Becoming Vegan: “Vegetarianism First?”

By Lee Hall; posted 28 May 2010

The Spring 2010 issue of The Vegan Society’s magazine The Vegan contains an article by Gary Francione: “Vegetarianism First? The Conventional Wisdom -- and Why It’s Wrong.” The gist, with which I concur, is:

• Veganism is the principle best applied to diet.
• Avoid promoting “vegetarianism” that allows for dairy products (Francione uses the word “vegetarianism” although this is more precisely called lacto-vegetarianism). Veal comes from the dairy industry, after all; so no one who drinks milk has disconnected from meat. And dairy cows go to slaughter too.

Now, then, what if you feel becoming vegan overnight is too much? Francione would advise you to drop all animal products from one meal a day, then from two meals, then three. I myself don’t know anyone who switched to a vegan diet that way, but no matter. We can agree on this: Becoming vegan starts by resolving to kick the habit of supporting the exploitation.

Francione quotes Vegan Society founder Donald Watson as saying that “lacto-vegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh-eating and a truly humane, civilised diet, and we think, therefore, that during our life on earth we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the ‘full journey.’” Donald agreed with “conventional wisdom” that lacto-vegetarianism typically came first (“half-way”) in the journey to vegan living. I think we can make the point, however, that thanks to the efforts of Donald, as well as Dorothy (Morgan) Watson, Elsie Shrigley, Leslie Cross, Arthur Ling, Eva Batt, Kathleen Jannaway and other early vegan proponents, people now can make the full journey in the express lane.

From most accounts I know (including my own), people normally take just a few weeks or months to change from the socially typical diet to a vegan diet once they’ve made the psychological commitment. I’d like to say it’s a snap of the fingers -- and if you have no trouble doing it overnight, excellent! Still, that’s the unusual story. Francione calls going vegan a breeze. Well, I expect it’s easier for people today than it was for us old bats who did it a few decades ago (we didn’t have all this great vegan ice cream then, we had to buy this really weird, pinkish veggieburger mix, and we walked miles to get it, uphill both ways!) but even today it’s not a breeze.

For an adult, it might take a few years to become fully at ease with the change in daily habits; rest assured that an old craving, or a dream in which one is eating an animal product, is typical, and no cause for panic. Some vegans have had to see or imagine a veal calf being torn away from a gently protective nursing cow in order to understand why milk is so hurtful, and before cheese ceases to be attractive. After several years, we no longer feel the occasional and sometimes highly unnerving cravings. Stay firmly decisive, and you can arrive there too.

There’s a real accomplishment in staying vegan over the decades; I wouldn’t want to downplay it. Celebrate it, certainly. We prevail because kind friends invite us to dinner; we cook for friends and relatives who compliment our dishes. And these days, we have good vegan restaurants. We know we’re going against the grain, but we feel a weight lifted from our souls. So again, I’d say: Do what works well for you -- but do it. You’ll have support, and you’ll be rewarded by an almost indescribable liberation of the conscience. I wish everyone I meet could know the feeling.

No need for pain rankings

I’m particularly unsure about Francione’s view that comparing suffering makes it “possibly more morally wrong” to have dairy products than steak. Francione cites the longer life of dairy cows to make this point. But all animals in agribusiness are dominated, owned and treated as our things. It’s a tragedy for the calf, as well as the cow--who lives longer, but not much--and there’s no need, method, or reason for ranking their suffering. Veganism does not ask us to do this.

“The most effective way to get someone to ‘get’ veganism,” Francione says, is to present the listener with the way not to “inflict suffering and death on animals for reasons of pleasure, amusement, or convenience”; to illustrate the point, Francione suggests we’d compare the eating of animal products to the tormenting of pit bull dogs: “Michael Vick imposed suffering and death on animals because he enjoyed the results. Those of us who eat meat and dairy impose suffering and death on animals because we enjoy the results. We just pay someone else to do the dirty work.”

Is this the best way to have someone understand veganism? Most people aren’t excited to go out to dinner because animals were put through hellish ordeals. What law professors would call the police on a sushi bar the way they’d call the police on a dog-fighting ring? People will instinctively think--and I think they’d be right--that the intent is different. Although it is true that animals are hurt, degraded, and deemed disposable for dog-fighting rings and for luncheons, I’m not convinced it’s a good approach to say a teacher who gives a child a glass of milk might as well be involved in dog-fighting. The provocation might cause more turning off than tuning in.

