My Face Is on Fire

Others

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 20:02:00 +0000

The Folks Around Us

Relationships can be complicated. Our relationships with others when we reach a point where we decide to go vegan get even more complicated. At first, new vegans often worry about finding products, identifying ingredients, the disappointment of limited options in so many restaurant menus, as well as about how they'll be perceived in social situations. This is especially true of new vegans who don't have any sort of established support system, whether in their face-to-face lives or in their online meanderings. Eventually, when things settle, it becomes clear that perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of being vegan isn't how others around us view us, but rather our own thoughts and feelings about our friends, families and others in our daily lives who aren't vegan. I always tell folks who ask that the hardest thing about going vegan is navigating through our relationships with non-vegan loved ones. It's alienating enough to walk around in a world where the majority of other humans view animal exploitation as normal; when you're interacting with people you love or like -- people who are closest to you -- that sense of alienation can feel overwhelming.

Sharing Spaces

It can be particularly hard-on-the-head when you're in a pre-existing relationship with a non-vegan. I was "lucky" in some ways (or so I thought). Shortly after my former spouse and I first got together, I became a vegetarian. We moved in together and -- since I loved to cook and he didn't -- I ended up preparing almost all of our meals, so he ate whatever I made and was happy. When we'd go out to eat together, just the two of us, he wouldn't eat meat. This was a decision he had made himself. After a few years I went vegan and, once again, he said that he was completely happy eating whatever I prepared (and using whichever other household products I selected to purchase). I really went out of my way to make sure that we had a wide range of tasty things on-hand, whether healthy or indulgent (or sometimes both concurrently). I bought cookbooks, lurked in vegan discussion forums, experimented with veganizing favourite or nostalgic dishes, etc. Going out to eat became rare since there were very few places in our tiny city at the time offering anything other than a garden salad or fries on their menus without a heap of animal ingredients. So nearly all of the meals we shared together -- or with guests we had over -- became plant-based.

Sharing Others' Spaces

The exceptions were when we gathered with family in their own homes. Even though I would always bring a couple of vegan-friendly dishes along, members of either of our families would sometimes make jokes about his "deprivation" and those were some of the few times I would see him loading his plate with meat and other animal products. It was those times that it hit me just how completely different our ethics were. Although it made life easier that he was happy (and insistent on) not consuming animal products at home, he was, ultimately, a non-vegan who thought nothing of consuming the bits and parts of other beings. This hadn't changed at all in our time together. It led to my dreading family gatherings which revolved around food. I would always end up feeling sad or anxious (or both). I began to resent him, not because I had any expectation that he would avoid eating animal products out of deference to me in those circumstances, but because it was a reminder that he still considered these animal products "food".

Involving Kiddos

I can't even imagine what it would have been like if we'd had kids involved. I've had vegan friends and acquaintances who've had offspring who've shared with me the unsolicited opinions and advice they'd received from non-vegan family and friends. I've read plenty of accounts of the challenges vegans with non-vegan partners have experienced when raising said offspring. Worse have been the accounts of the additional challenges in co-parenting after the dissolution of their relationships with their non-vegan partners (particularly if the dissolution was acrimonious). In hindsight, I'm often relieved that my ex and I didn't opt to have kids. I can't imagine having to spend years navigating parenthood and having to deal with others constantly trying to challenge or undermine any decisions we made concerning our kid, never mind not being on the same page about veganism, or even ending up co-parenting after parting ways and then dealing with being on different pages about everything. Dealing with others, in this sense, would have been exhausting.

On Managing Expectations

People sometimes insist that veganism "was too hard" because they couldn't get enough protein, always felt hungry, couldn't afford meat substitutes, lost weight/gained weight, that they hated having to cook, couldn't find enough plant-based options at restaurants or that they just couldn't find what they felt was a really satisfying plant-based cheese. I roll my eyes a little when I hear those things presented as if they somehow became insurmountable obstacles. Most of those issues seem so easily addressed and resolved with a bit of research and a bit of effort. When you weigh them against just dealing with the realization -- each and every day -- that we live in a world where animal exploitation continues to be the norm for those closest to us, they almost seem trivial. And while some folks may feel it's a struggle to manage their expectations concerning restaurant menus, it's an entirely different story doing so when navigating relationships with your non-vegan loved ones. While doing so for the former seems largely about inconvenience, doing so in the latter case is truly about survival. It's a necessity. How we go about doing so will vary from one vegan to another, but sooner or later, it needs to be hammered out.

Tell Me That You Don't Understand Veganism Without Telling Me That You Don't Understand Veganism

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:53:00 +0000

The Same Old

There's a long history of people who know nothing about veganism taking it upon themselves to share with the public how little it is that they know about veganism. Of course, they don't present it as such, and other folks reading what they wrote who have even less knowledge of veganism will nod their heads vigorously at the stereotypes, tired old attempts at arguments, general misinformation, et al. brought forward by those writers. (After all, confirmation bias is real!) When the writer decides to throw in some sort of display of victimhood (e.g. "a vegan was once mean to me"), it seems to cast some sort of additional sense of authenticity to whatever they have written, since the hapless reader is led to believe that the author must have put some serious thought and research into veganism after having been so emotionally wounded.

I stumbled across one of these scenarios today. Why someone would choose to write an attack on veganism in an online aviation magazine is somewhat bizarre -- even if it is an agricultural aviation magazine. Yet, a mostly unknown online publication called AgAir Update featured an opinion piece by a self-described "former livestock owner" called Michelle Miller yesterday. According to AgAir Update, Miller is known as "The Farm Babe". I looked her up and saw that she has around 250K followers on Facebook and claims to be a "mythbuster" of sorts who purportedly exposes the "truth" about modern farming and/or agriculture. Of course, one would expect that to include attacking claims made about the horrors of animal agriculture and, almost by default, attacking vegans.

Her short article shared just yesterday is titled: "Why There's No Such Thing as 'Vegan'". Miller begins by describing vegans as "passionate" and by stating that whichever personal choices we choose to make for ourselves to make us happy are fine. She then draws a comparison to religion and immediately starts dropping words like "extremist" and "abrasive" and segues into how as a "former livestock farmer" she's received "thousands" of hateful comments (and apparently even death threats). She then downplays and admits that these "attacks" were not, in fact, very common. She then changes the subject to dive into the actual topic of her opinion piece, saying: "The good news is that the negative attacks are not very common. The other news? Sorry, vegans: there’s actually no such thing as 'vegan'”.

Hello, Scarecrow!

She offers that vegetarians don't eat meat, which she seems to view as a valid description of vegetarianism entails. She then states that "vegans claim that they don't use animal byproducts, either" and then uses this as her strawman to apparently demolish veganism. Now, anyone who has been vegan for a while will be the first to tell you that vegans do not claim to not use animal byproducts at all with nothing more said concerning it. We clearly do our best to avoid them, but I agree with her that it is simply "humanly impossible" to do so in all cases. Where she views making that assertion as more or less taking down a house of cards, her using it as a "gotcha" just reinforces that she doesn't really understand veganism.

In a world where billions and billions of animals are slaughtered for food each and every year and both 1) the slaughter industry's wanting to squeeze every last dollar they can out of the bodies of these animals, and 2) manufacturers wanting to take advantage of the cheap cost of using huge quantities of the by-products of the animal slaughter industry, animal ingredients are everywhere. They're used as additives in food, to make clothes, cosmetics and perfumes, toothpaste, et al. They're also used to make some plastics, paper, fertilizer, batteries and/or electronics and many more things in which we would not expect to find animal ingredients. (Miller refers to a chart of items from "Farm Credit" in the article but there is no link or image that I can see, so I am assuming that it was either omitted, forgotten or that I have a weird browser issue. Regardless, it suffices to say that we know the list goes on and one -- we are surrounded by animal products in almost every single aspect of our everyday lives.)

The Miller weirdly asserts in two separate short sentences, as if they're her KO punch: "Yep. Sorry. Your beer is not vegan. Really, though, nothing is." Shortly, the word "hypocritical" is predictably inserted into the article. She takes off running with this and asserts that since you don't even know how something was grown and whether or not it was done with animal-derived fertilizer that you have no way to determine whether absolutely anything you eat or wear is (according to her simplistic definition), in fact, "vegan". Then of course she brings up that tired old argument that animals are killed in all forms of plant-based agriculture (so, by this, she seems to be implying that eating anything at all unless you grew it yourself using veganic or hydroponic farming would make you non-vegan). She takes it even further saying that "you're probably not vegan if you live in a house or drive a vehicle".

Again, no reasonable and intelligent vegan would ever claim that they 100% completely avoid using all animal products. That would be absurd (and other vegans around them would quickly point that out). That it is absurd, however, doesn't invalidate doing whatever we can to avoid knowingly participating in animal consumption and/or exploitation when and where we can. It certainly doesn't invalidate veganism -- or vegans! Veganism is an active way of living. We use this ethical framework to inform the manner in which we engage with others and the world around us. We reject the commodification of other sentient beings and reflect this rejection of it in our ordinary actions. I like the wording The Vegan Society uses in its description of veganism where it states that we avoid all forms of animal exploitation "as far as it is possible and practicable".

Just because there are instances all around us where avoiding animal products isn't possible or practicable doesn't mean that we should throw our arms in the air in defeat and then indulge ourselves in those forms of animal exploitation or consumption which are avoidable. Just because it isn't possible to completely avoid using all animal products around us is in no way a justification for anybody to shrug off at least making an attempt to consciously avoid them where it is possible and practicable to do so.

Not being able to avoid it anywhere and everywhere doesn't make us hypocrites: It just makes us try harder, hoping that the world will eventually change enough to make it possible to do more for other sentient beings around us. It leaves us trying to change that world.

Remaining Silent Isn’t Being Polite

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 21:07:00 +0000

I often still hear vegans mentioning that they don't discuss veganism with non-vegans unless they're asked about it. They insist that they don't want to "preach" to others or to "dictate" to others what they should or shouldn't eat, wear or otherwise use and that we all have the right to make our own "personal choices". I see a few problems with mindsets like these. The first is that we conflate the normal discussion of something which shouldn't be allowed to remain a taboo subject with "forcing" opinions on others.

If an acquaintance of yours made a racist comment or bragged about having stolen money from an elderly aunt, would we think we were "forcing" our opinion on that person by speaking up and questioning their behaviour and pointing out that it's wrong? Of course not. So why is it that merely mentioning veganism -- simply casually discussing why we, as vegans, refuse to participate in animal exploitation -- gets misrepresented by so many vegans as "forcing our opinions or personal choices" on others? There's no "forcing".

Why are we trying to silence vegan voices by writing off any mention of animal ethics in such a negative manner? If people are uncomfortable hearing about why animal use is wrong, instead of blaming ourselves for having somehow caused that discomfort, shouldn't we instead realize that all we're doing is pointing to the facts and that the discomfort they feel has to do with those facts and with their participation in the process? Also, I'm not vegan because it's my personal opinion that it's wrong for *me* to participate in the torture and slaughter of others; I'm vegan because that torture -- that slaughter -- is just so horribly wrong in and of itself. All animal use is abuse. How on earth could I sit and smile politely and say nothing? If nobody had ever spoken to me about going vegan, I wonder how much longer it would have taken for me to go vegan. I'm already ashamed that it took as long as it did. I really am.

Let's keep the issues and the discussion on the table instead of making it taboo to bring up speciesism. Let's not allow the continued compartmentalization and self-delusion in which non-vegans engage continue to be the status quo. We're not going to solve the horror that is animal exploitation by shrugging and smiling politely about it when others around us participate in it and defend their doing so. There are billions dying each and every year. Remaining silent isn't being polite: It's being complicit.

The Selective Compassion of Speciesism

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 19:56:00 +0000

"Kids Can Be Cruel"

A vegan mum posted in a local mixed "vegetarian/vegan" group on Facebook about an uncomfortable incident at a party which she had just attended with her vegan youngsters. Apparently, other kids (including the host's own offspring) decided to make a game out of catching and killing frogs around a pond on the property. The vegan mum's children were horrified and expressed as much to her when they went to tell her what was happening. She then raised the issue with the host and the host vaguely re-directed his kids who, then, started catching and killing various insects. The vegan kids distanced themselves from what was happening and went off to play by themselves. When the non-vegan kids then went back to killing more frogs, the vegan mum simply packed up her youngsters and left. She shared her experience with the local mixed "vegetarian/vegan" discussion group, saying that she wished her kids had more vegan friends to avoid situations like these.

On Purporting to Define Monsters (or Necessity)

Many immediately weighed in, myself included. The vegans were obviously horrified since part of being vegan means rejecting that it's in any way a big joke to treat other sentient beings as existing for our own amusement or pleasure. We don't want to be a part of any avoidable actions or processes which involve treating other beings as things -- never mind causing those beings harm or even taking their lives. We could all definitely feel empathy for these poor kids who ended up witnessing these acts. And if these others non-vegan kids were in any way deliberately trying to upset the vegan kids (and from the mom's story, it sounded as if some of them were well-aware of the vegan kids' discomfort), it does make it feel a bit more gross. That said, how many times have vegans witnessed adult non-vegans taunting vegans with pro-animal use comments and anecdotes, disturbing photos, memes, etc. on social media (and how often are they not just shrugged off, but often actively cheered on by other non-vegan adults on the sidelines)? Like grown-ups, kids can be jerks.

"Psychopaths!" was a term brought up by many in the discussion thread to describe the kids. "Monsters!" was another. Many pointed out that serial killers often start out as kids who engaged in behaviours involving cruelty to animals. Quite a few people who joined in the discussion condemning the actions opted to self-identify as non-vegans, singling out what had happened as "unacceptable" and insisting that their non-vegan kids would never have done anything similar:

"You don't have to be vegan to have compassion. There was no need for those kids to be killing those frogs!"

"I'm not a vegan, but I would never let my child kill another animal like that."

"My kids eat meat but would never do anything like cruel! Those kids were killing those frogs for fun! They were ENJOYING it! Their parents should be reported to the authorities!"

"This isn't a vegan issue! These kids are sick in the head!"

I pointed out that living in a pretty overwhelmingly rural Canadian province means that a lot of the parents at that gathering probably indulge in hunting or fishing and find great joy in either of these acts, sometimes even bringing beer along to add to their fun. Furthermore, many parents get absolutely giddy about bringing their kids along with them to teach them the "thrill of the hunt" or to teach them how to catch and kill fish; the kids in turn often feel great delight at getting praise and approval from their parents. These kids end up more or less killing animals for pleasure, as well -- theirs, as well as their parents'.

"It's not the same thing. Most of the people who hunt or fish do so because they need the food. At the very least, the meat is eaten or given to family and friends and it doesn't go to waste."

So if the kids at the party had ended up cooking and eating the frogs, I asked, would it have made it more OK for them to have been killing the frogs? A non-vegan replied that it would have been "unnecessary" killing since "there was already food at the party". I pointed out that some people hunt and fish when their freezers are already full of food. A lot of people go out and purchase meat when their cupboards are already full of beans, grains, nuts and seeds and others foods and purchasing that meat is (following that line of thinking) unnecessary since there's "already food at the party" (or in the pantry, in this case).

On Arbitrary Justifications

To call a killing unnecessary -- and thus wrong -- if whomever is killed doesn't end up eaten, but ethical if the being who ends up killed can be eaten (i.e. and not "wasted") just seems odd. And it's weird to discuss "waste" when already dealing with abundance. The fact that you can kill and eat a being doesn't mean that you need to kill or eat that being and the fact that you can doesn't mean that you should. At the end of the day, neither those frogs at the party, nor a fish caught with a hook, a deer shot with a gun, nor a pig stunned and slaughtered by a human ultimately cares whether or not he or she ends up -- or could end up -- in someone's belly.

As for taking joy in killing other animals? If it's wrong (according to those non-vegan parents) for children to take pleasure in killing frogs, why should the joy children (and adult) humans obtain from hooking fish by their mouths or using other weapons to steal the life from another being be any different? And why should the joy or pleasure they experience from eating or otherwise using a being whose life was taken by another individual be any different? That life was still taken for their pleasure, even if the taking of it wasn't directly at their own hands. Some argue that people who fish or hunt don't want to see an animal suffer -- that they don't derive pleasure from that, yet how often do you hear people sharing their tales of favourite fishing outings were great and lengthy struggles are involved as the fish fights desperately for his or her freedom? Or the excitement they feel when the animal they're hunting realizes they're being followed and becomes anxious and fearful?

Compartmentalization is such a strange thing. When it comes to other animals, we work hard to convince ourselves that one of two very similar things isn't really what it is -- that it is somehow significantly different from the other -- until it eventually becomes so ingrained in us, we just never bother giving it another serious thought. We don't bother reexamining the reasons we tried to convince ourselves that it wasn't what it really is in the first place. Shooting a stray dog is wrong; shooting a deer is OK. Eating a cat is wrong; eating a pig is OK. So many of us take things like these as givens without asking whether they really make any sense. We don't stop to ask why. We just take it as a given because we think it's easier that way, when actually it takes what's really simple to most of us on some level or another and convolutes it. When someone decides to go vegan, it's usually in a moment of great clarity where someone finally gets it: A dog is a pig is a cat is a boy is a parakeet is a chicken. A member of one species shouldn't somehow deserve more than a member of another species just because we think it's our right to impose labels on them according to how we decided they're best used by us.

