one species to that of another?  All this proves is that humans, as a species, consider ourselves superior.  Superior to animals, superior to each other…

Our superiority complex as regards animals manifests itself in the way we treat them.  We treat them like they are ours to own, dominate, enslave, use, torture, kill, eat and debase.  Nevertheless our treatment of animals is merely a manifestation of a deeper problem: we think we are superior.   I just don’t believe that we are.

This superiority complex was highlighted to me during a recent conversation with an omnivore.  Discussing some recent health concerns, he said to me ‘what if you found out that you would be completely better if you ate just a little bit of fish, would you eat it?’ He followed up with some typical misguided notions about fish (apart from farmed fish) living in the wild and having a great life, and supposedly not feeling pain etc.  My response was ‘what if you found out that you would be completely healthy if you ate just a little bit of baby, and the baby was otherwise doomed to a terrible abusive life, and it would be put down humanely so as to feel no pain, would you eat it?’.  He got offended and said ‘that’s different!’  Unsurprisingly the conversation ended there.

I admit that it was an extreme and almost absurd example.  I can see why he was challenged by it.  But that’s my point – I just don’t see the difference.

I don’t see a moral difference between a human’s right to life and that of a non human.  As a whole humans do see that difference.  In Australia we believe that humans have an inalienable right to life.  At the same time we think that humans have a right to take a life, that of a non human, for our own purposes.

I have yet to come across a convincing argument as to why humans should be entitled to take an animal’s life and treat it as expendable.  Our supposed superior intellectual capacity isn’t enough.  If it were there would need to be some serious changes in the way we think about and treat people with intellectual disabilities, or children, or people with brain injuries etc.

There would also need to be some changes in the way we think about and treat pigs, and monkeys, and following this latest study, dogs.

Adam

Prologue

When the conditions are right and sentience blooms, the sentient being has morally significant interests. He/she has an interest in avoiding unpleasant sensations and an interest in experiencing pleasure.

A sentient being with what I call intrapersonal rationality recognises that they have interests and seeks to serve those interests. If they are interpersonally rational they will recognise that other sentient beings have morally significant interests that are just as important as their own (of course is not necessary for a sentient being to be interpersonally rational for them to be afforded moral consideration by interpersonally rational beings). This is the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests’ which is an ethical stance that takes into account the interests of all sentient beings and recognises that ‘like’ interests are equally important.

From ‘equal consideration of interests’ we get to Francione’s rights theory. This theory, which is based on the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests,’ holds that if a being has morally significant interests they can’t be treated as property because property can never be balanced equitably with the interests of an ‘owner’.

And the right of an individual to not be treated as property can’t be taken away just because a mob of other sentient beings would benefit from his/her loss. Take democracy for example. Each person has only one vote and no vote is counted as being more or less important than another. It would be absurd then if an electorate could vote to take away the right of an individual to vote. It would defeat the whole purpose of democracy. Likewise, if a being has morally significant interests and hence is covered by the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests’ then it is absurd to justify treating him/her as the property of another person or persons. I’m not saying democracy is the best form of government – I am just using your familiarity with its processes to highlight the absurdity of taking away the right of a being with morally significant interests to not be treated as property, merely because of the sheer number of competing interests.

Utilitarians would have you believe that their theory is underpinned by the concept of ‘equal consideration of interests’ but utilitarianism, which holds that the right conduct is conduct that collectively maximises what is good, can treat people as property and so violates the principle of ‘equal consideration of interests’ for those people.

*****

Why meat is murder

I recently came across an article in The Age Melbourne magazine May 09 edition, which is, for anyone who is not familiar with the publication, a monthly magazine put out by a broadsheet Melbourne newspaper. The article was about growing anything yourself. One of the subjects of the article was Tony Faranda from Werribee South in Victoria Australia who was involved in “growing” salami for his own consumption. He’d buy three piglets at a time, fatten them up over a few months and then he or one of his sons would blow their lives into oblivion with a rifle. Mr Faranda was quoted as saying, “I enjoy looking at them. I enjoy patting them. I enjoy eating them.”  He clearly has a warped attitude towards non-human animals. Mr Faranda loves what he gets from these pigs, much like a rapist loves what he gets from his victim.  In the same article there is a photo of the 3 piglets that Mr Faranda will murder and the caption, which is styled like a cartoon caption, reads “These pigs will end up as salami made by Tony Faranda”. This pictorial representation is positioned by journalist Peter Barrett as comedy. Peter Barrett is flippant in his representation of this news story; he clearly doesn’t care about the fate of these innocent sentient beings and seems to derive sadistic pleasure from their plight.

