It’s Cesar Chavez Day, and the college is closed. Many things to do besides blog (though I’ll be back at it tomorrow), but can link to this old post of mine about Chavez and faith and this note from the Chavez Center about the great man’s environmentalist commitments.
I would also add this: Chavez devoted his life to justice for farm workers, yes. But he understood that getting the American public to change their buying and eating habits was inextricably linked with that justice struggle. Over and over again, Chavez made the case that there is a story — often a painful and exploitative one — behind what we buy at the grocery store. For those of us committed to veganism and animal rights, for those of us who believe the slaughtering of animals is deeply immoral, there is a reminder in Chavez’s life narrative of the importance of connecting justice and food consumption habits.
The chief immorality of factory farming is what it does to animals, sentient creatures who ought not be confined in misery and killed in terror for our sustenance. But a secondary immorality lies in the often abject conditions in which those who “process” the meat work; meat packers in this country have seen their wages decline dramatically in recent decades. Few factory farms are unionized; safety conditions are often appalling; many factory farms exploit the undocumented workers (overwhelmingly Latino) who now constitute a substantial portion of the labor force. Those of us who are vegans believe that the killing of animals does violence to the souls of the humans who engage in it. Animal liberation matters, but so too does the liberation of migrant workers from some of the ugliest, most unpleasant and most psyche-scarring labor done in this country. Animal rights and human rights can go together.
Consider honoring Cesar Chavez by consuming food today that was produced in a way that causes far less revulsion, far less pain, far less danger to the sentient. No agriculture is purely cruelty-free; pesticides kill animals, and the blades of combines on wheat fields chew up the bodies of small creatures. But we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the better — eat and shop in a way that honors the souls of farm workers and the souls (for they have souls, and rights to boot) of animals.
I often bring up this argument to those who advocate human rights without understanding how their diet affects “the struggle.”
Hi Hugo,
> Those of us who are vegans believe that the killing of animals does violence to the souls of the humans who engage in it.
That’s a little strong a statement to make on behalf of all vegans — it’s quite possible (I’m attempting it at the moment) to be vegan for animal welfare reasons, with the belief that it’s unconscionable to cause suffering to animals while they’re alive, but that the act of killing an animal for food (if done humanely) is justifiable if suffering is minimized; this is the Singer argument.
A fine note, Hugo; it’s important to keep in mind all the ways in the struggle for a humane food system, the rights of animals, and socio-economic justice often all go hand in hand.
Chris, Peter Singer is hardly a popular figure in vegan circles; indeed, he’s increasingly seen as out-of-touch. Steven Best and Gary Francione, abolitionists both, tend to enjoy more perceived gravitas in the animal rights community — Singer has burned a lot of bridges, especially after he alienated huge numnbers of anti-vivisectionists with his defense of some forms of animal experimentation. Vegetarians and animal welfarists do want to ameliorate the worst conditions for factory-farmed creatures — vegans generally want, sooner or later, to see all meat-consumption ended. (See the literature of PETA, the Vegan Society, and so on.)
Hi Hugo,
> Peter Singer is hardly a popular figure in vegan circles
So, Singer’s current unpopularity notwithstanding, I feel like it would be better to respond to someone who’s a little offended (because you implied that their reasons for trying to be vegan don’t exist) by acknowledging that you probably should have thrown a “generally believe” or a “mostly” in there somewhere. Claiming instead that their views aren’t popular enough at the moment to merit you leaving room for them in statements about what vegans are seems uncharitable to me.
> vegans generally want, sooner or later, to see all meat-consumption ended.
Statements like this one are fine with me, for what it’s worth; if the one in the post itself had been phrased this way, instead of phrased like “Vegans want to see all meat-consumption ended.”, I’d feel much more welcome.
Sure, Chris. It’s just that I know a lot of vegans, belong to a lot of vegan organizations, and have never met someone who held the view you’re espousing who was a serious vegan. To me — and this will offend you — it’s a bit like my saying “feminists believe women need to be treated equally” and you saying “well, some feminists believe it’s okay to treat women as inferior beings as long as you do so politely and regretfully with a goal of perhaps someday acknowledging their humanity.”
Veganism is both theory and praxis; feminism is both theory and praxis.
You are welcome here, of course — but defining words in a manner inconsistent with how they are commonly understood is not something I’m always going to be charitable about, my brother!
Hi Hugo,
I’m afraid I still disagree pretty strongly. Veganism is commonly understood to mean abstaining from animal products. It makes sense for us to have an understanding that is this broad, because there are many reasons to be vegan that are each quite different from each other. Some people are vegan for personal health reasons; some people for environmental and sustainability reasons; some for ethical reasons of reducing unnecessary and unjustifiable suffering; some for ethical reasons of a moral absolute view of what intrinsic rights all animals have; some for religious or cultural reasons; some for a mix of all of the above. I’m sure there are more reasons still.
Why, then, could it make sense for anyone to choose the specific reasoning they have an affinity for and announce that vegans all agree with that reasoning, as a rule? You argue, with the feminism analogy, that this is because opposition to a rights-based abolitionist veganism is like opposition to the defining notion of veganism itself. This is clearly just a redefinition of veganism to only cover people who share your motivations for being vegan, and saying it doesn’t make it so.
Chris, I’m going to let this conversation stop while I can still be civil; I gave up blogging about veganism last year because I found it impossible to retain my normal commitment to polite discourse when the subject came up, and my own sense is that any response I have to your last comment will be inflammatory and do little to advance the cause to which I am so committed.
Hugo,
Your blog gremlins are eating my comments again. I’ve tried to post a response to Greg on the Martha post about 4 times now but it keeps disappearing. I thought it might have been the link that I was trying to post, so I altered it. It still seems to be disappearing into oblivion.