At least this is what vegans realize and what vegans desperately hope that their friends and family -- their neighbours and coworkers and acquaintances -- around them might eventually realize. We hope that they, too, might become aware of the cost of speciesism to those whose ability to live their lives on their own terms truly matters dearly to themselves and to recognize them as the sentient beings they are instead of continuing to view them as things existing for human use and pleasure.

The Least You Can Do

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 17:33:00 +0000

On Punching

Very many years ago, a vegetarian acquaintance would regularly try to drag me into an argument. He would attempt to force me to pass judgment on his vegetarianism (and this would almost always happen after he had consumed a number of beers). He would press on and on and always present me with the same two options: I should either 1) roleplay to embody a "preachy judgmental vegan" stereotype to give him the fight he wanted so that he could come out swinging, or 2) I should placate him by telling him that he had indeed most certainly fulfilled his ethical quota for the critters and had no reason whatsoever to bother with the "extremist" idea of going vegan. The most I would do (after failing repeatedly to change the subject) was to try to tactfully explain again what he already knew was the position I held (i.e. that going vegan is the very least we owe to other animals – that it’s a starting point) and to repeat to him that I had zero interest in arguing with him, particularly when he was drunk and spoiling for a fight.

The thing is that he followed the posts on my blog's Facebook page and he took personally each thing I wrote about how dairy/egg consumption is really no different from the consumption of meat. He processed these posts as if I were directing them specifically at him. and instead of trying to understand why there's no real ethical difference between consuming one animal product or another, he felt insulted and resented me. And times like these he’d come out swinging, trying to push me into that same old corner, knowing that I meant him no ill will and that I'm not a confrontational person and also knowing that I'm not a liar. It had become personal to him for reasons that had little to do with me and everything to do with him and I refused to be some sort of emotional punching bag to let him work through those feelings. Yet, as calm as I attempted to remain, he would simply punch harder to try to provoke me, saying things like: "So you think you're a better person than me because you're vegan and I'm not, don't you?"

He knew that I certainly didn't (and don't) view myself as a "better person" than anyone else simply because I am vegan and they're not. We're not stick figures living in that simplistic a world. Nobody is vegan because they think they're better than another individual; if anything, people generally tend to go vegan for a completely different reason -- precisely because they don't see themselves as being any more important than other beings. We don't see our pleasure and convenience as trumping the interests of those other beings and we do what we can to avoid participating in -- or contributing to -- any facet of their exploitation.

Then Crunching

At some point in this attempted argument, my vegetarian acquaintance would (predictably) try to number-crunch: I had been a vegetarian for around 12-13 years and had only been vegan for a few years at the time these confrontations occurred. He would remind me that he had been vegetarian for over 25 years and that he had obviously done "much more" for other animals in all those years than I had during my shorter stint as a vegetarian (and even shorter stint as a vegan). "You've been vegan for an hour," he'd say. "I've saved far more lives than you and you'll be lucky to ever catch up." I'd point out to him that veganism is not -- and never has been -- a contest and that veganism is really not about past actions, but is about what you're doing now and how you’ll proceed moving forward. And if what you're doing now involves choosing to continue to treat other animals as treats existing for your convenience or pleasure, you're really missing the point about what it is that we owe other animals. But he was convinced that he has doing his "part" and was doing "enough" and that there was no need for him to even weigh going vegan. (Never mind that every single meal he consumed included cheese or eggs.)

More Crunching

Every once in a while, people message me through this blog's Facebook page to ask me for suggestions for places or organizations to which they can donate money. Around a year ago I got into a discussion with one of them. He told me outright that he had "a lot of respect for people who choose to go vegan" but that it just wasn't something he felt he could do because of its "inconvenience". He told me that to "compensate" for this, he would donate at least a few hundred dollars a year "to groups like PETA" but that he wanted to give a little bit extra that year, so wanted my recommendations.

I pointed out to him that throwing money at PETA was a complete waste and that his dollars would be more useful in the hands of small vegan-run sanctuaries or to grass-roots groups engaged in educating others about veganism and in helping people become vegan. I also told him that if he really wanted to make a difference, going vegan himself was the least he could -- and should -- do. I asked him if there was any way I could help him sort out what he felt was inconvenient about going vegan. He told me that he didn't really want "to feel bad about [his] personal decisions" and he thanked me for providing him with the names of a few groups and sanctuaries. He messaged me again a few weeks later to report how much he had paid to whom and to thank me again for the suggestions. He joked that he felt better after having paid "[his] annual guilt money".

In the End

Is it great that a couple of small sanctuaries in need received a few hundred dollars they had not been expecting? Sure. But what about when the person donating the money is one of the reasons farmed animals end up in these sanctuaries in the first place (the fortunate ones, anyway)? It becomes no more than a sort of self-imposed "meat tax" where the person tries to make themselves feel better about choosing to continue to be part of the problem.

Is it great that someone chose to eschew eating meat while continuing to consume dairy and eggs and perhaps even in larger quantities than before? Not really. You're just shuffling stuff around on your plate and kidding yourself since we all know there’s as much suffering and death in the dairy and egg industries as there is in the meat industry – even more so.

At the end of the day, it’s sort of nonsensical to try to convince yourself that you’ve taken steps to chip away at a problem while deliberately choosing (easily avoidable) actions and (easily changed) habits which contribute to that very problem. While it may make you feel you’re doing something, throwing money at other animals and/or shuffling parts of them around on your plate won’t substantially change anything at all for them. You still view and treat them as things existing – in some form or other – for your pleasure and convenience instead of viewing and treating them as beings with rights and interests of their own. And for all those who would insist that any semblance of change, any well-intentioned gesture (even if misdirected or self-delusional) should be applauded as a “baby step” instead of described as what it actually is (i.e. walking in place while going nowhere), you’re missing the crux of the issue. Until we realize, accept and act upon the fact that other animals aren’t ours to use, we’re just crunching and shuffling while going nowhere. It’s when we do realize that we owe other animals so much more that it becomes clear that the logical first step to take – the starting point – is to go vegan.

What Vegans Eat: Revisited

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 21:07:00 +0000

I was looking through old food photos I had posted here years back and actually felt kind of shocked at how humdrum my meal preparation has gotten over the past few months. I used to eat a LOT of raw fruits and vegetables, a lot of legumes and whole grains, a so much wider variety of seasonings and condiments. I am certainly no cooking expert. If anything, after a few decades of indulging in it as a hobby (and usually so when cooking for others in my life), the last few years have left me falling back on making a handful of the same simple dishes over and over again, or relying on processed convenience foods.

It all started with a bad leak in the kitchen ceiling of the apartment I used to rent. The owners of the building couldn't nail down its source and by the time the situation was close to a resolution, I had gone a few months not wanting to prepare anything in what I was pretty sure was becoming a kitchen with a mold-infested wall adjacent to my stove. I gave my notice and moved and ended up in a tiny apartment with a tiny ill-lit kitchen, where everything was hastily-crammed into cupboards or makeshift storage containers. It's been over a year and I still try to remember where I put this or that food ingredient. I still remember exactly where I would have found certain things in my old kitchen (which had been brightly-lit and had so much more storage space to better organize things).

So cooking (which used to be a spontaneous event where I could reach for just about anything I had on hand to improvise) has become more of a chore, usually involving the need for a plan, then the need to dig around a while to locate a few wayward spices or forgotten grains. The pandemic hasn't helped. Between not really feeling like doing much of anything on some days and my reluctance to hop out to the store to fetch a missing item or two more often than necessary, there's been repetition and food waste. I even tossed my sourdough starter a few months after lockdown after finding that I was spending more time fussing over it than actually using it in anything at all. As for plating and natural lighting to take great food photos? That's become a thing of the past, as well. I used to have a lot of fun with it, though. I may try to rig something up at some point if I get back into the hang of cooking more interesting things. In the meantime, here are some things I have been making over the past two years:

Ployes (a French-Canadian Brayon favourite--pancakes made with buckwheat flour) with maple syrup, Gimme Lean sausage patties and oranges.

Chickwheat! Seitan made using a take on the Gentle Chef's recipe.

Tacos with Yves ground round fried up with onions and seasonings and then cheddar Daiya shreds folded into it, avocado, coconut yogurt, salsa and green onions.

Rolls with smoked tofu, marinated carrot sticks, avocado and bell peppers.

Prolly one of the prettiest tofu scrambles I’ve ever made. I used onions, tofu, garlic, shredded carrot, tomato, Swiss chard, mini sweet peppers, turmeric, tamari, parsley, pepper and black salt.

RIP my first ever sourdough starter. The pandemic was too much for you.

Homemade dough. Sauce w/fennel seed, basil, oregano and crushed red pepper.

Thinly-sliced Gusta Italiano cheese, Yves salami, crushed garlic, chopped up Gardein chick’n strips, oven-roasted sweet potatoes, garlicky pan-sautéed mushrooms, slightly caramelized red onion,

pickled jalapeño peppers, seasonings.

Homemade falafel (the best I've ever had!) using a recipe from Tori Avey.

Orange bell pepper, spiralized beets and mushrooms on arugula, baby kale and baby spinach. Topped with croutons, sunflower seeds and dressing.

Kolhapuri masala using sweet potatoes, potatoes, tofu, Chinese eggplant and peas

and brown rice.

Lasagna with almost everything coming from a package or a jar.

Whoopie pies.

Veggie dumplings with bibimbap (brown rice hidden beneath the sliced shiitakes, sesame-roasted asparagus, shredded carrot, blanched and seasoned bean sprouts and

bulgogi-marinated seitan).

Clementines, cantaloupe, blackberries, raspberries, Kimmel bread and hummus.

Shanghai choy, yu choy, shiitake mushrooms, smoked tofu, scallions and a bit of kimchi in a broth made using miso and gochuang (spicy Korean paste).

Tofu vindaloo with zucchini and string beans, brown rice and chili poppadum.

Does it Matter? Well, Yeah...

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 19:21:00 +0000

Veganism, Plant-Based, Whole Foods, et al.

The UK's Cambridge Independent ran a piece by a plant-based restaurant owner today which purportedly sought to examine the question "Vegan or plant-based: What’s the difference and does it matter?". In it, Louise Palmer-Masterton positions vegans as having issues with the term "plant-based" because they view it as "ethically inferior". To her, she says, the two terms "mean the same" (although much of her piece ends up confirming that she thinks the opposite).

[T]he truth is, [my restaurant] is all about wholefood plant-based ingredients, ethically sourced, low carbon, circular, compassionate and cruelty free. So, is that vegan or plant-based? And what is the difference anyway?

Palmer-Masterton goes on to mention Donald Watson's coining of the term "vegan" but says that its final definition wasn't hammered out and "clearly defined" until "the 80's" at around the same time that Dr. T. Colin Campbell "coined the term 'plant-based'". He did so, she says, "seeking a term that described this diet without invoking ethical considerations". With a focus on health, he specified that a plant-based diet would also need to be a "whole foods" diet. So Palmer-Masterton sums this up by saying that veganism isn't health-focused, but that a whole foods plant-based diet is. Her restaurant, she says, is both.

But Veganism Isn't a Diet

If a plant-based diet means one "free of animal products and/or exploitation" then one can say that a vegan's diet is plant-based. Using the term "vegan" to describe food (or other things) rather than specifying its use to describe actual people adhering to veganism has always been problematic in this sense, with many people choosing to self-label as "vegan" because a few times a week, they consume meals which don't contain animal ingredients. We end up with people trying to sub-categorize veganism to include animal exploitation (or conflating "plant-based" with "vegan") when they're all really completely different things. Palmer-Masterson seems to imply that vegans who point out this distinction do it as a condescending sort of nose-thumbing, adding that vegans will sometimes "have a go" at people who self-label as plant-based. (Mostly, I am guessing that vegans are simply again caricatured here as waving their fists angrily whenever they try to explain to someone that veganism isn't a diet. Everybody loves to perpetuate the "angry vegan" stereotype.)

Veganism as a Dirty Word

Historically, she says, veganism has always been very "fringe" and that its being associated with animal rights activism was uncomfortable for many in the mainstream. Because of this, she says, it was "unattractive" to the "average" person. That the term "plant-based" gained popularity and entered the mainstream "contributed significantly to the rise in popularity of veganism" she says. But did the term really contribute significantly to the rise in popularity of actual veganism? Or did it contribute to a rise in popularity of a watered down misinterpretation of veganism--one which leaves open the option to shrug off the ethics of animal exploitation where the sake of the animals themselves is concerned? Particularly those animals who don't end up on your plate.

Hold the Animals; Save the Planet!

She writes that current day environmental concerns are leading people to choose to lower their consumption of animal products. She asks whether they are "eating more vegan food or more wholefood plant-based food" and proceeds to argue that consuming whole food plant-based food versus eating "a vegan diet containing processed foods" is better for the environment. But here she seems to be insinuating that 1) veganism is a diet (it isn't), 2) plant-based foods are somehow de facto non-processed foods (they're not) and that 3) "vegan" and "processed" go hand-in-hand (nope). I doubt many vegans would deny that eating fewer processed foods is beneficial to the environment, but the point she seems to be arguing is that someone's following a plant-based diet is more environmentally sound than a vegan consuming what's actually a similar diet and that simply makes no sense.

When she wraps up and turns her attention to clothing, her focus remains on sustainability and the environment. Although she does point out that manufacturers are wrong when they claim that clothing containing animal products have been more sustainably or ethically produced, she states that "[t]here has to be a deeper dive into production beyond simply avoiding animal derived ingredients". The truth is that many vegans do indeed understand and accept that going vegan is the least we can do--that it's merely a starting point and that we need to do more.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Palmer-Masterton says that she sees "wholefood plant-based eating and veganism converging in the coming years". (Has she no idea that many vegans actually do consume a whole foods plant-based diet? There is overlap.) She asks that "wholefood plant-based and vegan people" make "peace" with each other as if there's a war going on and that everybody should just hug it out since we're all on the same team, fighting the same fight, changing the world for other animals, et al.

The thing is that we're not all on the same team. We have different intentions, a different follow-through and some of us choose to continue participating in animal exploitation while some of us take the rights and interests of other animals seriously. Although vegans may consume a whole foods plant-based diet that's suitable for them, someone who consumes a whole foods plant-based diet may not give a fig about what happens to other animals (except solely in terms of the extended effect meat and dairy industries have on the state of the environment). Plant-based diet followers who aren't vegan often gripe about vegans in shared online or IRL groups because the dieters who continue to participate in animal exploitation simply loathe there being any mention of ethics. Vegans will generally gripe about plant-based dieters when the latter often self-label as "vegans" and get offended when told that veganism isn't a diet and they can't lumped in as some sub-category of vegan.

As for the whole foods slant on it? Many of these same discussion groups are littered with people who constantly health-shame (or even body-shame) vegans for not adhering to a strictly whole foods diet. Is a strictly whole foods plant-based diet better for health and for the environment? Very likely. Could vegans benefit from incorporating more whole foods into their diets? Very likely. But veganism isn't a health movement. Additionally, shaming people who've already substantially lowered their carbon footprint by eschewing the consumption of animal products (particularly when the one doing the shaming chooses to otherwise participate in animal exploitation)? Well, it just seems a bit weird. At the end of the day, though, if the two movements do "converge", it has to be with the understanding that veganism is the starting point.

On Taking Advice About Veganism from Non-Vegans

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 14:17:00 +0000

Veganuary

It's that time again. Someone out there in the world decided that an article was really needed about their botched experiment with "veganism". (I use that term very loosely while writing about this, since in almost all of these cases, it's completely misused.) Whether it's a reporter for mainstream media or some university student writing for their school paper, these things pop up over and over again throughout the year. Thanks to Veganuary, January tends to dredge up more of them than usual since many of the large animal welfare organizations mount well-funded publicity campaigns to encourage people to "try veganism". What they invariably mean (and if you read the "about" section on the Veganuary website it's spelled out pretty clearly) is to "try following a plant-based diet for a month" for health, environmental and even ethical reasons.

Failure as a Win

Of course veganism is so much more than a diet. And going vegan isn't something that one does temporarily, leaving open-ended whether or not to walk away from it after a set period. Without any forethought at all, without resources or a support system (if even only a single vegan contact) and, mostly importantly, without having made a conscious decision to reject participating in animal exploitation because one has connected the necessary ethical dots, it's just plain silliness to write about spending a month floundering and presenting it to an audience as an earnest attempt to "try veganism".

The writer of such an article is almost always setting themselves up to fail, but then it's probably a case of having the conclusion set before even putting pen to paper. (Do people even put pen to paper, anymore?) Since most of the writer's audience consists of non-vegans, that writer's reaching a conclusion that involves remaining non-vegan is probably the most satisfying to the largest percentage of their readers. So it's ultimately a win for the writer and a win for the publication.

Unfortunately, since so many people believe whatever they read, the frequency of these articles likely leaves people thinking that adopting a plant-based diet -- or actually going vegan -- is about as enjoyable as getting a root canal.

The "Experiment"

In the University of Warwick's purportedly award-winning student newspaper, The Boar, writer Shay Solanki decided to take a kick at the can. She writes that she decided in December of 2019 to reduce her meat intake and that she and her sister then decided to take the leap for Veganuary. While her sister decided to follow a vegetarian diet for the month, Solanki decided to "bec[o]me vegan".