The classic characteristic of a sociopath is treating others as if they were a resource. The sociopath has an inability to recognise the inherent value of individuals separate to himself and does not have a sense of moral responsibility towards other individuals. In regards to their relationship with animals, Tony Faranda and Peter Barrett are sociopaths.

In the following article I intend to prove to you that killing a sentient being, other things being equal, is wrong – irrespective of whether the being suffers during their murder. The inevitable pain involved in raising and murdering animals for food has already been addressed many times in many forms of media.

Imagine a world full of sociopaths except for one person – one lone person who possesses intrapersonal and interpersonal rationality. In other words, an ethical person. Lets call him Mr Ng. Mr Ng’s world is not unlike our human world, except we have a few less sociopaths. Now let’s imagine that Mr Ng gets killed – murdered in fact – by one of these sociopaths. Is the sociopath’s act wrong, even though there is no one to care? Of course it is still wrong. It is a direct wrong to Mr Ng. His life was taken from him and he will never experience again. Now imagine a different scenario: a world full of robots except for one ethical person. Lets call him Mr Smith. One of the robots kills Mr Smith. Is the robot’s act wrong, even though there is no one to care? Again it is wrong. The person is deprived of future experiences. They might not be aware of their deprivation, but nevertheless they have been deprived.

Do the ‘natural’ science laws of the universe cease to exist when there is no one to recognize those laws? Absolutely not. And it’s the same for moral science. The laws of ethics exist independently of humans. It just takes moral actors to see the reality. Like Newton discovered the natural science law of gravity through observation, moral actors uncover the laws of ethics through, amongst other things, reason. These laws lie dormant waiting to be discovered by a moral actor.

On face value these scenarios are different. One world is populated mainly with sociopaths and the other with robots. However, these scenarios are morally equivalent. Neither the sociopaths or the robots care that these men have died. Even though there is no one to care we, as impartial spectator, intuitively recognise that both Mr Ng and Mr Smith have been wronged. In scenario two, when Mr Smith died all that remained was robots. But a world full of robots is morally speaking the same as no world at all. Hence it is not necessary for other living, breathing moral actors to be aware of an action for the action to be wrong.

What makes an act wrong does not hinge on the presence of a moral actor to pass judgement, instead it depends on the nature of the act. The focus needs to be on the loss itself, not the knowledge of the loss. People miss the point when they focus on the fact that the person is no longer around to be conscious that they have been wronged. This is like looking for the wrong after the fact. In other words, trying to a derive the wrong from a lifeless corpse. The wrong doesn’t lie with the dead body. It lies with the action – it lies with the act of killing. And the wrong occurs at the moment of death. To end a person’s life is to deprive them of future experiences. Critics of this theory point out that it’s just potential experiences. But the fact is these experiences would have been a reality if it had not been for the person interfering with the person’s life path. That was the action that prevented the potentialities from becoming a reality. The potential will become a reality unless it’s thwarted. Much like an object will continue its motion unless friction comes into play, a being will continue to be unless thwarted by an intervenor. A murderer, cancer, cellular degeneration and accidental death can be all classed as friction. The question is: will you be the friction? Will you be the wrong?

Death for a sentient being is a case of what they don’t know will still hurt them. Imagine a community subjected to a horrific scientific experiment where their legs are secretly removed at birth. This community doesn’t know that having no legs is abnormal and the knowledge that they are abnormal and part of a science experiment is kept from them. In fact there is no word for legs in their vocabulary. For those pedants out there lets just say that robots help them with daily routines and the community believe that the robots were created by a figure of legendary status who also had no legs. The robots too have no legs, instead they have wheels to get around. The scientists who designed this ghastly experiment thought that having robots with legs may cause the community to become envious of the robots and possibly trigger a recall of latent knowledge of what has been denied to them. Despite them being unaware that something has been taken from them, it is an indisputable fact that these individuals have been deprived of normal function. They don’t need to know they are deprived to be deprived. If the scientists involved had not deprived them of normal function their lives would have been easier and they would have had a greater chance of achieving optimum happiness. Indeed there is no doubt that it would have afforded them greater opportunities and hence greater potential to achieve happiness beyond their current capacity. Once the action was taken the individuals were wronged. While awareness of what had been taken away from them would have compounded their situation, the greatest wrong is the direct wrong they were subject to when their legs were cut off which resulted in their capacity for pleasurable experiences diminishing.