OK, you might answer -- but what if the analogy has merit?

Let’s consider it. Veganism really tells us not to use animals. If you might get just one conversation with a person, how would you convey that? The animals on Donald Watson’s dear uncle’s farm seemed happy during Donald visits. But then came the truth. They were allowed to stick around just until they’d outlived their usefulness to the farmer. Not all farm animals are tortured the way pit bull terriers are tortured in dog-fighting rings. In this age of “locavores” and “happy meat” the Vick comparison isn’t the best way to counter the idea that all animal agribusiness is problematic. Several people have told me lately that they raise their own chickens on a nice yard. Now and then we meet environmentalists who insist they only eat the flesh of hunted animals and strive for “clean” or instant kills. There are sound arguments against having happy hens and clean meat, but the Vick comparison does not make them obvious.

And what about someone who just raises, say, goats to roam in the paddock, like pets? What of people who breed, say, their Labrador retriever, in a home situation? Is that OK? The Vick comparison might imply that just breeding animals doesn’t bring up vegan concerns. But purposeful breeding, including the breeding of animals to play with (no matter how well the animals are looked after), is indeed a topic of vegan concern. To cause horrific suffering to pit bull terriers or calves is wrong -- but, as Tom Regan has indicated, not the fundamental wrong .^[1]

Incremental steps?

Francione next offers a section called “Incremental Steps” that says:

Although animals who are supposedly raised in ‘free-range’ circumstances, or whose products are advertised as ‘organic,’ are raised in conditions that may be slightly less brutal than the normal factory farm, they are all still tortured. I will never portray these products as anything but what they are: gimmicks that are intended to make humans feel more comfortable about consuming nonhumans.

Again, veganism stops something more than -- deeper than -- torture. As I write, an activist group in Ohio is distributing a film about horrible treatment of calves filmed in a dairy, and the state farm bureau’s response is: “The gratuitous cruelty exhibited in this video is incomprehensible to anyone who is devoted to caring for farm animals.  Clearly, the intent of this employee’s actions was nothing short of torture and the severity of his acts calls out for punishment.” Are we really all about stopping acts of torture? Or do we make it clear that dominion itself (which makes “severe” acts possible) is the real issue?

Let us be forthright: We’re questioning the very concept of human dominion, not just the atrocities it makes possible. But good that Francione is completely avoiding calling free-range products a possible incremental step. This avoids the confusion of the “five criteria” in Rain without Thunder, a book in which Francione posited that banning the battery cage could conceivably be “a full recognition of the interest of the hens in their freedom of movement.”^[2]

Although people might hope for that when they buy free-range eggs, the way out of the human-supremacy habit means learning how to live a vegan life. Logically, “steps” on the way to a respectful culture would not involve choosing between alternative living or killing methods for chickens or any other animals in industrial settings; it would, instead, mean some people say “no way” to exploitation at a given time, strengthening a movement in the direction of respect. This could mean acting to preserve the autonomy of free-living animals, or setting up festivals and projects that show people how to disengage from animal products. What’s an incremental step on the way to vegan living? Learn, and show others, how to prepare falafel instead of hamburgers, guacamole instead of quesadillas.

One thing The Vegan Society has never done is consider so-called humane animal products a half-way house. Most of us are getting the picture: “humane” and “sustainable” animal products are often packaged by agribusiness to convince people they’re doing the ethical thing by buying these items. Moreover, any space animal farms devote to bigger sheds or ranges is that much less space left as habitat where animals could actually benefit from animal-rights ideals.

As I wrote in the Winter 2009 issue of The Vegan :

[E]veryone has the wonderful potential to commit to vegan values right now. To try to do this in increments -- say, by switching to egg companies without battery cages or supporting other free-range concepts -- is to forget the reality that Earth’s space is finite. The spread of pasture-based animal agribusiness uproots free-living beings and snuffs out their lives. The argument for incremental steps within industry fails to notice the communities of animals being displaced every day by industrial landscapes and buildings.

As our population reaches 7 billion, as free-living animals are cleared out of their homes so feed can be grown for the animals we eat, we’re at a crisis point. Imagine the change that hinges on a personal paradigm shift that means we stop thinking of the Earth as a warehouse and animals as objects.

When the idea of human supremacy is understood as an old, destructive myth, it will be replaced. This change depends on us. Each person who is persuaded of the importance of veganism helps humanity step in an exciting new direction. Ready?

Footnotes