Just into her second paragraph, Solanki complains that "[s}omething, however, felt quite empty to [her]". She points out that she had been a daily meat eater and that "vegetarianism was mainly reserved for [her family's] older generation" and that although Indian food was "closest to home" for her because of her background and that she was a good cook, that she never felt truly "satisfied" when eating anything.

Describing how "restrictive" it had all been, she informs her readers that as soon as January ended, she "ran straight to fry some fish and felt relieved" and that she continued to eat it and "normal foods" (words matter here) for the following two weeks until she felt guilt and then stopped. But January had been "really tough", had left her "not feeling good" and she had taken it "too seriously", she adds. A friend of hers who had also "tried veganism" for Veganuary had apparently decided to stick with her newfound plant-based diet and Solanki writes that she felt a lot of "pressure" from her to do the same.

So the outcome for Solanki? She decided to take it easier on herself and to be "mostly plant-based" since if she ever traveled to another country "like Morocco or Lebanon" she wouldn't be able to find any food that was "culturally significant" and that it "would be a waste to not explore their culture" by eating food containing animal products. (I laughed at the mention of Lebanon, since it's widely-known that there are so many of what some call "accidentally vegan" traditional dishes to be had there.)

"Fake Innocence"?

Solanki begins to wrap up her article by saying that the worst thing about veganism for her is its "fake innocence". Veganism must be, according to her, simply evil. She repeats that it purportedly restricts people from being able to experience other cultures and then she gets really serious: veganism (gasp!) "hinders" you from being able to buy "certain cosmetics and clothes".

She goes on to list a mishmash of some of the common stereotypical complaints against veganism. In researching its history, she says, you'd find its origins in the work of some white guy in the 1940s, but that if you research "properly" you'll find that its origins go back to "ancient Indians and other Mediterranean cultures". (Like Lebanon?) This recent "wave" of veganism, she says, has made plants and meat-alternatives' prices "surge" and that in diverging from its "ancient roots" (presumably by having been promoted by the aforementioned white guy in the 1940s), it has become exclusive and that this exclusivity is "unfair" and "not worth the hassle".

This confuses me quite a bit since she wrote at the beginning of her article that she spent Veganuary leaning on Indian cuisine, since it was familiar and accessible to her. When I think of traditional vegan-friendly Indian cuisine, I think of chickpeas, lentils and mung beans. I think of potatoes, tomatoes, spinach and zucchini. I think of rice and wheat flour. How would this be too expensive or exclusive? It's such a worn and tired argument against veganism to insist that unless you can do all of your shopping at Whole Foods (or stuff your freezer with overpriced packages of Beyond Sausage), you can't possibly feed yourself as a vegan; it's particularly weird and out-of-place coming from someone who has knowledge of and experience with whole foods (lowercase!) Indian cuisine.

Solanki then delivers that predictable final blow by attacking vegans directly. "It's a running joke" she says "that vegans are annoying and forceful". From her own expansive experience "it's entirely true in most cases". In fact, she says that (emphasis mine coming up) "as a former vegan, I've often felt guilt pushed on me by other vegans for eating fish". So she's a worldly and weathered vegan after a traumatic one-month stint* feeling deprived for having limited cosmetics choices and having to rely on the the "accessible" dishes she said are basically relegated to her family's "older generation". And pissy vegans who reject animal exploitation didn’t champion (or sanction) her choosing to exploit other animals. (*At the very end of the article, she states out of the blue that she was "vegan" for six months.)

At the end of the article, after piling stereotypical excuses over each other, Solanski softens her tone to say that veganism might be OK for some. And just in case she wasn’t emphatic enough about it in the article, she confesses to her readers that it just wasn’t for her.

"Why I No Longer Call Myself Vegan"?

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:13:00 +0000

Being Vegan

People who are vegan and who intend to remain vegan usually remember a moment, a conversation, a book or film -- something that finally helped to cement their previous thoughts about animal exploitation. Then they go about their business of becoming and then BEING vegan. It's a mindset. It's an ongoing action. It basically informs each and every choice you make as you go about your day. The decision you make is to step back and to remove yourself as much as it's possible to do so with having any involvement in animal exploitation. You make this decision because you have come to realize and to accept that other sentient beings do not exist for your convenience and pleasure. You realize and accept that they have lives of their own and interests of their own and that those interests don't include being trapped in the living hell which comprises most aspects of the "animal industry". All use is abuse. It's a meaningful conviction and it alters how you view others around you. It's not something that will change on a dime depending on which food item someone has tried to temptingly leave on your plate. And for the ever-loving sake of Pete, it's not something that reject in a huff or tantrum because some other vegan was a jerk to you. I don't kick puppies. I'm not going to wake up one morning and decide to go out and kick puppies just because some other person who doesn't kick puppies hurt my feelings or pissed me off.

"Former" Vegans

How can you find the "former" vegan in a crowded room? He/she/they will be telling EVERYBODY that they are and why they are. They'll do this, of course, while whipping out each and every vegan stereotype or bad trope you've heard whenever the bacon-worshiping hoards descend upon vegan-positive comments on the internet. They'll pull out the long-debunked protein-myth and mention the visible signs of the abrupt and severe onset of nutritional deficiencies they experienced. They'll go on about never having anything to eat (not mentioning that their previous diet perhaps consisted of frozen pizzas and Chef Boyardi ravioli) or about how absolutely unaffordable it was because Beyond Burgers and shopping at Whole Foods are soooo expensive. You've seen the articles. There are at least 1-2 a month in newspapers, magazines, student papers, blogs. Heck, the big "reveals" happen so often in YouTube videos that they've rapidly become cliché. When a nobody makes the announcement, it's usually just to try to drum up controversy and sales; when somebody better known makes it, it's usually to drum up sympathy and sales.

“Wait, You Mean That I Have to be 'All In'?”

"Former" vegans are generally pretty bitter and determined to get their punches in and to attack other vegans. Very often, they'll blame "other vegans" for having turned them against veganism. They were "too strict", "too holier-than-though", "too militant", "too elitist", etc. We all know, of course that what this probably meant was that at some point, the "former" vegan had it simply pointed out that, no, sneaking a piece of cheese off her girlfriend's plate at a potluck wasn't, in fact, OK -- that viewing consuming an animal product as some sort of indulgence or reward wasn't, in fact, in keeping with veganism. Or maybe they just felt slighted reading or hearing discussions of why veganism isn't a part-time gig and the resentment just built up. The very same people who accuse vegans of being an "elitist clique" are often just upset that they can't honestly and accurately refer to themselves as vegans while continuing to deliberately participate in animal exploitation. I mean, how cliquey for vegans to have the audacity to shrug and say that you need to be vegan to call yourself a vegan! The absolute nerve!)

A friend of mine in an old-school online discussion forum used to say "If you're not vegan now, you never were." There's a lot more truth to that than most may realize. When someone announces to you that they've come to a different conclusion from when their supposed "journey" began, it's often wise to see where and what that "beginning" actually was. People like to say "we're all on the same journey" when referring to vegans and vegetarians or plant-based eaters (or flexitarians), when they issue is that they're assuming that everybody has the same goal. For vegans, veganism is pretty much a starting point. You're either vegan or you're non-vegan. If you're transitioning towards veganism, great -- but that doesn't make you a vegan. And if your not a vegan but just have some sort of variation of a lifestyle which eschews eating or otherwise using a particular species, or you abstain from using animals some of the time (e.g. some meals, some days, etc.) that doesn't mean that you have any intention of going vegan or that you've come to realize and accept that using other animals is inherently wrong. You follow a plant-based diet for health reasons but think animal rights activists are nut-cases who anthropomorphize other species? We're not on the same journey. We don't regard other sentient beings in the same manner and without having that in common and acting upon it accordingly, we're not "playing for the same team" and no, I won't just "agree to disagree" with you about what it is which we owe other animals so that you can co-opt a term. That doesn't mean I'm being judgmental, holier-than-thou, et al. but just that I'm sticking to the facts.

How NOT to be a “Former” Vegan

When you're working your way backwards from what someone positions as a different conclusion (e.g. becoming a "former" vegan) from that which they position as having been their starting point (e.g. being vegan), it's always worth taking a closer look at how they qualify that initial position and what took place between A and B. Take for instance, this opinion piece from a Boston University journalism student written for the website Study Breaks.

The author states that she went vegan at 15 and that five years later, she now "follows a plant-based lifestyle". She calls the latter a "relaxed" version of veganism which allows for the consumption of dairy. She insists that both are just awesome for the animals and for personal health reasons, but that veganism is "stricter and oftentimes more toxic". The word "judgmental" gets used to describe vegans. She talks about getting sucked into a vegan online community that "thrived on shaming non-vegans" and mentions that she got pulled into it because of her “youth”. Reading between the lines, I assume she is suggesting that she was naive and just didn’t know any better. So, vegans are from the start portrayed as assholes.

It was "maturity" which led her to see that eating chicken nuggets doesn't plainly leave a person complicit in what happens to the chicken, she asserts. Then the same old tired arguments (which are intended to pass for maturity?) start.

[A] lot of areas of the U.S. don’t have access to the high-quality plant-based ingredients needed for a well-rounded vegan diet.

Also, a lot of vegan food is expensive. Like, really expensive. For most Americans, a $200 per week grocery budget is just not feasible.

To claim "a lot of areas don't have access" makes it sound as if the majority of the US is a food dessert. Are there food desserts? Absolutely. Are they a serious issue? Absolutely. But to use the vague "a lot" is grossly inaccurate here. The rest of the quote makes it clear that the author thinks that eating a vegan's diet means needing to shop at Whole Foods for Beyond Burgers, Miyoko's cheese or Ripple pea milk — and that's simply untrue. A lot of processed vegan foods have gotten significantly more affordable over the years and can be purchased for cheap at the neighbourhood supermarket or Walmart. But over and above this, vegans don't need to rely on processed foods to get their nutrients.

Her effort to describe how unfair it is to ask people to go vegan goes even further with this gem. A few Google searches and a basic familiarity of plant-based nutrition enough for anyone to conclude that this is just an appeal to emotion.

Not to mention, cutting out meat and dairy means people with nut, soy or gluten allergies are basically left with nothing to fulfill their protein needs because the vast majority of meat substitutes include these ingredients.

This is just ridiculous. Around 1% of the US population has a tree nut allergy. Between 0.3 and 0.6% of the US population is allergic to soy. Celiac disease affects maybe 1% of the US population. Plus there are so many other sources of plant-based protein available so that this tiny percentage of the US population needn't worry about malnutrition if and when they should might attempt to go vegan. Between 96 and 98% of the US population isn't vegan, so that leaves a helluva lot of people who, if all they could eat to fulfill their protein needs were nuts, soy or gluten, could and would be just fine. Thankfully, this isn’t a bonafide argument of any sort against veganism.

The author then claims she struggled with whether or not to continue to call herself vegan while eating Chips Ahoy! cookies and other foods containing animal ingredients while in college, felt guilt, turned to her "trusty" vegan community for support (methinks sympathy) and was reminded that veganism was about the animals. Rather, as she snarkily puts it (because, keep in mind, we're so far operating on the premise with this article that matter-of-fact vegans are assholes):

I was harshly reminded that animals were being tortured all over the world and by not refusing to eat granola bars with honey in them, I was personally contributing to their suffering.

So after not getting the answers she wanted from vegans, she looked to "former" vegans who had gone back to exploiting animals for I épuration and decided that the term vegan "no longer suited [her]". She was unable to go to Whole Foods (seriously, it's in the article). She found it too hard to "deny [herself]" the yummy non-vegan foods her friends enjoyed or the yummy non-vegan cookies family friends would send her. She went back and forth between eating plant-based and eating animal products for a during her college years and felt guilty and her vegan community didn’t assuage her guilt. So she decided that the solution to no longer feeling guilty was to just go ahead, shrug it off and indulge, since feeling guilty wasn't "healthy".

She ends her article advocating baby steps and small changes, citing her vegan heroes as those who are accepting of others' diets, adding that not all vegans are judgmental assholes and that the vast majority of us don't "shame and blame" non-vegans "for a host of environmental and ethical issues". She adds: "Does this mean any human who chooses not to go vegan due to dietary concerns, lack of access to nutritious vegan food, or any other perfectly viable reason is immoral? No." But according to her, nutritious vegan food can only be had from Whole Foods and "any other perfectly viable reason" can mean any single type of food craving you may get when you're out having fun. So?

So basically: Author decides to go vegan, won't give up easily avoidable animal products she regards as treats, turns to online vegans for a pat on the back, gets offended when she's asked to think of the animals instead of herself, feels guilty, grows bitter, finds inspiration in popular "former" vegans to stop feeling guilty for consuming easily-avoidable animal products and decides to stop calling herself a vegan as she continues to consume easily-avoidable animal products.

At least she finally decided to stop calling herself a vegan.

Normal

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 15:45:00 +0000

I remember while transitioning to becoming vegan when my former spouse and I traveled to my hometown to visit my family and of how he called me from my sister's (where he had been giving my oldest nephew a guitar lesson) to say that she had asked him to stay for lunch. When she dropped him off later at my mother's, she said to me that it was a lot easier to just have him over for a meal instead of both of us because he wasn't "as picky as [I was]".

I remember a vegetarian friend arguing with me furiously when I'd mentioned that the spouse and I were talking about having or adopting a child and that we planned to raise said child as a vegan. He insisted that I would be "forcing" my beliefs on this hypothetical child and that I should let them make up their own minds about whether or not to go vegan.

I remember just weeks after the end of my 10+ year common-law marriage (most of which I'd spent as a vegetarian), how over drinks one evening the ex told me that his mother had expressed relief at no longer having to take my diet into consideration for food at family gatherings anymore.

I remember the last Xmas dinner I attended at my sister's, watching my brother-in-law from across a crowded room glance around and then spoon chicken bouillon powder into pots of string beans and baby carrots I had been told would be suitable for me to eat, then shield the container of chicken bouillon from me with his body after we made eye contact and I approached him to verbally confirm he had done what he had done. I remember being told to please not make a big deal out of it. I didn't and I never ate there again.

I remember an old friend telling me that she might consider becoming a vegetarian, except that her naturopath had told her that she needed to eat meat because of her blood type. She told me that her naturopath had told her that I needed to find out my own blood type, since I was very likely killing myself. (We had the conversation about how the "Eat Right 4 Your Type" diet had long-since been debunked, but since I didn't have a piece of paper saying that I could officially peddle woo...)

I remember planning a small plant-based dinner party for a half-dozen friends, asking each one about dietary restrictions and food preferences or aversions and how one close friend asked me if they could bring a macaroni and cheese casserole because they couldn't see themselves having a meal where they couldn't "at least have cheese". I remember that friend declining the invitation when I asked them if they could for this occasion not bring anything containing animal products.

I remember the friends who told me that they hadn't invited me to their own barbecue because they didn't want the rest of their guests to feel guilt-tripped as I ate my veggie burger.

I remember my second manager at my last job holding a celebratory lunchtime pizza party for our staff of around a dozen, telling me that she couldn't order something different for "everyone" and that I was welcome to pack my own lunch and join them. (I passed.)

I remember years ago reconnecting with an old college boyfriend on Facebook and getting caught up with a couple of really long phone-calls, then how suddenly every few days he posted anti-PETA comments and when I explained to him that I (and many other vegans) have no love whatsoever for PETA, he instead posted articles mocking vegans or those news stories about child malnourishment court cases where the parents self-identified as "vegan" (never mind that they were feeding their child a diet consisting of nothing but water and potato chips or of rice milk and frozen berries -- it's always about their being "vegan").

I remember a cycling buddy of mine suddenly develop an interest in debating veganism with me at a local coffee shop (he particularly dug in his heels about plants having feelings and how avoiding animals but not plants was speciesist and made vegans hypocrites), and how he decided one day to say that he had purchased a fishing rod and planned to bring it on our long trail bike rides so that he could "bring back [his] supper", then how I told him that I'd probably bike further or do something else to not have to be around him as he hooked fish. I remember him getting angry and accusing me of "passing judgment" on him for merely stating I had no interest in being a spectator. We never went bike riding again.

I remember going to NYC with a moody non-vegan travel companion and meeting up with vegan friends of mine for dinner at an old Italian restaurant and how he grumbled at me later for having "deprived" him of an opportunity to have "good" pizza since we had decided to split everything we ordered and everything was, thus, plant-based -- including the delicious pizza.

I remember running into an ex of mine after an amicable split a year earlier and his asking me if I was "still vegan" and my jokingly responding with a "no" and how he told me what a relief it was that I'd "finally come to [my] senses" and how frustrating it had been to always have to find restaurants that had a plant-based item on the menu and felt unfair to him that we couldn't go absolutely anywhere he wanted to go because of it. I remember his telling me that he was "happy" that I'd "come back to normal". I didn't bother wasting the breath it would take to tell him that I hadn't been serious.

I remember another ex telling me that although he'd never complained about the dozens and dozens of meals I'd lovingly made for him while we were together -- food he had often praised at the time -- that he'd never really been crazy about my cooking and that he was "happier without all the tofu and beans".

I remember being told that the hardest part of being vegan would be interacting with friends and family who chose not to be. Knowing doesn't prepare you for it, though, does it?

We're a Happy Family! (Or Why "Veg" Groups Don't Work.)