The following is a fictional example, but I am sure a similar scenario has happened before. Imagine a baby was abducted by a couple who couldn’t have kids of their own when the baby’s biological parents were on holiday in China. The couple were impoverished so the child grew up in an impoverished environment. The child didn’t know she was kidnapped from her biological family as her biological parents, like her captors, were of Chinese extraction. With no exposure to the world outside her village, the girl grows up thinking that her life in the village is a normal existence for every Chinese girl, not knowing that some Chinese girls live in luxury as do her biological parents back in Australia. Her biological parents are traumatised by the loss of their daughter, but their daughter suffers the greatest loss. It goes without saying that her life in the poor village is miserable, but there is another level to her disadvantage: she has been deprived of satisfactory living standards. If she hadn’t been abducted she would have been living a comfortable existence with her biological parents. She doesn’t need to have awareness of her deprivation to be deprived. This girl has been robbed of potential.

An alternative scenario involves a young man living below the poverty line. Let’s call this man Mr Proctor. Mr Proctor was entitled to receive a significant inheritance from a deceased grandparent. Unfortunately Mr Proctor’s uncle made away with his inheritance. Mr Proctor knew nothing of his entitlements – in fact he did not expect to receive any inheritance. As far as he was concerned he had no entitlements – the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. Had the uncle not done the wrong thing and given Mr Proctor his entitlements, Mr Proctor’s living standards would have been significantly better. Irrespective of his unawareness of his loss, the man has been deprived. He doesn’t need to know what his uncle did to be deprived. We can come up with a plethora of examples to prove that a sentient being doesn’t need to know they have been wronged to be wronged. It is not the knowledge of deprivation that is the greatest tragedy, it is the deprivation itself.

If you have been asleep during the previous seven paragraphs and you still think there is no direct wrong in killing a sentient being, other things being equal, consider this: Rejecting my argument also means rejecting the argument that we should use pain reduction measures when we can, such as the use of anaesthesia, pain relievers and euthanasia in the case of incurable severely debilitating illnesses. The reason for this is that pain reduction is future focused. We are given anaesthetics prior to surgery because we know and the anaesthetist knows that if we don’t use anaesthetics we will be in pain in the future, when the surgeon gets to work with his scalpel. What makes chronic pain worse than acute pain (of the same intensity) is that it has an ongoing component; a future component. If we don’t interevene with some form of treatment or pain relief the pain will continue into the future and we will continue to suffer. Animals living with a terminal illness can be in severe pain but continue to live in agony for hours, days or even weeks. If they are euthanased they no longer endure in extreme pain. I must stress that I am talking about animals suffering from incurable terminal illnesses who are also experiencing pain significant enough to make life not worth living. If we were to comparatively analyse pain, it is not just the degree but also the length of time that is important.  If I am in pain I know that I want it to stop as soon as possible. Now, not a second later.

If you, like all reasonable beings, hold that we should minimise pain when we can, then you recognise the gravity of future painful experiences and are also compelled to agree with my aforementioned argument that future pleasurable experiences must be granted the importance they deserve and will always prove to be of value to our future selves.

Just as we seek to minimise the pain in our lives – not just the degree but also the duration – we also seek to have as many pleasurable experiences as possible. Obviously I am not justifying unbridled hedonism, but we clearly recognise that the longer we live, the more opportunities we have to experience pleasurable experiences. A baby that dies has had their life cut drastically short and so is deprived of many years of future pleasurable experiences. The important thing to remember is that it makes no difference to the baby whether another baby is born exactly at the same moment as his death. The newly born baby has his own set of interests independent of the baby who died. Furthering the interests of the newly born baby does not further the interests of the dead baby. The dead baby does not have access to the experiences of the newly born baby – the new born can’t share his experiences and they certainly can’t take turns. Pleasant experiences are important because individuals, not collectives, value them and derive benefit from them; the loss or benefit only has meaning and significance to the individual sentient being.  The dead baby can no longer experience, and having some other baby come along does not change the dead baby’s circumstances. Replacing the dead baby with another does not make up for the loss because the loss is to the dead baby not some magical giant receptacle.

Now back to the actions of Mr Faranda, unapologetically described in The Age Melbourne Magazine May edition. While I have already given a number of examples that prove that, other things being equal, death is a direct wrong to a sentient being, this horrendous example of animal exploitation can be used to very simply prove that intentionally killing a sentient being for personal gain is wrong. Which I will now do.

