Gary L. Francione
On Friday 15th January 2010, @garylfrancione said:
How vegan is vegan?
Dear All:
I want to address what many consider to be a compelling question:
how vegan is vegan?
I am not sure why we treat this question--and its analysis--any differently from the way that we would treat any fundamental moral question where humans are concerned.
If we think that animal exploitation is morally unjustified, then we ought never to intentionally consume, wear, or use animal products. This means that we should read labels (given the ubiquitous nature of animal products) and if we eat in a non-vegan restaurant (itself a moral question), we ought to ask about ingredients.
Some people seem to think that because it is impossible to live without some animals being exploited (e.g., animals are killed unintentionally in harvesting of vegetables), it does not matter whether we intentionally consume animals so it's not necessary to be a consistent vegan--if we eat or wear or use *some* non-vegan products, it's okay because we cannot live "perfectly."
But that is like saying that if we build a road, we know that some number of people will be killed when they use that road. So it's okay to murder particular people because all human activity results indirectly in death to some people. No one would agree with that.
We cannot live perfectly. Even if we buy fair trade, consume less, recycle, etc., the bottom line is that the western way of life causes a lot of misery for a lot people. Even the best of us cannot live "perfectly" so an occasional intentional battery of another is okay. How much of a non-rapist do you have to be to be a non-rapist??
Surely, no one would agree with this reasoning in the human context. So let's not be speciesist and apply it in the nonhuman context!
Now, there are some people, like Singer and the "Vegan" Outreach crowd, who argue that veganism is just a way of reducing suffering and is no different from eating "cage free" eggs or gassed chicken at KFC. It's all just about suffering and consistent veganism is "fanatical." I have written elsewhere on this issue.
http://is.gd/6kKgo
http://is.gd/5HH4T
GLF
Short: http://tl.gd/3r1qq
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