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 19:53:00 +0000

Backstory

I spent years as a vegetarian. I've talked about this before. I first decided to eschew meat when I was around 19 years old. I had become an environmentalist, reading up as much as I could on how human habits were wrecking the planet. I became a less wasteful consumer and then sought to do more. At one point, I wrote a weekly column for my hometown paper; later, I spent a summer working on a project to promote recycling. An old high school friend who'd become a vegetarian soon easily convinced me that not eating meat fit in with my environmentalist ethics and so I stopped eating meat. It's bizarre to me in hindsight that, as a lifelong animal lover, I never connected the dots about animal use and its effects on those very beings who are actually being used. I didn't even really think about it when I decided to stop eating their flesh to "save the planet". There was no World Wide Web yet.

I remained vegetarian for a few years, focused intently on ensuring that I consumed enough legumes and whole grains to meet my protein needs. The "protein myth" was still being passed around at the time and the old second-hand vegetarian cookbooks I found also presented the need for carefully complementing proteins as a given. I also upped my consumption of dairy (mostly cheese) and although I had never really liked consuming eggs, I shuffled them in as a semi-regular part of my diet. I had to "replace" the meat I wasn't eating, after all. I began regularly scooping tofu out of the briny bin of my city's health food store and added it to absolutely everything. Usually plain and raw. I eventually lapsed a few upon starting a new relationship which led to my sharing a living space with a non-vegetarian musician. The trees would be alright without my help for a while, I figured.

I picked it back up again after watching a documentary on the Chinese fur industry with my cat Tarwater curled up on my lap. I watched footage of cats and dogs crammed into cages, listening to the reporter describe their fate. I started to cry and held Tarwater more closely. Then a few animal rights activists were interviewed and they mentioned vegetarianism and how killing cats for their fur was no worse than killing chickens for their flesh and that eating meat caused so much environmental devastation. That did it! I had to become a "vegetarian" again!

My Introduction to Online "Community" and to "Those Pesky Vegans"

It wasn't long after this that I found myself with internet access for the first time ever. My reasons for re-exploring vegetarianism had become more animal-related than tree-inspired and I promptly located and joined a large and popular "veg" internet forum and found community. My life was spent interacting with non-vegetarians (including coworkers who constantly tried to challenge or debate me in the communal workplace kitchen and family members who viewed my vegetarianism as a rude social imposition on them at gatherings). The online forum I called "home" for the next couple of years was predominantly made up of vegetarians who avoided meat for any number of reasons -- health, the environment, allergies, religion, etc. There were some vegans in the community, but the terms "veg*an" and "veg" were tossed around a lot to lump together both vegans and vegetarians. The forum's vegans had their own separate "veganism" and "animal rights" discussion boards and were repeatedly directed to them by forum moderators.

In fact, discussions of veganism felt as if they were more or less relegated to those boards. Whenever a vegan had the audacity to gently point out what was ethically problematic with a form of animal use brought up by a non-vegan, it only took one or two vegetarians to pipe up that they felt "judged" or "offended" for the vegan in question to be swiftly reminded that there were already designated "vegan discussion boards" to discuss vegan issues. A public scolding of the vegan usually ensued and everyone was reminded that the forum was "a place were all veg*ans" could "come together in kinship", since we all purportedly "shared common values" and were "all on the same path, but just at different points along our respective journeys"--as if we were all, in fact, moving toward some sort of common goal. Vegans who spoke up for themselves or for other animals were disparaged as whiny, disrespectful and combative and as ruining all of the hard work accomplished by the site's wealthy hosts. Vegans in general were often written off as being vegetarianism's extremist fringe-dwellers.

But you know what? As a young non-vegan vegetarian who was dealing with being mocked and misunderstood by those around me offline for choosing not to eat meat, I was grateful to find company with others who could relate when I shared my experiences. I wanted the comfort of community -- of peaceful community. Defending my choices and getting wrangled into debates offline could be exhausting. To be honest, I at first resented those pesky vegans for rocking the boat. They were upsetting the day-to-day camaraderie I enjoyed with others who'd also shuffled this or that animal product from their diets. They were upsetting people -- vegetarians -- by pointing out to us how we were not doing enough. "The nerve of them!" I thought. "Can't we all just get along? Isn't it bad enough to get attacked from people on the outside without having to be attacked by others 'like us' in what should be a safe space?" I was singled out as a weirdo in the offline world for choosing not to eat meat and (even though no comments were ever directed at me specifically) felt I was being singled out by vegans in this merged community for not doing more. I couldn't shut up my offline critics, but I was grateful that my fellow vegetarians and the moderators maintaining the peace on this site were able to shut up the vegans I felt were picking on the rest of us.

"Those Pesky Vegans" Re-examined

Veganism was portrayed as an extreme point at the end of a purportedly shared journey. Vegetarians (regardless of whether or not they had voiced intentions to actually go vegan) were lumped together with them, often protectively coddled as "potential" vegans. More often, they were condoned as "doing good" wherever they'd decided to "pause along their journey". So vegans were told to keep their "preaching" and "proselytizing" to themselves. In fact, those who failed to comply immediately were often heckled by a small handful of longtime regulars (who were often vague about their own animal use, while making it clear that they were financially well-off and tight with the site's financially well-off owners). Labels like "vegan police" and "holier-than-thou" were thrown around to shame vegans into silence. Many vegans left the forum altogether, since standing up for themselves (or for other animals while in "mixed" company) often escalated into a very public expulsion and (usually) banning. The vegans were viewed as the wrongdoers. Even within a so-called "veg" community, vegans were made to feel ashamed about expressing aloud (or in print, as the case may be) what they knew we really owe other animals if we take their interests--their lives--seriously.

But you know what else? Watching what was going on had an impact. Hearing these "oh-so-extremist" vegan messages politely -- or passionately! -- pop up again and again? Watching vegans get shamed into silence for expressing themselves in what was supposed to be an inclusive community? It left me wondering why only the overlapping points -- the lowest common denominator, if you will -- were deemed acceptable to bring up. One way or another, even though I had not yet connected the dots to go vegan, the constant anti-vegan hostility was enough to make me look for a new community. I explored a few more places over the years, including one I helped build after experimenting with veganism and where (although the vegan vs. vegetarian dynamic was much healthier and much more respectful of veganism) I still found myself feeling as if I needed to censor myself. I had begun my transition towards veganism and I wanted to be able to talk about it without worrying about being accused of hurting the feelings of others who had no desire to go vegan. That said, being "around" other vegans was great, helping the vegan-curious who wanted to transition was validating.

I couldn't as time went on, however, deal with the awkwardness of sharing a community with some folks who were vegetarian and who'd made it clear that they had no interest in or intention of going vegan. I was finally connecting the dots and finding myself meeting blank or incredulous stares when talking to friends or family about my decision. The community I needed at the time had to be more than a meatless mirror to what I was experiencing offline. I eventually stumbled across the Vegan Freak Radio podcasts and discovered the amazing online forum called "Vegan Freaks" where veganism was promoted, discussed and shared in a no-nonsense and unapologetic way. I'd finally found my cohort. No more excuses: I went and stayed vegan and it was a true relief.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

With a perceived rise in interest in veganism on a local level, I recently joined a regional Facebook group set up for both vegetarians and vegans in my area. I thought it might be interesting to get to know other vegans offline. I soon got into a heated discussion with a vegetarian dog breeder who had stated outright that she had no interest in going vegan and that since the group was for both vegetarians and vegans, that she expected the vegans to respect her choice to continue participating in animal exploitation. She distorted my calm and objective criticism of breeding dogs for profit and human pleasure (particularly when millions are killed in shelters each and every year) and accused me of launching a personal attack. She, in turn, launched into a passive-aggressive defense of her "choices" calling me "judgmental" and insisting that I was making her feel unwelcome.

One astute member of the group messaged me to point out that the breeder had just recently appeared to be flaunting her animal use and trying to shame vegans into censoring themselves. She had criticized a photo someone had posted about the plight of dairy cows, outraged that it had been permitted in the group, insisting that it was offensive to those in the group who consume dairy. She'd then started up a discussion to get vegetarians to list off their favourite dairy cheeses. (Goading with gouda?) But her behaviour had been overlooked. Her outrage came to a head after my debate with her about dog breeding. As a result of my not bowing down and telling her that there's nothing wrong with using animals for pleasure and profit (or with breeding dogs into existence when so many are abandoned into shelters and killed each year), she made several furious posts threatening to leave the group and to form a separate group excluding vegans where "vegetarians wouldn't be judged". It's one of the first hissy-fit tactics they'd teach you about in "Online Forums/Groups 101" if such a course existed. Make a lot of noise, play victim, garner sympathy and portray the person with whom you have a difference as a vicious bully. Many stepped up, showering her with her attention and reassurances that "different views" were respected in our group and that she should stay. She left anyway.I ended up getting a personal message from one of the group's moderators. I was told that I was being negative and "alienating" by calling animal use other than meat-eating unethical. I felt as if I'd been swooped back in time. I quote from the message:

"We are all on the same page and our hearts are all in the right place. Some just aren't there yet and need love, encouragement and acceptance for the changes they do make and not criticism for the changes they haven't been able to make yet. Every little bit counts and should be encouraged. Something is better than nothing. Please keep your opinions about milk and eggs to yourself unless someone specifically asks you for them. Please do not criticize someone's livelihood or profession. This group is to unite us in our common cause and we should focus on the values we share and not on our differences. You're making vegans look unkind."

It's sad enough that animals are used unapologetically by over 98% of the human population and that vegans are shamed into silence when walking around in the regular old world. To have the moderator of a group for vegans and vegetarians basically tell me to shut the fuck up about the ethics of animal use lest I offend someone who chooses to use them felt like way too many steps backwards.

Veganism Is Not Vegetarianism

It had been over 20 years since I had first encountered that sort of chastising in a "veg" community. Had absolutely nothing changed? But it got me thinking again about why these mixed groups don't work and wondering why on earth I had thought it would be any different at a local level. Basically, it was more of the same moral confusion I'd encountered over a decade earlier. Disagreements are pretty much a given whenever vegetarians and vegans share a space. Why? Because we're not the same. The truth is that you either deliberately choose to exploit animals for your pleasure and/or convenience or you choose to avoid -- as far as possible -- to exploit animals for your pleasure and/or convenience. Vegetarians who are not actively transitioning towards veganism choose to continue to participate in animal exploitation. Plant-based dieters who otherwise use animals and reject veganism as extreme or unnecessary choose to continue to participate in animal exploitation. They are no different than others who choose to do the same, whether those others are pescatarians, flexitarians, or eat-everything-arians. There are vegans and there are non-vegans. Sometimes there are non-vegans who are going vegan. But we need to stop assuming that all non-vegans are going vegan. We need to stop feeling obliged to lump ourselves in with non-vegans who are not going vegan and to sacrifice truth or to sacrifice vegan community because we're crossing our fingers that if we're nice enough, maybe those stubborn non-vegans will stop willingly participating in the torture and slaughter of other sentient beings.

And if we do share spaces, rather than choose the lowest common denominator as a guideline for behaviour or as a foundation for community standards (i.e. to act as if animal exploitation is OK), we should opt to raise the bar. I'm 100% behind helping others who want to transition. But these shared spaces -- if they are to successfully exist -- should be ones where vegans feel safe and where the non-vegans in them are actually actively and in good faith seeking help to go vegan. These spaces should be ones where vegan principles are respected, upheld and promoted. If a non-vegan hasn't gotten to the point where they are willing to behave accordingly in a space shared with vegans, then that individual has obviously not connected the dots about whether or why they should go vegan. That individual is no different from any other non-vegans outside of that space who thumb their noses at vegans or at veganism. And a space in which speciesism and exploitation are either condoned, shrugged off or promoted surely ain't the place to get anyone to connect any dots. This is especially so in "veg" communities or groups which are comprised of those who reject animal exploitation and of non-vegans who see no ethical issue with the continued human use of other animals.

You either reject animal exploitation or you don't. If you don't reject it, we're not "on the same team". We're not "on the same path". And you're not part of my vegan community. I don't want my vegan community to grow by using non-vegans as filler to make it seem larger than it is; I want my vegan community to grow by changing people's hearts and heads about what it is we owe other animals and to help them go vegan. I don't think that's unreasonable to ask.

Veganism (Which Isn't Veganism) Is All the Rage

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:30:00 +0000

It seems to be the standard now for online news publications to periodically -- or even permanently -- feature a column by someone who is either trying a plant-based diet for a predetermined period, or who is claiming to be going/to have gone vegan. I really wish that more of these columns would be written by folks who were actually inspired to authentically go vegan for ethical reasons involving their rejection of animal use, rather than seeing so many of them written by folks who have an interest in losing weight or have a half-hearted interest in appearing to care about the environment. Every so often, a passing reference is made to factory farms and animal welfare. There's often a paragraph with statistics about greenhouse gas tucked into these pieces and a quote from a dietician or nutritionist, but there rarely ever seems to be anything insightful or honest written about animal use. Basically, most of these columns are written by people who haven't really connected the dots and who are only interested in playing vegan for the sake of churning out some money-making words.

The UK's Swindon Advertiser, this week, offered up the same old, throwing in a few confusing spins for good measure. In "A more ethical way to go shopping", its news editor, Sue Smith, describes her dabblings in "the world of veganism". I am guessing that her "venture" into it in January was for a column describing her trying out a plant-based diet for a week or month. I haven't looked. I rolled my eyes at the very first line which includes the words "eat ethically" and "organic farm". Smith starts off in a confused mess by describing that she tried being vegan a few months ago, then decided to try to be mainly vegan (yeah, mainly vegan) moving forward, but treating herself to animal products "on high days and holidays". So, from the start it's made clear that Smith view animal-derived foods as tasty treats with which she can regularly reward herself. To figure out "where to shop" for these, she decides to go to an "organic farm".

Abbey Home Farm, her readers are told, is run by vegetarians. Although fruit and vegetables are grown there and sold in their shop, cows are also kept and killed to stock the shop with meat, milk, cheese, yogurt and butter. Long-term vegetarians who decided that they wanted "to produce food for the local people". So they took over a farm and added a shop on the premises: "We wanted a shop where people could see the animals around them. They could see what they were eating," said co-owner Hillary Chester-Master. (I think she meant whom they were eating, but I digress... Vegetarians. Sigh.)

Then these two "long-term vegetarians" decided to set up a café on their farm. Smith calls it a "vegetarian café", adding that "they do serve meat On Sundays – with just one choice of either chicken, beef, lamb or pork". It's ethically insignificant, of course, since there's no difference between producing dairy or meat for human consumption. But Smith has already shown veganism as being something which can make up a percentage of your diet (i.e. by being "mainly vegan"), so it should be no surprise that she would describe a café selling animal flesh as "vegetarian". I mean, why not at this point, since words and their definitions seem as insignificant to Smith as wether or not humans use or otherwise consume other animals. It's no surprise either that co-owner Hillary Chester-Master, "long-term vegetarian" would also refer to the café as "vegetarian" in the piece. I mean, she even refers to a chicken as "a week's worth of meals".

Smith then babbles about not wanting to support "intensive farming" after her "foray into veganism" and asserts that it's "satisfying (and important" to know the "origins of the animals whose lives would get taken for her pleasure and convenience and she describes herself as a kid in a candy store wandering around the shop and looking at the "food" around her. And so the rest of the article turns into an extended advertisement for Abbey Home Farm. Everything is 100% organic. It's up for a BBC food and farming award, the readers are told. Children are brought in to "learn about where their food comes from". The reader is basically lulled into embracing a charming, pastoral vision of what enslaving and slaughtering sentient beings can purportedly involve. The reader is presented this vision by someone who repeatedly touts vegan cred. And this is why I wish fewer non-vegans would make a buck pretending to be writing articles from a vegan-friendly angle. In the end, they're no better than speciesist endorsements for the reinforcement of the status quo. Smith is OK with that. Chester-Master is OK with that. The animals whose lives are stolen by both? Not so much.

On "Selective" Morality

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 17:35:00 +0000

It's Tuesday morning, so I've been sifting through various news articles and opinion pieces mentioning veganism. The headline "Why I believe selective veganism is the way forward" caught my eye. It seems an ongoing project for many to co-opt the term "vegan" and to water it down or otherwise alter it to include or promote deliberate animal use for pleasure or convenience. When I clicked on the link, the opinion piece's title became: "Struggling vegan? Why I believe selective veganism is the way forward" which better clarified the writer's likely angle to me. Veganism is haaard! Treat yourself with animal products to make it easier! I hopped that I was wrong, but these pieces have become so predictable.

"Selective Veganism" Explained

Lisa Bowman begins by defining "selective veganism" as "the vegan version of flexitarianism". Basically, she says that while the latter consists of people who are "mostly veggie" occasionally indulging themselves in meat, that "selective vegans" are people who are "mostly vegan" but who occasionally indulge themselves in dairy and eggs. Um. Yeah. "Here we go again," I thought.

Maybe you’re strictly vegan at home but flexible when you go out to eat? Perhaps you’re 100% vegan until you’re offered free food? Or maybe you won’t touch dairy unless you’re hungover as hell.

At least (i.e. at the very, very least) she acknowledges that "most vegans" would view this as a "cop-out" (no, really?), but she doesn't elaborate upon why they would any further, choosing instead to focus on all of the reasons most vegans would probably be better off cutting themselves some slack and, well, not be all that vegan.