It would be great if Mr Faranda had a revelation and stopped treating animals as property, stopped murdering pigs to make salami. Unfortunately, I don’t think this will ever happen. But for argument’s sake, let’s pretend it did. Let’s pretend that on the day of the pigs’ execution, Mr Faranda stumbles across the Ethereal Blend Blog while searching for women’s shoes online. He finds Tim and Adam’s arguments irrefutable so decides to become a vegan there and then. As part of this revelation he feels the need to go outside and look at the pigs that live in his yard. He bends down to look at the pigs, but this time he does not look upon them as property. He can now see them as individuals with inherent value – a value not determined by any other person, but instead endowed by the nature of their being. Namely, sentience: the capacity to experience and further to this, the ability to give inanimate things value. As Mr Faranda is now a born-again vegan, he does not kill the pigs. The fact that he does not kill the pigs means that the pigs continue living. Day after day, they continue to experience piggy pleasures. If Mr Faranda had not turned vegan and did decide to kill the pigs, the pigs would not have experienced the piggy pleasures that they have had since that day of revelation. It is a good thing that he decided not to kill them and it would have been a bad thing had he decided to cut their lives short and therefore deprive them of future experiences. By way of simple illustration we can easily see that intentionally killing for personal gain is a direct wrong.

If, dear reader, you indulge in ‘free range’ meat then you are not absolved of guilt. In order to aquire ‘free range’ flesh you need to render an animal dead and since killing the animal deprives them of future experiences even painless methods of killing (if they exist!) are acts of murder.

Much like an object will continue its motion unless friction comes into play, a being will continue to be unless thwarted by a intervenor. A murderer, cancer, cellular degeneration and accidental death can be all classed as friction. The question is: will you be the friction? Will you be the wrong?

*****

Epilogue

For too long, ethical vegans (people who have the capability to cut through the cultural,social and intellectual bonds that constrain pure ethical deliberation to see the truth) have minced words and bitten their tongues in relation to their communications with omnivores about the facts of veganism. I believe many vegans don’t embrace the abolitionist position (the position that recognises that animals have morally significant interests and therefore should never be treated as a resource) because they are afraid of annoying their omnivore friends. There are no two ways about it: treating animals as merely the means to someone ends is wrong, and when the exploitation involves ending an animal’s life it is murder. This needs to be shouted out, not whispered in dark corners. We should raise the roof every time we hear a face value vegan uphold the cop-out subjectivist position of “I think it’s wrong but it’s okay if someone else does it”. It is and has always been wrong to exploit animals. It’s just been a matter of people discovering this, much like Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity. In the dark ages and ancient times nobody was aware that exploiting animals was wrong, just as nobody was aware that the Earth was flat and the earth revolved around the sun. Rigorous, informed and objective ethical thought by rational beings will always lead to the conclusion that meat is murder.

Naty

As the world is gripped by swine flu phobia, it occurs to me that in disease and suffering, we are all equal. And I don’t mean we are equal in the way that most people mean it: ‘we are all equal (and by ‘all’ I mean all humans who happen to look like me, share my beliefs, share my way of life, live in a similar area as me or at least in countries as developed as mine…)’.

I mean that it is at times like these, when the same disease strikes humans and non human animals alike, that the fact that humans and non humans are equals comes to the fore. And predictably, it is at times like these that society does its best to entrench in all of us the unfounded belief that humans are somehow superior, better, different, smarter…

The fact is that a life is a life, full stop. To assert that one life is more worthy that another is utterly without merit. A sentient being, capable of joy, fear, pain, pleasure, suffering; how can that life be worth less than another? How can it be a commodity? Owned, sold, abused, killed – for another’s benefit? Why is a mother of one species less deserving of nurturing its young than a mother of another species? Why do we consider it acceptable to entertain one species at the expense and with the suffering of thousands of others?

Society has long used any number of excuses to justify its brutal stance towards non human animals. Today, when google is god and we are just a few clicks away from quasi-plausible justifications for just about everything, Shakespeare still encapsulates the irrefutable truth: if you prick us, do we not bleed?

Adam

Society considers vegans fussy, but in fact, most omnivores are fussier eaters than vegans. Omnivores typically have a narrow diet. They shudder at the thought of eating tofu, yet they are happy to eat the innards of a dead animal. How ridiculous to wince at the sight of tofu – a product derived from an innocuous bean – yet get gastronomically aroused in the presence of guts and muscle from a dead being! Guts and muscle that once enabled a being to experience life, now slumped on some plate, quickly putrefying and filling with bacteria.

Typically vegans include a wide variety of foods in their diets. Plant foods that most omnivores have never heard of, let alone tried. The range and variety of foods a vegan can eat is massive. The edible plant kingdom is huge and far outstrips the range and variety of animal foods that omnivores commonly eat. So frequently an omnivore’s diet is more restricted than a vegans. The difference between a varied omnivore diet and a vegan one amounts to dead animals and their excretions.