Belonging (or How to Avoid Being an Outsider 101)

Bowman makes a huge -- and wrong -- assumption about vegans when she states that most of us she sees posting on sites like Instagram seem to have enormous vegan support networks. The truth is that most of us don't. Outside of major urban areas, most vegans with whom I've spoken have been fortunate if they've known more than 1-2 other vegans off the internet. Social networking helps with this a great deal, since it's a way for us to connect from a distance, or to meet up where we may not have otherwise crossed paths. Sadly, though, many of the new vegans who've written to me via the blog or my blog's Facebook page, though, have mentioned that they knew no other vegans "in real life".

So Bowman brings up socializing and focuses on eating out, saying that since her friends are all non-vegan, she can't eat at "vegan food joints" and finds herself left with only two options. She says she can either "make do with what’s available for vegans on the menu, which invariably is either nothing or chips and a miserable side salad" or to eat animal products (she specifies that they be "vegetarian") and to not "stress about it". First of all, it should be pointed out that specifying that vegetarian dishes should be chosen is ethically meaningless, since there's no difference between consuming meat, dairy or eggs. In all cases, animals used for these are bred into existence for human pleasure and live wretched lives which end in slaughter. In the case of dairy and eggs, additional lives are taken whether they be of the calves removed from their mothers so that the milk meant for them can be stolen for humans, or the male chicks who end up killed at hatcheries. As for the rest of it?

It's possible to socialize with people and to have it not involve food. However, if meals are involved, there can still be options which needn't involve what I'm guessing Bowman thinks would be strong-arming your non-vegan friends into a plant-based restaurant. Bowman says she's in Liverpool. As someone who lives in a tiny city (really a big town masquerading as a city) with a population of less than 57,000, I don't have the luxury Bowman mentions of even having access to a strinctly plant-based restaurant. That said, even my small city has at least a couple of vegetarian (and very vegan-friendly) restaurants, a café with half of its menu consisting of vegan-friendly options and then Middle Eastern or Asian restaurants with a good number and variety of dishes perfectly suitable for vegans, as well as pubs and restaurants with at least 1-2 dishes like stir-fries or veggie burgers whose condiments can be switched out if they're dairy-based. Heck, we have at least two pizza places offering plant-based cheese and a popular downtown restaurant offering Daiya and cashew-based mayo as substitutes. I can think of only 3-4 places in the downtown core out of nearly 30 eating establishments where you might find yourself stuck with nothing but french fries.

Is it really be so difficult in a city the size of Liverpool to suggest a place to friends which would have something suitable on its menu? Bowman makes it sound as if your choices are limited to either 1) depriving yourself of the company of your friends, or being with them and 2) depriving yourself of food unless you compromise your ethics to share a table with them. I mean, I just looked at the Happy Cow listings for Liverpool and am envious. Honestly, though, if it really came down to it -- if you really found yourself faced with eating fries or a salad with no other options available -- then, so what? I've been asked out to pubs by friends who've shrugged upon realizing that I had no other options but fries on a given menu and I've ordered the fries and made a mental note to avoid the establishment in the future. I don't understand how a vegan whould -- or should be made to -- feel obliged to purchase animal products in such a situation.

On Selfish Pleasure

In a section titled "So that you don't suck all of the joy out of eating" (i.e. another of the excuses she presents for not being vegan), she admits that her weakness is halloumi. She "loves" it, she reveals. She "loves it" when she's hungover and has it "three times a year" and those three times apparently "bring (her) so much happiness, it outweighs the ethical guilt (she feels). Basically, her own selfish pleasure trumps ethics. So what if kicking a puppy made her happy? Or tripping an elderly person to watch them fall? It's confusing when further along in the article, she cites this same halloumi consumption as having led to her feeling physically ill and then goes on to link eating a "clean" diet with eating a plant-based diet, and eating that plant-based diet with orthorexia and then deciding to continue indulging in halloumi and other animal products for mental health reasons. I won't write about this, since we've already seen plenty of the "I listened to my body" confessionals by "ex-vegans" and Bowman doesn't really provide any clear information that her anecdote was any different.

I don't think that Bowman ever clearly refers to herself as a vegan in the article (which is a good thing for many reasons), but it quickly becomes obvious that the piece is less a "how to help struggling vegans" one than Bowman's own self-defensiveness about her own personal choice to continue using other animals and viewing her doing so as somehow treating or rewarding herself. This self-defensiveness becomes even more obvious later in the article when it takes a more hostile turn.

A Good Vegan is a Quiet Vegan

Bowman writes that unless you're a "shouty" vegan, most people won't know that you're vegan so that having to disclose that one is vegan is "awkward". She brings up for instances of being invited to someone's home for dinner or where coworkers surprise you with food. The workplace awkwardness from the latter, I think, would be better avoided altogether if her coworkers simply knew she was vegan in the first place (although by this point in the article, it's obvious that she isn't). Perhaps her own awkwardness comes from having already eaten animal products in front of her coworkers and, thus, feeling hypocritical about calling herself a "vegan" at work, then having to explain why she arbitrarily shifts her boundaries in other circumstances. In this case, I think that being consistent about her ethics would probably be a better solution than using her inconsistency as an additional excuse to further consume animal products. But for an actual vegan, I think that simply clearly self-identfying as vegan could stave off a lot of possible awkwardness.

As for dinner invitations? It's pretty commonplace these days for people to identify or clarify their dietary requirements whenever sharing meals is brought up. But I guess I could see how someone who chooses to side-step ethics to feel a part of the non-vegan gang eating out might be conflicted about asking members of that gang to take her (non-existent?) ethics into consideration when they invite her into their homes for a meal. Bowman also thinks that explaining that you're vegan entails explaining why you're vegan, and that explaining why you're vegan is "patronising" and to be avoided. (I'm guessing this is where she thinks the "shouty" vegans come in.) She states that rather than risk being patronising, she would choose to exploit other animals. (Note, though, that she again draws an ethically meaningless line here, asserting that she'd consume dairy "to avoid an awkward situation" but would not do so with "meat".) She brings up travel and mentions that during a stint working at a yoga camp in India, all of the food made available to her contained meat and dairy and that she would have been a "pr*ck" to her hosts if she had abstained. Basically,

Bowman makes it clear, however, that it's not just a question of what she considers to be good manners to eat whatever food is provided to her as someone who presents as eating anything; she throws in somewhat flippantly that she'll eat non-vegan food that's free, since "free food tastes better".

On Letting the Haters Keep Hating

Bowman also brings up that to avoid getting into a debate about veganism with people who might be antagonistic, she will choose to deliberately eat animal products in front of them and to verbally self-identify as not being vegan. This has got to be one of the most bizarre things I've read in a long while. Of course, at this point in the article, we know that she neither is, nor views herself as a vegan in the sense of the word in which most understand and accept it (regardless of how she later goes on to describe herself as "95% vegan"), so these reasons she continues to list off become more and more confusing. She's writing about how vegans should behave by explaining how she, as a non-vegan, opts to behave in certain situations. This one is no different. I think there are probably much better ways -- certainly more ethical ways -- to avoid or to get out of an unwanted debate about veganism for an actual vegan than to eat animal products and to distance oneself from the term. Bowman seems to have internalized so many negative anti-vegan stereotypes, though, that she can't even actually put herself in the shoes of an actual vegan to consider any other options.

This is evident in her stating that her so-called "selective veganism" allows you to "distance yourself from the extreme vegans". By "extreme" she cites vegans, who confided to other vegans in a Facebook group she had joined, that sitting at a table on Christmas day with non-vegan family members and watching them eat an animal was upsetting to them. She suggests that they should just suck it up and "get on with it". She then misses the point made by these vegans entirely by insisting:

Just because someone eats meat or milk doesn’t make them a bad person. Their heart may just lie in other ethics.

So, ruining everyone’s Christmas by muttering ‘murderer’ darkly at the dinner table every time Gramps lifts a piece of turkey to his lips isn’t okay.

There's a difference between leaning on fellow-vegans for support in a private setting (e.g. in a Facebook group) because something is upsetting to you, and being passive-aggressive and/or rude at a dinner table. Also, just because someone's behaviour is upsetting to you doesn't necessarily mean that you think they're a "bad person" in general. Vegans learn to compartmentalize when living the lives in which we constantly interact with other non-vegans. We know that exploiting others is wrong and we live with the reality that over 98% of the people around us actively participate in that cycle, including people who have been our loved ones since before we went vegan. We do still see the behaviour as wrongful, though. But what on earth does it mean to say "(t)heir heart may just lie in other ethics"? It's gibberish to me (but then so is much of this article, to some extent or another).

The "Takeaway"?

She finishes off the article with the typical reducetarianist arguments that "every little bit helps". She uses an argument I'm used to hearing from groups like the misleadingly named welfarist group "Vegan" Outreach, that eating some animal products makes veganism (sic) more "sustainable in the long run". Let's get this straight: Vegans don't deliberately consume or otherwise use easily avoidable animal products. So, if you deliberately consume or otherwise use easily avoidable animal products, you're not a vegan. Your continuing to deliberately participate in animal exploitation doesn't make your "veganism" more "sustainable"; it makes your continued animal exploitation more "sustainable" for you. It just reflects that you haven't taken a long hard look at your own speciesism and that you haven't rejected the notion that other animals exist for human pleasure or convenience. The former is quite significant and the latter is pretty much what going vegan entails.

Veganism isn't a diet imposed on you against your will. Vegans choose to go vegan because it's quite honestly the very least we owe other animals. It's not something you can adhere to 95% of the time while viewing it as a treat to gobble up this or that animal part or product for your own pleasure or convenience. If you view consuming or using other animals as a "treat" to which you're entitled for otherwise depriving yourself of using them, you really (no, really) need to ask yourself what's going on in your heart and head. Criticising veganism as being "too all-or-nothing" if it doesn't involve your choosing to gobble up your beloved dairy-based halloumi misses the point of veganism entirely. Bowman may view deliberately using animals as being a her being a "selective vegan" or "struggling vegan" when the plain truth is that it's neither. It's just ordinary ol' non-veganism.

Ultimately, the only valid thing Bowman has written in this entire article is that most vegans would view her position -- one advocating animal use for vegans as a means to stay "vegan" -- as a "cop-out". It's a "cop-out" at the very least. Sadly, though, Bowman's piece is a pretty standard example of the kind of speciesism reinforced and promoted by a wide number of purported animal advocates today. We need to do better. We need to do so much more.

On Whinging About Going Vegan When Not Going Vegan

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 15:27:00 +0000

Earlier this morning, on the My Face Is on Fire Facebook page, I posted a link to a Huffington Post blog by Lee Willscroft-Ferris, founder of TheQueerness.com. Its first post was basically an announcement to set it up, presenting the context behind it that Willscroft-Ferris -- a longtime vegetarian -- had decided that going vegan was the next "logical step" for them to take, describing the ethical reasons behind doing so. Although the blog title ("Veganism: My Journey Towards Ethical Eating") is unfortunate, Willscroft-Ferris does describe going vegan in terms of overall lifestyle choices and as a "political" act, so hopefully it won't ultimately hinge upon food, but will explore all aspects of animal use. I'm keeping my fingers crossed although sometimes when it comes to writings about veganism in mainstream media, doing so feels like waiting for crumbs to be thrown.

Usually, so very many of these types of opinion pieces in the media end up being insincere bandwagon-hopping attempts to just drop the word "vegan" in an article without the article's ever actually having anything to do with veganism. Someone will decide to put themselves on a diet without doing any research whatsoever, then spend the article or series whinging about how deprived and inconvenienced they felt because they had no ethical issue with using animals in the first place. This is almost always the case with anyone who adopts a different diet without preparing themselves for it, though. Throw into the equation that veganism isn't just a diet and that there's this little thing called "motivation" which factors into the decision made by those deciding to actually go vegan in earnest and it's no wonder that these types of articles so often present "going vegan" as an awful experience.

Take for instance this article on the German Deutsche Well (DW) broadcaster's website. In "Visiting vegan: Could you give up animal products for a week?", British Berlin-based reporter Louise Osborne decides to embark upon the #howgreenami challenge (which I think is an environmentally-focused short-term thing launched by someone or other on Twitter) by purportedly "living vegan for a week". I found myself shaking my head from the beginning of the article. She describes having to replace warm fur-lined leather boots for cold Converse sneakers (there are plenty of winter footwear options available on the market which aren't made using animal products and which still keep your feet comfortable warm). Thus, from the start, "living vegan" is portrayed as miserable. In fact, just two days and four paragraphs in, Osborne states that all she feels is "resentment".

That it's self-depriving is also drilled home as the Brit writes about having had to give up her morning tea, because she usually drinks it with "a splash of milk" and hasn't been able to subject herself to the absolute horror of trying out a plant-based milk in it. She writes: "I'm not quite that desperate … not yet, anyway." So much for even exploring other options. She just assumes that those options would be hideous.

She pauses at this point to drop some statistics at this point about the rise in veganism in the United Kingdom, mentions the oft-cited UN report on the link between meat consumption and greenhouse gases, discusses the popularity of veganism in her adopted home of Berlin, then jumps right back into writing about her woeful experiment.

She decided to point out the social inconvenience of going vegan by bringing up an unplanned and unresearched restaurant outing with friends. The restaurant chosen ends up being one specializing in cheese fondue and grilled meat and as her friends encourage her to "cheat", she orders up creamless pumpkin soup and french fries. As her friends indulge in fondue, she whinges that she feels "left out" even though she doesn't "even like cheese". At this point, the writer's tone seems more akin to that of a sullen or petulant child's than it does one befitting a reporter earnestly exploring an angle for a story. She admits to having "cheated" and to having had wine she knew was processed with animal products and writes that "(i)gnorance is bliss".

She complains about visiting a vegan-friendly restaurant and ending up with chocolate she felt was sub-par compared to the milk chocolate she loves. Then, back to this weird confusion about clothing and her choosing to portray vegans as suffering through the winter months, she complains about her cotton scarves failing to keep her warm. She brings up the word "deprivation" to launch into the token interview with someone presented as an authority on old-hat veganism, writing that she wanted to know how "they lived" with deprivation. So she goes to a market and talks to a purported "health" vegan, then to someone motivated by animal welfare and treatment.

Osborne takes the opportunity to discuss treatment, writing that although she's concerned about it, that she doesn't "absolutely oppose animals being slaughtered for food". She then brings up that old overused "but if we don't use wool, we'd have to use fossil fuels to make clothing" excuse. She then returns to her token vegan expert, the welfarist, who admits to her that she still uses leather and believes in making her "own rules" about which animal products she uses. She tells Osborne that she doesn't like being told what to do. Osborne wraps up her article agreeing with this attitude, referring to veganism as overly "strict" and finishing her piece off on an "every little bit counts" note.

The (un)funny thing is that these days, many welfarist animal advocates would likely read this article and repost it, presenting it as a positive thing and as a "victory" in terms of veganism being written about in mainstream media. To me, articles like these just reinforce the same old tired lies peddled by large welfarist organisations that veganism is too hard, too extreme, too alienating to the general public, too inflexible, et al. It's articles like these which these organisations use as "proof" that going vegan should be presented not as the least one can do for other animals, but as the most. Articles like these get used to argue in favour of focusing public education on flexitarianism, reducetarianism and all other forms of what is, essentially, excusetarianism. What we need to remind ourselves is that articles like these aren't about going vegan and that if we don't speak up about what going vegan really is that nobody will connect the dots. If we don't dispel the lies and bust the stereotypes, nobody else will. Louise Osborne certainly won't.

On Misguidance

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 15:32:00 +0000

(This was taken from a January 18 post on the My Face Is on Fire Facebook page. I'm posting it here because I encountered something similar again late yesterday evening, which left me sad again at how ineffective -- even counterproductive -- some of us are in keeping the focus on what's important as we welcome new vegans into our community and offer them our support.)

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In a small vegan Facebook group this morning, I saw a thread in which a young mother of a 5- and 7-year-old who'd just gone vegan reach out to ask about alternatives to some of the foods her kids have enjoyed as treats or as convenience foods. She pointed out that as a parent with a cooperative partner (who is open to following her lead) that it may very well be up to her to decide what to feed her little ones, but that one's a fickle eater and that she's hoping to transition them to plant-based foods with the least amount of hassle. She was asking about things like Daiya and veggie dogs, asking if tater tots were vegan-friendly, which ice creams were better, etc.

Instead of answers to her specific questions, she received a big mess of a lecture about feeding her kids junk food. When she pointed out that they also eat fruits and vegetables and that she had those covered -- that she needed help with her other questions -- 3-4 people basically made it clear to her that they thought she was a bad mom 1) for having fed her kids junk in the first place, and a bad vegan 2) for not completely switching them over to an organic whole foods diet instead of seeking vegan-friendly alternatives to the junk foods they enjoyed. She insisted again that she does feed her kids as much healthy stuff as she can and that she wasn't looking for information on how she should be feeding them from A to Z, but would be grateful for advice in response to her other questions.

A few people became indignant at this and one went so far as to tell her that she was the sort of person who gives vegans "a bad name" since her kids will "no doubt end up malnourished and the subject of (medical/legal) intervention". Not surprisingly, she told them to go stuff themselves with beans and left the group.

For the everlovin' sake of pete, don't ever let this be the sort of "support" you give other new vegans who seek community and guidance. Is proper nutrition as important for vegans as it is for everyone else? Of course. But going vegan doesn't mean having to embrace a whole foods, fat/salt/sugar-free, nothing-out-of-a-box diet. Most of us eat convenience foods from time to time and are doing perfectly fine. Most importantly, though, for someone who is new to veganism and who is earnestly trying to transition family members along with her, convenience foods can be useful. To shame someone for using them accomplishes nothing, especially when that someone is already very likely being shamed by non-vegan friends and family members around her for wanting to transition her kids in the first place. Vegan parents face enough invalidation from non-vegans around them; they should expect better from other vegans, shouldn't they?

On Absence from Blogging

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 04:51:00 +0000

I've been talking about blogging with a friend whose advocacy I've respected for a long while. I've had more than a few people ask me why I haven't been writing for the last year. It's weird looking back at how I used to blog so frequently, whenever a relevant story or opportunity arose and then at how my own responses have diminished in frequency. To cite "burnout" would be obvious, I guess. The politics in animal advocacy have left me feeling a bit fried. I used to find strength in my involvement, but not so much these days. That's not to say that I haven't felt the urge to recognize or applaud others whose work I've continued to admire, appreciate and promote. A lot of my advocacy has shifted over to the sharing of articles on Facebook on My Face Is on Fire's page and I've spent a large chunk of time maintaining and moderating an international cuisine page there, as well. I've commented there, for sure, often rambling on in status updates. I've just neglected to update the blog. I hadn't realized how much I'd stayed away from it until this week, when I noted that I'd only posted twice this year.

I hope to get back into blogging. I've spent more time being introspective, I guess, than in paying attention to the politics in the movement. I've kept an eye on some of the discussions had. There've been so many. I hope to feel more comfortable sharing my own insights into all of it as an abolitionist vegan, as I've done before, but adding more to it. I'd like, I think, to drill down a bit more, to explore how things affect vegans on a day-to-day sort of level -- to continue to offer support to fellow vegans who forge on and who strive to share the vegan message with others. I'd like to be more earnest about some of what that entails while continuing to share how essential and simple it is to make changes to our lives once we've identified and chosen to reject the speciesist views we're taught to embrace from the ground up our entire lives. We need to support each other as vegans. When it comes to animal advocacy, we need to support each other as abolitionists. I don't expect activists who've been hurt by others to support those others, but would like to see less of that hurting going on. I'm not talking about glossing over facts and honest discourse here, or about silencing valid criticism. There needs to be honest discourse. We need to be challenging each other. We do. But we need to consider being each other's sounding boards first and foremost. We can criticize constructively if we leave our egos out of it and focus on the fact that billions of lives depend on our getting our collective shit together. Particularly when the alternative for most who are paying attention is to listen, instead, to the blaring welfarist voices championing SICs and more "gentle" forms of animal exploitation.

I want to keep writing. I need to keep writing. That said, so many others are doing it so very well that I plan to spend some time here highlighting them. Their work as abolitionists has been inspirational to me, regardless of their political allegiances. I can't not continue trying to do something, because the overwhelming majority of the people around me continue to use others -- to contribute to their torture and slaughter. My friends and family contribute to the torture and slaughter of others. So this little bit that I can do to try to get people to reconsider their own participation in all of this is the least I can do over and above refusing to participate in it myself. It's the very least I can do.

Veganism is Ethics in Action

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 02:42:00 +0000

Striking at the Root

I've seen a few people on social networking sites post this recent article by Ginny Messina, aka The Vegan RD. It's called "Preventing Ex-Vegans: The Power of Ethics" and stresses the importance of raising the issue of ethics -- the moral reasons we should not participate in animal exploitation -- when talking to others about veganism. Basically, Messina points out what has seemed to me over the years to be obvious. Unless we strike at the root and address speciesism and make our animal advocacy about the animals, other humans are less likely to take animals seriously enough to leave them alone in a meaningful and permanent way. If one was to skim over the article and was already convinced that talking about ethics is key when talking to non-vegans about what we owe other animals, the takeaway from the article could very well be that Messina reiterates this.

Whatchoo Eating?

Messina points out how using health or dietary arguments can fail. So many welfarist groups concern themselves with health-related arguments, stressing that a shift in diet will lead to improved health and appearance -- to weight-loss and to a sort of untouchable state of being where mosquitoes will never again gnaw on you and you'll never again experience the sniffles and will forever safeguard yourself against cancer and any number of chronic diseases. It only takes one experience refuting any of such claims, whether from an ordinary lapse in someone's immune system to stave off a bad seasonal flu, the failure to become sylphlike or a symptom of something more insidious perhaps passed down thanks to genetics, exposure or previous habits to leave someone rejecting such arguments. Worse is when vegans who actually do get sick (as humans are wont to do) are singled out as having gotten sick because, of course, they've been deprived of proper nourishment and of the magical benefits of consuming various parts of another sentient being's decaying body or secretions. Worst is when vegans start shaming other vegans for not being glowing-skinned exemplars of perfect health or for not being of a weight deemed ideal by mainstream society.

Veganism = Vegan Diets = Vegetarianism?

It's problematic to me that Messina uses the terms "vegetarian" and "vegan" interchangeably and that she seems to equate eating a plant-based diet to being vegan. The term "vegetarian" involves the likelihood of continued involvement in animal exploitation, so it seems weird to talk about how to motivate people to remain either vegetarian or vegan with a focus on ethics being key. Plant-based eating or following a so-called "vegan diet" also involves animal exploitation in other areas. The thing is that the animals who are exploited and/or killed don't care whether or not they end up in our bellies. Vegans realize that it's not that animals and their secretions are eaten that's the issue, but that animals are exploited and treated as things in the first place. Veganism isn't just a diet. So when Messina writes that "[o]ne of the reasons people abandon vegan diets is that they lose faith in its benefits" she's right in the sense that people's interest in fad diets waxes and wanes according to results and expectations, especially if those expectations rest upon claims which are "far-fetched". But it's when she equates following a plant-based diet to being vegan -- i.e. to losing one's interest in a plant-based diet as potentially leading one to become a purported "ex-vegan" that the article becomes a bit problematic for me. She writes that "health" arguments may motivate people to go "vegan", but the truth is that all health-based arguments do is motivate people to change what they put into their mouths, mostly. Vegans reject participation in animal exploitation. A health-based argument may lead someone to eschew -- to some extent or other -- eating animals and their secretions, but it won't convince anyone to stop buying leather shoes, wearing beeswax lip-balm, taking the kids to a petting zoo or to not buy a purebred puppy from a professional breeder.

Messina states that "the problem of ex-vegans and ex-vegetarians is a serious one". Honestly, I'm perfectly alright with ex-vegetarians and don't see them as a problem at all. I'd love vegetarians to become ex-vegetarians and to choose, instead, to reject their participation in animal use and to go vegan. There is absolutely no ethical difference between someone's eating and otherwise using other animals on all levels (e.g. your average non-vegan), someone's partially limiting the animal products they put in their bellies and otherwise continuing to use other animal products (i.e. your average vegetarian), or someone's completely limiting the animal products they put in their bellies and otherwise continuing to use other animal products (i.e. your average plant-based diet follower). They're all speciesist. They all involve complicity in the continued victimization of other sentient beings for humans' pleasure and convenience. So, yes, Messina is right that there needs to be a focus on the ethical arguments to not use those other sentient beings. Except that you can't really use ethical arguments in any sort of clear, consistent and unequivocal way to bring about permanent change to how humans view others in terms of their being ours to use when you lump in deliberate exploiters with vegans.

In her concluding paragraph, which seems to deliver the clear message that ethics should drive vegan advocacy, Messina unfortunately again focuses on variations of animal use, talking about "vegan and vegetarian diets'. Yeah, ethics is important. But so is figuring out where we should be consistent and unequivocal. It's stilly to talk about ethics when promoting a so-called "vegan diet" and even more so when talking about a "vegetarian diet". I mean, if you're going to talk about ethics, how on earth can you talk about propping up what are, honestly, choices which allow for animal exploitation? If Messina wants to deliver a message concerning how to get people to both go and stay "vegan", then it really confuses the issue when she focuses on diet or says "vegan or vegetarian" without explicitly emphasizing that what we need to accomplish in talking about ethics is educating folks that using animals at all, whether we're eating them or their secretions or otherwise contributing to their exploitation, is wrong.

How Not to Be an Annoying Vegan?

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 01:29:00 +0000

College Education Fail?

Hot on the heels of her article from November called "How to be a vegan without being annoying", Castleton State College's The Spartan's own staff writer Jorah McKinley has offered up yet another badly-written rant to serve as filler for her paper. In an attempt to drill home the point to all that standing up for yourself (never mind standing up for other animals) is annoying, McKinley copied and pasted her previous article into a new document to submit to her editors who, in turn, managed to prove that either 1) Castleton State College's journalism program is in trouble, or 2) The Spartan is in desperate need of a proofreader with a minimum elementary school education. McKinley omits the first sentence from her previous article to update her reader that she has apparently been "a vegan" for a whopping eight months now.

Of course, she misrepresents veganism as a diet, self-identifying as having herself "adopted a vegan diet", so at least it's clear that she's writing about vegans from the outside looking in. (Although it may explain some of what seems to be her animosity towards vegans, it neither excuses it, nor does it excuse what's ultimately just poor writing all 'round.) She begins by introducing her reader to all kinds of hostile stereotypical caricatures of vegans (whom she lumps in with vegetarians).

I realized that there are a lot of vegans and vegetarians who are just terrible. We all know the type. They’ve got their condescending tones and their upturned noses and their crunchy vegan granola. Nobody likes these people, no one. Don’t be one.

It's sort of amusing that she should use the term "condescending" to describe tone, given the tone of her own article. Worse, though, is that she actually encourages her non-vegan readers to pass the article along to non-vegan friends. You know? To help them not be annoying. It's pretty simple, McKinley tells her vegan and non-vegan readers. She writes that the "one rule" that's not meant to be broken lest you become one of those awful creatures is that you never talk about veganism. In case you might not get it, she spells it out in caps for you: "DON’T TALK ABOUT IT!" It's not meant to be discussed in your "everyday life", she tells us. It's a "personal choice" she repeats to her readers (while reiterating that she interprets veganism as being a "diet").

They [sic] way you choose to eat is a personal choice. Not every single person you come into contact with needs a full description of the moral high ground you think you’re standing on. So DON’T talk about it unless someone asks, which they probably won’t, because no one cares.

Because obviously saying anything about veganism is preachy and awful and should be kept to oneself unless someone asks. And if they ask? Then for the loving sake of pete, don't have the rudeness to give someone an honest answer! You can either (according to McKinley) 1) be an asshole and freak out on them, or 2) keep it to yourself. There's really no grey area, McKinley makes clear. You're either a stealthy vegan or you are condescending scum, "[p]ushing you’re opinions on innocent and unsuspecting bystanders".

This is the message McKinley not only seeks to deliver to those she would view as her "fellow" vegans to more or less shout them down, but the message she wants to make clear to all of the non-vegans at her school, to spread her own animosity by fostering it in the rest of Castleton State College's students. What a true hero she is to her school's vegan students, staff and faculty, no? (Ssssh!)

I Love Vegan Food Bloggers

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0000

I Love Vegan Food Bloggers, Yes I Do!

I love (love, love, love!) vegan food bloggers. I appreciate and respect folks who have the time, energy, creativity, knowledge and skill to concoct all kinds of amazing plant-based dishes, whether to appeal to novice cooks or hardcore foodies. In past years, I would often just go through my list of favourite food blogs and write up posts, organized by theme or a particular ingredient, with links to the various scrumptious recipes from the sites I have perused and loved. I loved promoting food bloggers and am quick to cough up links to favourites to anyone who asks.

In the past when I've promoted vegan food blogs, I've sometimes been asked by the odd animal activist: "Is it an abolitionist site?" Almost always, I would shrug and say: "It's a recipe blog, not a philosophy or political blog." As far as I was concerned, as long as someone did a fine job of creating and presenting tasty and tempting recipes, that's all that really mattered. In fact, I've generally preferred blogs whose writers steer clear of any philosophical or political discussions. My reason for this isn't that I don't think a vegan food blog is a great place to do vegan advocacy. In fact, I do. I've talked to many vegan food bloggers and cookbook authors, though, who've pointed out that it's time-consuming enough to figure out a recipe, test it, perfect it, plug it into step-by-step instructions, take mouth-watering photos of it and then present it in a complete well-edited package to appeal to vegan and non-vegan readers.

I'll Pass on the Welfarism, Thanks!

I'll admit that I usually side-step food blogs where groups like HSUS or PETA are very obviously promoted. I do understand that one of the ways in which some food bloggers end up increasing their readership is to catch the attention of some of the welfarist movers and shakers. I'm guessing that a single mention in an article by some of the talking heads of the welfarist movement could easily not just triple or quadruple a blogger's audience, but take that blogger from being virtually unknown outside of a small circle of loyal followers and launch her (or him) to vegan foodie superstardom with ad revenue, donated products, cookbook deals, et al. More than one vegan food blogger has mentioned to me that as much as they wish they could actively promote abolitionist principles, that the welfare-bashing associations that go with it usually leave them passed over by the wide majority of vegans (or others seeking out plant-based recipes) who align themselves with welfarist groups and causes.

"I'm out to share yummy vegan recipes and to make life easier for those who aren't handy in the kitchen," said one food blogger to me recently. "I'd rather leave the ethics and politics to those who have the time, knowledge and patience." And quite honestly? I have no issue with that. I'd rather see a vegan food blogger be focused and successful at what (s)he does and stay apolitical than promote welfarist organizations. I'd also rather see a food blogger be focused and successful at what (s)he does than see that blogger engage in awkward or half-hearted advocacy that ends up just confusing his or her readers.

And When Something Like This Comes Up?

Around a month ago, I was scrolling through my vegan food blog feed. I follow a lot of them, primarily since (like many vegans) I love to cook, but also since I manage an international vegan recipes page of sorts on Facebook and am always looking for recipes to share there. The headline "10 Ways to be Vegan" grabbed my intention immediately. It was on a blog called Namely Marly. Expecting the best, I was left sighing and shaking my head just a few paragraphs in. I shared a link with a vegan friend, quipping: "Could have been straight outta The Onion, no?" and finished the article. It was so nonsensical that I kept waiting for a "punch-line". I found none.

The tip-off should have been Marly's celebration of the latest celebrities to go on a short term plant-based diet weight-loss cleanse. Oh golly, oh gee! The fact that they stuck to it for 22 whole days left Marly giddy with excitement and referencing Jay-Z as left pondering whether he's stay on a "plant-based diet or become a semi- or part-time vegan".

Marly proceeds to ask if we can be "vegan by degrees". When I saw this, I thought that she would perhaps discuss transitioning and how it happens in steps in an obvious and deliberate manner towards eliminating our consumption of animal products. Instead, Marly chooses to use "vegan by degrees" to describe humans who don't, in fact, intend to remove themselves from the cycle of animal exploitation. First, she keeps conflating veganism with "a vegan diet". (If you're actually reading this blog post, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that you already know that veganism is not a diet, right?) She mentions people to whom she's spoken who "started a vegan diet" and then found it too hard to do every day and to commit to for the long haul. She quips: "And all this thinking led me to a conclusion: you don’t have to be 'whole hog' to be vegan."

Marly then goes gets entangled in the same-old "all-or-nothing" argument that anti-vegans often use to try to undermine veganism by insisting that we shouldn't bother even trying to go vegan, since there is purportedly no such thing as a 100% vegan. You know the ones? They argue that since there are unavoidable forms of animal use in the world that we should excuse away indulging in the avoidable forms? For instance, they will sometimes argue that since insects and small mammals are destroyed in fields in agriculture, that it's hypocritical for vegans to eat vegetables and then point out that it's unethical to consume meat, dairy, eggs, to support circuses or rodeos, et al. She begins with the straw-manish premise that the definition of veganism "is to eat or behave in a manner that causes zero animal suffering" and then after offering up examples of unavoidable animal suffering caused by humans, concludes that it's only logical that anyone who acknowledges that these (unavoidable) forms of animal use and abuse exist should easily "understand [her] concept of [what she calls] Vegan by Degrees". Her ten "ways" to be vegan?

1) Dietary Vegan
Marny's first pick falls in line with the understanding of veganism she presents earlier in her piece, which is of veganism as a diet. She specifies that that the only forms of animals use of concern to these "vegans" involved what they put into their mouths and bellies.

2) Ethical Vegan
Here she describes actual vegans who (gasp!) apparently take veganism "to the next level" by eschewing animal products they don't put into their mouths and bellies. They're the hardcore extremist vegans, of course. This second point of hers really serves to remind me of how I loathe when animal activists (even if innocuously so) qualify the term "vegan" with the word "ethical", since it leaves the door wide open for others to insert different qualifiers (e.g. see Marly's first point for an example).

3) Green Vegan
These are apparently vegans who eschew all animal products, just like ethical vegans, but do so for environmental reasons. Because apparently visiting the zoo contributes to global warming. But seriously, folks... There have been so many pro-animal use arguments and justifications made on behalf of saving the environment, that trying to argue that there's such a thing as a "green vegan" who rejects all forms of animal use that a so-called "ethical vegan" would is bizarre. I've heard people argue over the benefit of using leather -- a slaughterhouse by-product -- rather than using fossil fuels or other chemicals to make synthetic replacements. Some have even argued that the energy used up in making and distributing processed meat substitutes leave a heavier ecologically destructive footprint than growing, slaughtering and consuming your own backyard bunnies. The list goes on...

4) Raw Vegan
See #1 but unplug your oven..