About a week ago a friend of mine invited me to a seminar. He is an omnivore and I decided to bring lunch for both of us. The reason I did this was because I knew that if I brought food he wouldn’t be purchasing any dead animals and it was another opportunity for him to experience vegan food. And even though I know that it is highly unlikely that he will ever be a vegan, I wanted to help him understand what vegan food was all about. When I told him I brought sandwiches, his immediate instinctive reaction was to be negative and make a joke about it. His mind is so closed to veganism that he instinctively made a joke. I find this extremely irrational given there is nothing icky or grotesque about eating edible plant foods. Plant foods are not procured from the bodies of animals. They are not procured from the flesh, guts and bones of animals. What substance is more stomach-churning than rotting animal parts? I don’t know of any. On the other hand, plant foods are innocuous. No pain is involved in the procurement because plants don’t have a central nervous system, they don’t have nerve receptors, they do not have the capacity to experience anything. Now back to my friend. When he got around to tasting the sandwich he was surprised. He actually enjoyed the sandwich and said it was the best sandwich he ever tasted. What’s interesting about this is that he has tried vegan food before and he enjoyed it then too. His mind is so fixated and restricted, that every time he is presented with vegan food his irrational fears are renewed. It doesn’t matter that he has had positive experiences with vegan food in the past, each time he is offered vegan food he expects it to be a nasty experience. Later on I offered him a vegan cupcake. This cupcake looked no different to a non-vegan cupcake, yet his instinctive reaction again was of disgust – he made another joke. When I eventually convinced him to try it, he was pleasantly surprised again. It didn’t matter how many times he ate vegan food that was enjoyable, every time he was offered vegan food his immediate reaction was negative. If that is not fussiness, I don’t know what is.

Now let’s look at the big picture – let’s move away from talk of diet because veganism is more than just a diet. Let’s change our focus to the wider understanding of fussiness. To be “fussy” in the strict sense is to be excessive and particular about trivialities. Were the suffragettes fussy in their demands for equal rights for women? Are people who avoid buying sweatshop products fussy about labour practices? Is the expectance of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work fussy? Is the person who avoids buying products made from child labour fussy? Of course not. None of these stances/actions are fussy. And neither is a vegan when they intentionally avoid products and practices that are tied to animal exploitation and abuse. There is nothing trivial about animal exploitation and abuse. And showing concern about the suffering of sentience beings is not fussy. On the contrary, it is a necessary expression of an evolved human, of an ethical being.

Society needs to revise its attitude towards individuals who take steps to avoid unethical actions and use good judgement to inform their decisions. It can only be considered a good thing to avoid unethical actions. On one level, veganism is about avoidance. The vegan recognises that some actions need to be avoided because they are unethical. This avoidance should never be deemed fussy because the driving force is ethics. Ethics is an important concept, not some triviality like taste or fashion. While avoiding unethical actions, at the same time veganism is expansive because it promotes positive actions. It is not enough to just avoid doing bad things, we should also take actions that improve the lot of sentient individuals.

As I have demonstrated, omnivores are typically fussy about what they eat. They are fixated on their taste buds; they let their taste buds drive their actions, but are lax in their acceptance of responsibilities to dietary actions. This dietary laxness is indicative of their general moral laxness and conversely, their mental restrictions. The omnivore psyche is a narrow mindset, which restricts ethical thought and ethical deliberation. And hence they have moral blinkers on, blinkers that guide them to certain types of foods. On the other hand, the value system of vegans drives them to do the right thing and avoid certain foods/products. Their sense of right and wrong and their motivation to do the right thing informs their decisions.

People think veganism is a restrictive lifestyle, but letting tastebuds, convenience and tradition dominate your life is a restriction beyond measure because it lets the trivial dominate, suppress and incarcerate the significant.

Adam

Nothing annoys me more than ex-vegetarians. They annoy me more than people who have never been vegetarian because at least people who have never been vegetarian have the potential to become one. Ex-vegetarians are more often than not deeply disturbed individuals who, having rejected vegetarianism due to their own weakness, want to lash out at true vegetarians to try to appease their guilty consciences. Now they do this either consciously or unconsciously, but that is neither here nor there. The most disturbing part is that, like a lot of people, they deride others in order to make themselves feel better about their own inadequacies. As they lack the moral courage to persist with vegetarianism, they feel the need to justify their failure to others. By deriding vegetarians and vegetarianism, they seek absolution of guilt and reassurance from others that the decision they made was right. In trying to make themselves feel better about being morally weak, they spread lies about the nature of vegetarianism and resort to absurd and unfounded criticisms.

Ex-vegetarian – a dirty word in my book – and Michael Coulter, opinion writer for The Age newspaper, is one such individual.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/why-are-these-vegans-sent-to-plague-us-20090328-9esz.html