5) Plant-based Vegan
This is apparently a "dietary vegan" who won't eat processed foods. Even if those processed foods are plant-based. This is a new one for me. The term "plant-based" has been used widely by all kinds of cookbook authors, athletes and so on during the last few years who've at least been candid about their promotion of a strict vegetarian diet versus trying to pretend that they are promoting a type of veganism. Why Marly has chosen to try to redefine this is just plain weird. Although I guess that when you are attempting to try to fabricate a list of ten supposed "degrees of veganism" that you're bound to yank anything out of the ether that you can. No bonus points for originality here, though.

6) The Paris Vegan
This. This made me chortle. Marly references the so-very-often-mocked Peter Singer's "Paris exception", which is where Singer says that it's OK to exploit animal products if you're on vacation or a guest in someone's home and don't want to appear rude. I have heard vegan eyes rolling in unison from hundreds -- thousands -- of miles away over this one. (OK, so there's a bit of hyperbole involved in the previous sentence...) It's funny that Marly would bring it up as a legitimate type of veganism, but I suspect that this would be completely lost on her.

7) VB6
Vegan Before 6 -- Mark Bittman's fad diet. You know, the one where you can call yourself vegan as long as you don't consume animal products for 1-2 meals a day. Then for the third, you can have the bacon double-cheeseburger and milkshake with a side of foie gras and still pat yourself on the back for being... ungh... vegan.

8) Weekday/Weekend Vegan
So this is for those for whom something like the Vegan Before 6 "type" of veganism would be just too dang hard. Marly's offering you a better option: Just go vegan on the weekends or somethin'. It's like Meatless Monday X 2 (but presumably with dairy and eggs, though Marly hasn't really specified this and given all of her other so-called definitions, I hardly dare speculate as to how fast and loose she's chosen to play this one. I'll err on the side of caution and guess that it may very well involve just not eating meat on weekends. Or maybe just not eating white chickens who've been raised in Maryland. Yeah. That's it.

9) Virtually Vegan
This is basically a lacto-ovo vegetarian. But Marly uses the entry as an opportunity to argue on behalf of eating honey: "You know, if you think about it, honey is a very natural sweetener and bee keepers are very motivated to take good care of their bees."

10) Travel Vegan
This is sort of like the so-called Paris Vegan mentioned earlier, except instead of option to consume animal products to perhaps not inconvenience a host while you're travelling, you opt to consume animal products to not inconvenience yourself and to not deprive yourself of a beautiful cultural experience involving the torture and slaughter of another being.

Yes, she really wrote that list. Yes, she is actually serious about it. In fact, the rest of her piece is devoted to encouraging her readers to take it easy on themselves and to be flexible about their "vegan" participation in animal exploitation, outing herself as a comfortable "90-95%" vegan. She writes:

At some point in time you’re going to have to make a decision about what percentage of veganism you can afford or be happy with. For me, that 90 – 95% range works just fine. On a day-to-day basis I don’t eat any meat, dairy, or eggs. I even read the labels on my garments and shoes and do my best to avoid the ones made with leather. But I stop there. I don’t call the manufacturer to find out if the glue that was used in the shoe I want to buy was made from animal products. And I don’t ask the server if the bun that comes with my veggie burger has egg in it.

Marly even takes it further by engaging in that old familiar vegan-shaming that groups like Vegan Outreach engage in to make vegans feel guilty about actually making an effort to avoid animal products. She begins by bringing up a scenario where a vegan is served non-vegan food by a family member, choosing an example where a soy cheese containing dairy has been used. She presents two possible reactions to this: 1) Eating it "with gusto" and shutting the fuck up about it, or 2) A scenario where the vegan foists upon the hapless family member "a lecture or some kind of patronizing comment about how the cheese they used was only 98% vegan". Other than devouring the food in happy silence, Marly informs her readers that "any other reaction would be rude".

But the thing is that if a family member had actually gone to the trouble, had actually taken your ethical beliefs so seriously that he or she would have tried to prepare a dish which was appropriate for you, is it so unthinkable that the family member might understand completely if you politely declined to consume the animal product? Furthermore, since Marly is opposed to questioning servers -- people to whom she is not emotionally attached -- about animal ingredients in her food, I can't help but wonder how on earth she would have even found out about the dairy in her host's dish. You know? Since asking people what they are handing you to put in your belly is a pain in the arse.

She counsels her "well-intentioned" readers to loosen up about their consumption choices and to not let those choices be governed "by restrictive, arbitrary rules". (Because asking a server whether the veggie burger on the menu is actually vegan is restrictive; being expected -- as a vegan -- to at least make a simple effort to avoid easily-avoidable animal products in a restaurant is the needless self-imposition of an arbitrary rule. And Marly makes it clear that self-imposition is an unnecessary burden. "If giving up mozzarella feels like pulling out a fingernail then just relax about it," she tells her readers. "It's all good," she reassures them, postulating that she is perhaps "brilliant".

But you see, it's not enough for Marly to out herself as a non-vegan "vegan" and to present her readers with many non-vegan types of "veganism". If you have ever read similar articles before, you know that they always come with a good self-protective dose of shaming. Those of us who have the incivility to both be unequivocal about veganism, as well as to -- gasp! -- point out that deliberate participation in avoidable animal exploitation (whether indulged in gleefully or not) isn't vegan? Well, Marly tells her readers to swing those awful, mean and critical vegans a wide, wide berth. "They don’t eat white, refine sugar because it was processed using bone chard [sic]. So they think you shouldn’t either." (Said no vegan ever about a cane sugar manufacturer switching to leafy greens to filter its sugar!)

But on a more troubling and serious note, Marly (after managing to direct a dose of the aforementioned shaming at the actual vegans who left comments in response to her post) calls upon the "community" to be "inclusive" rather than "exclusive" and tells her readers to toss aside those horrible restrictive and arbitrary "guidelines" (uh... like avoiding animal use for selfish pleasure?) and to just suss out what they're comfortable with on their own and to (I guess) call that their own personal form of veganism. She praises all of the readers who agree with her wholeheartedly that the "options" she's presented make (what she still insists on calling) veganism more easy. She ignores most of the more thoughtful and well-reasoned points brought up to explain what veganism is or isn't, though my favourite comment from The Rational Vegan goes completely over her head. Instead, she basks in the adoration of her non-vegan readers who've felt vindicated in their continued use of animal products.

Although I love (love, love, love!) vegan food bloggers, a vegan food blogger Marly surely ain't. Popularity is important for a food blogger, vegan or otherwise. As indicated at the beginning of my post, I get that. I really do. But, for the ever-lovin' sake of all that's left that is good in this world, when that popularity is built upon the blood and bodies of other sentient beings? That's where I draw the line and become that supposed "hater" and "ideologue". But you know what? That's my own "authentic swing" and Marly? She's just been chiseled away from my recipe blogs reading list. There are puh-lenty of other actually "authentic" vegan food bloggers out there whose work I would much rather follow and support. If that makes me a "judgmental" meanie, I'm pretty comfortable with that option.

On Sprinkles and Integrity

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 19:08:00 +0000

I was flipping through my Facebook newsfeed a few days ago and noticed that my friend Denise had posted a couple of emails to a small vegan group to which we both belong. They concerned Vegan Treats. Surely if you're reading this blog, you have heard of this vegan bakery in Bethlehem, PA? It's particularly well-known for selling its desserts wholesale to stores and vegan restaurants in neighbouring states. I made a pilgrimage to sample some of their cheesecake during a 2010 trip to Pennsylvania and, as recently as last month, I had a slice of their chocolate strawberry shortcake at the wonderful Vegetarian's Paradise 2 in New York City.

I was curious about the exchange between Denise and, at first, Konya herself, then store manager Joy Grant. Denise has agreed to let me share the messages here. This first one was sent by her via Facebook to the Vegan Treats page on September 3. When no response was received, she sent a copy of it by email on September 9:

Hello,

I am hoping that Danielle will see this message.

My family and I have been vegan for around 8 years and visit your bakery fairly often. During one visit in the spring we noticed that you use Sprinkle King brand sprinkles. My daughter is a baker and stated that Sprinkle King is not vegan as they contain confectioner's glaze (with insect shellac). We also noted that there was a case of Chex brand cereal in the kitchen, and to my knowledge they contain non-vegan vitamin D.

We visited again the day of the Bethlehem Vegfest and saw the same brand of sprinkles there. I asked the woman behind the counter if the sprinkles are vegan. She assured me they were, and said she would double check with the manager in the back. She came back to again assure us that the sprinkles are vegan but she said she was not permitted to let us know the brand being used.

I am not sure what to do in this situation. I have always thought that a bakery run by an ethical vegan would use all vegan ingredients and that I would not have to doubt any product purchased there. This has caused me to wonder what other ingredients are not vegan at Vegan Treats. I have friends and acquaintances that frequent your bakery and I feel that I have to let them know of this situation, that I would be ethically in the wrong if I did not at least give them the information I have. I wanted to check with you first however.

I hope you can see this not as an attack or threat, but as a plea for more information. Please let me know your thoughts.

I also sent this via FaceBook last week and have not heard anything back.

Thank you for listening.

Denise

On September 9, Danielle Konya replied to her initial message, but via Facebook. Her response was the following:

Good afternoon, Denise!

Thank you very much for contacting us and for being a loyal fan of Vegan Treats! I would be happy to explain some of your concerns.

I have been vegan for over 20 years, and started my bakery as a means to support my activism. I can assure you, I hold the purity of my desserts to my own very high, personal standards.

We do utilize Chex brand cereal in our bakery. Although their source of Vitamin D can sometimes be controversial, I have chosen to stand in line with various guidebooks, and community members, including PETA.org, and to consider this cereal to be vegan.

I have also chosen to utilize a brand of sprinkles that does contain Confectioner's Glaze. Although this is a very controversial ingredient within the vegan community, I would prefer to be transparent with my customers, and allow them to make the choice for themselves. I would like to apologize for any confusion there may have been in regard to the permissibility of sharing brand names. I am always happy to share product information with customers, and want everyone who dines here to be comfortable in their choices.

The far-reaching, negative implications that living in our civilization has on animals is an incredibly sad and unfortunate fact of life. I wish as much as anyone else, that I could ensure my shoes, food packaging, office supplies, cotton t-shirts, etc. were 100% cruelty-free, but realistically, I can not. Instead, I have to make educated choices that have as great of a positive implication as possible.

Please, feel free to email myself, or my management team anytime. Our email address is info@vegantreats.com Utilizing email always gets a faster response than our facebook page, simply due to the fact that we are always logged in to our mail account.

Thank you again for being a customer, and for taking the time to message us,

Danielle Konya

OK, so do you see what happened there? Denise, a loyal customer, messages Vegan Treats because she and her daughter visited the Vegan Treats home store and noticed both non-vegan Sprinkle King brand sprinkles and a case of non-vegan Chex cereal. On August 23, a visit to the Bethlehem Vegfest left her finding Vegan Treats there and using the same non-vegan sprinkles. When she inquired about them later at the Vegan Treats store, she was told by an employee that they were vegan. The Vegan Treats employee even double-checked with someone else and then repeated to Denise that they were vegan -- but then refused to confirm their brand name? Now, if an employee pulled that sort of stunt at a regular old bakery or restaurant, a vegan's instant reaction might be to suspect that the employee was being less than honest, yes? But why would an employee at a vegan bakery seek to withhold ingredient information from a vegan customer? Unless, as Danielle Konya confirmed in her response to Denise, they were NOT vegan, after all.

An animal ingredient is an animal ingredient is an animal ingredient. Confectioner's glaze, is an animal ingredient. For those of you who don't know, it's the name candy manufacturers use to refer to shellac. According to the Vegetarian Resource Group, "Shellac is a coating or glaze derived from the hardened, resinous material secreted by the lac insect, much like honey from a bee" and "300,000 lac insects are killed for every kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of lac resin produced". Furthermore, "[a]pproximately 25% of all unrefined, harvested lac resin is composed of 'insect debris' and other impurities". You can read all about it here.

Konya takes about the "purity" of her ingredients and "transparency" with her customers -- wanting to let them "make the choice for themselves", but the truth is that she wasn't transparent and she didn't let them choose. Konya fed her customers ingredients with which she knew many of them (e.g. the actual ethical vegans) would take issue. Had Denise not noticed the sprinkles and the cereal, she would never have known. None of Vegan Treats' customers could have known. There was no transparency in any of this. And she most certainly didn't allow her customers to make any decision "for themselves". She made it for them. With regards to the Chex cereal, she wrote: "I have chosen to stand in line with various guidebooks, and community members, including PETA.org, and to consider this cereal to be vegan". That was her decision: not her customers'. Even though she knew that it would be problematic -- "controversial" to some of her customers. What she did manage to do, sadly, was to deceive her customers.

On September 12, Denise replied to Danielle, messaging her through Facebook:

Hello Danielle

Thank you very much for the thoughtful reply.

My concern is mainly the lack of transparency that I personally experienced when asking directly if the sprinkles were vegan. If someone were to go in today and ask that same question, what reply would they receive?

I hope you can understand my feelings. I feel betrayed, as I have always confidently bought your goods with the understanding that everything was vegan in your shop. I have never seen the information posted anywhere in the shop that the sprinkles were questionable. Will this information be made available so people can make an informed choice? I never felt the need to ask before as I had assumed that all ingredients would be vegan.

Thank you again,

Denise

Instead of a response from Danielle, Denise received one that same day from Joy Grant, denying there had been any deception in Vegan Treats' serving its customers animal ingredients and referring to Denise's questioning the use of an animal ingredient as her own personal (perhaps fussy?) choice:

Good afternoon Denise,
Thank you for emailing us! I'd like to introduce myself, my name is Joy Grant, I am a member of the management team here at Vegan Treats. Danielle is out of the country, but with her advisement and permission, I'd like to continue your conversation.

We were also concerned with the explanation our counter person provided. It is not the managent or owner's intention to hide anything from our customers. Our bakery is designed with an open concept, we enjoy providing visitors with a behind the scenes view of our kitchen.

We encourage everyone to make choices in their life that allow them to fall asleep at night knowing they did the best they could for the world. Some do more, some do less, but we hope all try. I sincerely appreciate your dedication to this compassionate lifestyle that we all share, and although you have chosen to avoid sprinkles containing confectioner's glaze, we are going to continue using them in our bakery. We respect your position wholeheartedly, and have decided that our use of sprinkles is a choice we can stand behind.

Moving forward, our staff know that it is imperative to be honest and straightforward with all of our customers. If they are ever confused, they are encouraged to pass along our email account, names, and various work hours, so that we may help everyone with confidence. We are also in the process of re-designing our website, which will include a page of FAQs, one regarding our sprinkles has already been drafted.

I hope I've helped answer your concerns. Please feel free to call or email me. I will be back in the bakery on Monday, and available for a phone call anytime between 9am and 3pm. I check my email account regularly, please do not hesitate to email me over the weekend if you prefer.

Thank you,

Joy Grant Vegan Treats Bakery

As a vegan, I am more than familiar with being deceived about animal ingredients. In my case, it was the first Xmas I spent in my hometown after having gone vegan. I was eating at my sister's. I had offered to bring a few dishes, but she'd refused, listing off a number of things I'd be able to have. I still brought a few things. My brother-in-law was doing most of the cooking and, at one point, I offered to help. He shooed me out of the kitchen and as I was walking out, I noticed him haul out a container of chicken bouillon powder and proceed to spoon some of it into first the boiling pot of baby carrots, then the wax beans. It was with his spoon hanging over the pot of wax beans that he saw me watching him and that he moved his body to hide the container from view.

At the table, I refused to eat anything except what I had brought, along with a plain baked potato. When pressed by my sister, I told her why. Both she and my brother-in-law sighed. He at first denied having done it and when I made it clear that I had seen him in action, he downplayed it, saying that it was just a small amount of "seasoning", that I was being picky, that I could rinse it off, etc. But in the end it wasn't the amount of bouillon powder that mattered. It was the deception. It ended up being the last time I ever ate at my sister's because even knowing my ethical stance, my brother-in-law took it upon himself to get me to eat something he realized I could very well have a serious issue eating -- something I would even refuse to eat. I felt that my trust had been betrayed and that my choices and stance had been disregarded and disrespected. That was what was unforgiveable. Mistakes happen, but being fed animal ingredients on purpose without my consent? I felt violated. Wouldn't you? Now, can you imagine something like this happening in another vegan's kitchen?

That's exactly how another vegan felt after hearing the news about Vegan Treats and reading Denise's exchange with them. On September 12, after having left queries on Vegan Treats' Facebook page and having had them deleted, Sabrina emailed them directly:

As a vegan and customer of Vegan Treats, I am unbelievably shocked and disappointed in your bakery. It was bad enough to learn that VEGAN Treats is using non-vegan ingredients, but then to have my FB posts deleted and to be blocked for asking simple questions is beyond all belief.

I have to tell you - this doesn't bode well for your business. The fact that this is how you handle your customer relations (deleting/blocking for polite questions) says a lot about your company, as does the fact that you advertise as a vegan establishment and are definitely NOT.

I know many vegans and will be getting the word out about your ingredients and unprofessional behavior. People have a right to know, as much as you want to suppress that knowledge.

Sabrina

Their response to her later that day was the following:

Hi Sabrina,

Thank you for emailing us, we would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Emailing, calling, or even stopping by in person is always the most effective means of reaching a member of the management team, rather than navigating through our 3rd-party monitored social media accounts. These outlets are, admittedly, used for basic promotional material, event information, topical "blurbs", etc. and aren't, admittedly, the best way to get a personalized answer to questions, order placements, shipping status questions, and the like.

I am sure you are referring to Vegan Treats' decision to utilize sprinkles that contain confectioner's glaze, and our use of Rice Chex Cereal in our gluten-free cheesecakes. We have chosen to utilize a brand of sprinkles that does contain Confectioner's Glaze. Although this is a very controversial ingredient within the vegan community, we would prefer to be transparent with my customers, and allow them to make the choice for themselves. Vegan Treats is always happy to share product information with customers, and want everyone who dines here to be comfortable in their choices. We do utilize Chex brand cereal in our bakery. Although their source of Vitamin D can sometimes be controversial, we have chosen to stand in line with various guidebooks, and community members, including PETA.org, and to consider this cereal to be vegan.

The far-reaching, negative implications that living in our civilization has on animals is an incredibly sad and unfortunate fact of life. We here at Vegan Treats, wish as much as anyone else, that we could ensure our shoes, food packaging, office supplies, cotton t-shirts, etc. were 100% cruelty-free, but realistically, we can not. Instead, we have to make educated choices that have as great of a positive impact as possible.

We hope that the vegan community can join together to recognize the importance of vegan businesses, and instead of fighting one another, we join together to discourage our friends, family members, neighbors, and strangers from patronizing "traditional" restaurants, bakeries, and grocery store aisles.

Please feel free to email anytime,

Joy Grant
Vegan Treats Bakery

Basically, Joy admitted once again that Vegan Treats was fully aware that the sprinkles they were using contained confectioner's glaze (i.e. shellac, an animal product) and spoke of transparency and of claiming to want to give customers the choice whether to consume them or not. (Of course, as previously mentioned, that involves actually letting your customers know, in the first place, that you're feeding them animal products.) She used the old "you can't be 100% vegan because of the cruelty inherent in producing everything unavoidable in day-to-day life" argument to excuse away knowingly using cereal and sprinkles -- SPRINKLES! -- containing animal ingredients. And then, in what smacks of a subtle nose-thumbing gesture, she shamed Sabrina and accused her of not recognizing "the importance of vegan (sic) businesses" and choosing to purportedly fight with her fellow vegans rather than trying to discourage friends and family from shopping at "'traditional' restaurants, bakeries and grocery store aisles". In short: "Quit your whining. PETA says it's all good to serve you lanolin and ground up insects and their secretions. You should be supporting us instead of the other businesses who (also) serve their customers animal products."

Sabrina's reasonable response to this, sent later that same evening:

Joy, Confectioners glaze is not vegan; there is no controversy. I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to find a vegan who agreed that eating bugs was vegan. You do realize that confectioners glaze has bugs, right? The lac bug, to be exact. Also, you do realize there are alternatives, right? As far as Chex, Vitamin D3 is derived from sheep lanolin. I'm sorry, but how is this vegan? You realize that vegan means NO animal products, right? If you are so "transparent" then IMMEDIATELY stop deleting your customers' posts from your FB page, and let your customers know about your sprinkles and the Chex. I also don't appreciate the comment about "fighting" one another. Expecting a vegan bakery to have vegan products is not "fighting."

And the final word from Vegan Treats?

Hello again, Sabrina,

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and knowledge with us. Under the owner's guidance, we have all been educated on Confectioner's Glaze, its production, and its contents. Although you may have decided not to consume anything containing confectioner's glaze, Vegan Treats is going to continue in its use of our current sprinkles, albeit with our eyes open to commercially-available, confectioner's glaze-free sprinkles.
The entire team at Vegan Treats is happy to answer any questions our customers may have, feel free to call or email us anytime.

Sincerely,

Joy Grant
Vegan Treats Bakery

Basically: "We know exactly that insect secretions and their ground up parts go into our sprinkles. Maybe you don't like that, but we're going to keep serving them. See ya!" On September 13, I decided to post information about what was happening on the My Face Is on Fire page on Facebook. I thought that Vegan Treats' vegan customers should be made aware of what was happening. A reader decided to contact them and received a message from them in which the company backtracked completely, proclaiming not only that they were, in fact, going to pull the sprinkles, but that they had apparently -- unlike what they'd told Denise and Sabrina -- had no clue that the sprinkles contained animal ingredients. An excerpt:

Since we received a concerned email from a loyal customer, the confectioner's glaze issue in our sprinkles has been our number one concern. Rest assured you have no worries when it comes to Vegan Treats; our goal is and will always be the protection of all living creatures. We go to great lengths to make sure all of our products are vegan, but sometimes we can be mislead by the companies that we are supporting.

Danielle has been an ethical vegan for over twenty years, and had rarely encountered the issue with confectioner's glaze. We seldom use the sprinkles and believed them to be 100% vegan. We were assured by the company when we researched them that they did not contain any insect byproducts. Vegan Treats has never meant to deceive or mislead our customers, and we try to be as transparent as possible. We appreciate your concerns because they are ours as well. We have already discontinued the use of the sprinkles and are reaching out to find an alternative.

Now, the good news is that after enough expressed outrage, they finally paid attention and decided to stop using the sprinkles (no mention of the cereal). The weird news? That they would suddenly play innocent and suggest that they had been duped and had not known that the sprinkles contained insect ingredients. Another reader shared with me a similar messages he received from Vegan Treats that day, again vaguely suggesting that Vegan Treats had been misled into thinking that the sprinkles were free of animal products. They also mentioned "investigating" the non-vegan Chex cereal they were using. That same day, Danielle Konya ended up posting on the Vegan Treats Facebook page, describing Vegan Treats as "an ethical vegan company" and emphasizing her devotion and dedicated to other animals. It also stated the following:

Our distributor told us that the confectioners glaze in the sprinkles does not contain shellac. There’s some debate now if confectioners glaze can ever be vegan. Until we can find out with absolute certainty, we are taking a proactive step to discontinue the use of sprinkles in our products because of an inability to verify definitively the ingredients of confectioners glaze.

The thing is that confectioner's glaze is shellac. And it doesn't take a PhD or a heap of super-human insight to suss out that had the folks at Vegan Treats actually believed that their confectioner's glaze (i.e. shellac) didn't contain shellac, they would not have presented it to Denise and Sabrina as a "controversial" ingredient and written all that they did about having been completely educated on its contents and on how we can't expect to be perfect vegans and 100% "cruelty-free" and that they were going to keep using it anyway, even if fussy vegans like Denise and Sabrina chose not to consume it.

Comments were left in response to asking for clarification and Danielle wrote at 3:26 pm on September 14: "We were told this glaze did not contain shellac, a product we wouldn't knowingly use." Denise's daughter, a hobby baker, knew from reading the ingredients on their packaging that the sprinkles contained confectioner's glaze (i.e. shellac) and in the letters to Denise and Sabrina, Danielle et al. admitted to knowing that the sprinkles contain confectioner's glaze -- and that they were going to use them anyway. Many vegans with whom I've spoken -- and even more who have left comments on the Vegan Treats Facebook page -- have agreed that it's one thing to make an honest mistake and to correct it, but that this entire situation has only been presented as an "honest mistake" in the desperate damage control done following the sharing of the initial exchange between Vegan Treats and Denise, in which Danielle Konya admitted to knowing what they were using and that she intended to keep using the non-vegan sprinkles.

And for those who may actually know the swept-under-the-carpet details about what transpired before the sprinkles were pulled, Konya had an article printed up in her local Lehigh Valley Live paper in which she managed to get HSUS' happy-animal-use-promoting Paul Shapiro to weigh in about nobody's being perfect and perfection being the enemy of the good (or the same old drivel used to prop up advocacy campaigns which stop short of unequivocally promoting veganism). And if anybody still wants to yammer about the possibility of her having deliberately fed her customers an insect-derived ingredient? Well, then Farm Sanctuary's Gene Baur also steps in to self-identify as a self-described "vegan" who occasionally consumes honey. The message is loud and clear: "Hey vegans? Quit your whining. Nobody's perfect and what's a little bit of bug juice, anyway? Now go eat one of Danielle's yummy eclairs!"

Perhaps popular welfarists Baur and Shapiro think there's nothing wrong with vegans knowingly consuming animal products, or with a supposed "ethical vegan" running what's described as "an ethical vegan business" purportedly accidentally feeding her customers animal products found in a common ingredient in the bakery world and widely known to be animal-derived. As I mentioned before, accidents can indeed happen. However, if you choose to water down your own definition of what it means to be vegan and you know that other vegans who may not have chosen to water down their own definitions of what it means to be vegan have placed their trust in you, you're burdened with this thing called "accountability" when it comes to your actions and when it comes to respecting their ethical decisions.

When your actions involve knowingly feeding your customers an animal-derived product you readily acknowledge could very well be deemed "controversial" at least (and repugnant and unacceptable at most), when you do so without full disclosure until someone outs you, when you do not cease doing so until there is enough outrage expressed? That's an entirely different story. And then when the damage control involves playing victim and sympathy-seeking and having others try to shame vegans for being concerned about having possibly been fed those animal ingredients in the first place? Instead of just admitting that you screwed up and knowingly fed your customers something you shouldn't have and promising to change, but instead you engage in a cover-up and the pros who have your back shame the vegans who were unequivocal about their choices? That, to me, is the deal-breaker. That's the "don't let the door hit you on your way out" unapologetically delivered by Vegan Treats to those who know what happened. And that's why I will never again knowingly purchase a product from Vegan Treats.

-------------

Please note: Any use of bold-type in the correspondence referenced above was by me.

The Great Divide

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 20:39:00 +0000

I was talking to a new local vegetarian friend and we were discussing restaurants we'd visited in other cities. I mentioned that I'd love to see a vegan restaurant open up here, in our shared city.

"Or at least a vegetarian one," she said.

"Well, that wouldn't guarantee vegan options," I pointed out.

"Well, it would probably be better than what's available now," she countered.

"In terms of convenience for vegans? Not really. When they shuffle out meat, they usually shuffle in lots of cheese," I explained, mentioning a bunch of places in town with vegetarian items on the menu which were completely unsuitable for vegans.

"Well, something is better than nothing," she said. "And at least it would get people thinking about not eating meat."

"A vegan restaurant would be better than nothing and would get people thinking about not using other animals at all."

"Well, I have no problem with eating cheese," she said. "It's not the same as eating meat."

"It's all the same," I said. "There's as much suffering and death involved in eating a grilled cheese sandwich as there is in eating a hamburger."

"But it wouldn't really go over, though. A vegan restaurant would be too weird. People like cheese too much and you have to be willing to make some compromises and to draw them in with something."

"How about drawing them in with really good food that happens to not involve animal exploitation?" I suggested.

"You know what I mean," she said, annoyed.

"I think what you mean is that you don't really want to have to eat a dish that doesn't have cheese in it."

Silence.

"Hey, maybe we can have a vegan restaurant with cheese, eggs and meat options for those who want them," I joked sarcastically.

"That would be great!" she replied enthusiastically. "Just no meat, though. I'd rather not watch people eating animals."

"I'd rather not watch people using animals at all," I said, realizing that we weren't getting anywhere, and reminded once again of the great, great divide between vegans and vegetarians.

Why I Obsess over Veganism

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 15:00:00 +0000

A vegan messaged me this morning to say that she thinks that by "obsessing over veganism", abolitionists are apparently doing animals a "disservice". She asserted (the tired old): "Not everybody will go vegan for the animals, so you should at least try to convince them to eat less meat or to do Meatless Mondays. Every little bit helps and telling them it's not enough unless they go vegan just alienates them and leaves them doing nothing at all."

So here's the thing… If I was against wife beating and advocated against wife beating, would someone else who was against wife beating actually say the following to me?

"Not everybody will stop beating their wives, so you should at least try to convince them to hit them a little less hard or to hit them a little less often. Every little bit helps and telling them that it's not enough unless they stop beating their wives altogether just alienates them and leaves them doing nothing at all."

Sounds ludicrous, right? The person who sent me the message thought so and reminded me that we were discussing "animals and not humans". I reminded her that humans are animals and that it's precisely this "us vs. them" mentality–of deeming them inferior because they're of a different species–that's used an excuse for the atrocities we inflict upon them.

We're already overrun with advocates from large welfarist groups telling the public that "every little bit counts" and that it's alright for them to keep using animals as long as they use them a little less often or a "little less cruelly". These large animal welfarist groups are generally well-funded by non-vegans who cherry-pick animal causes because they sometimes view some species (e.g. dolphins, seal pups, dogs, etc.) as more worthy of moral consideration than others (e.g. cows, chickens, pigs, fishes, etc.). These large welfarist groups are already effectively promoting this backwards "less is more" message to non-vegans while catering to their speciesism.

I have no interest in reinforcing someone’s belief that other animals are in any way whatsoever ours to use. They're not ours to use if we use them a little bit less often. They’re not ours to use if we give them slightly bigger cages. They’re not ours to use if PETA or HSUS give someone wet sloppy kisses for finding a way to steal their lives that is 10% less horrific than it would otherwise be. They're not ours to use, period. Giving them any less consideration is speciesist. You know what else? Giving them any less consideration as a vegan doesn't somehow cancel out speciesism. Yes, even vegans have a long way to go in identifying and addressing our own speciesism. The evidence for this is most obvious to me when fellow vegans suggest that we should accept their continued use and wrap our advocacy around this acceptance, rather than educating the public to stop using them and to go vegan.

As long as we condone and applaud half-hearted measures where other animals continue to be used, we merely reinforce the speciesist status quo, when it's speciesism itself that we truly and desperately need to eradicate. We owe animals more than to contribute to what we already know is the problem, no?

On Speciesism and Token Gestures

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 20:10:00 +0000

The bottom line is that for any animal advocacy to bring about meaningful long term change for the billions killed each and every year for human pleasure, it needs to address speciesism. Convincing someone to give up beef for climate change, fishes to save the oceans or meat on one day a week for personal health? It merely persuades people to make token gestures for themselves -- often just temporarily -- rather than to initiate meaningful permanent change for other animals. People are left feeling better about choosing the other animal products they'll invariably choose to replace the ones they may omit or use less often. They become convinced that those other options are better or more ethical choices. They’re left feeling good that they’ve done “enough” – and hey, if animal advocates are patting them on the back for it, then surely they’re doing enough, right?

Some animal advocates argue that "something is better than nothing", assuming that getting non-vegans to shuffle animal products around is actually "something" in the first place. How is it "something" if instead of having a burger for lunch on Meatless Monday, someone instead has an omelette? How is it "something" if someone decides to stop consuming beef, but instead chooses to eat chickens or fishes? And why this false dichotomy, as if the only two options available in animal advocacy result in varying degrees of the continued deliberate exploitation of others? Is it not incredibly arrogant for us to think that although a message got through to us and we went vegan that the same could not possibly occur with others?

Those advocates insist that getting non-vegans to "lower" their animal consumption is some sort of "step in the right direction", when the truth is that unless that direction is towards veganism, there are no actual "steps" being taken. When we try to persuade non-vegans to make small token gestures for themselves – for their health, their environment – rather than attempt to persuade them to make meaningful changes for the sake of those billions of others whose lives we steal each and every year, we are bargaining away the lives of innocents. Without addressing the underlying problem of speciesism and turning people’s focus to those others, we have no hope of seriously shifting the status quo.

Worse is that when animal advocates convey to the public that veganism is "too hard" and applaud token gestures, they actually leave the general public less willing to hear and weigh animal rights advocacy and an actual vegan message. After all, why would they listen when they’ve been told that they’ve already done enough? This is the horrible damage caused by groups like Vegan Outreach and all of the other large welfarist groups who pump their fists in the air over false victories. This is the horrible damage which we’re left to undo.

Time Magazine Takes the Low Road

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 15:07:00 +0000

I missed this article by Jeffrey Kluger a few weeks ago. I figure that it's because the writing at Time Magazine has been generally unimpressive over the years and that even if the piece had shown up in my news feed, my eyes may have glazed over a little and I may have moved on to the next item. It caught my attention this morning on the Gary Francione: The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights Facebook page, where Prof. Francione had included a link and brief commentary in response to it. The general consensus by all, myself included, was that it's garbage journalism at its worst.

According to the Wikipedia entry on him, Kluger is a senior writer with Time. He's taught journalism at New York University, he's written for magazines like Science Digest and he's written several science-related books, including one eventually used by Ron Howard to form the basis for his Apollo 13 film. A bit more digging, however, brings up that he was lambasted just two years ago when he wrote a piece on the Higgs Boson discovery and several science writers immediately fingered it as being "riddled" with errors.

Knowing this makes the poor quality of "Don't Feel Guilty About Eating Animals" a bit more understandable, if not more acceptable. On his Facebook page, Francione summed it up by saying that Kluger "argues that we are hardwired to justify immoral behavior and, therefore, we should feel free to engage in immoral behavior". Basically, Kluger's piece is about a study showing that if people do things that make them uncomfortable (e.g. things which they feel or know are wrong to do), they will try to justify it. According to Kluger, this fact in turn warrants that they continue to engage in the behaviour they've attempted to justify.

Kluger's opening sentence itself is scientifically wrong. He writes: "Like it or not, you're a carnivore." Ask any nutritionist or dietitian, general practitioner or high school biology teacher and they'll set you straight: Humans are omnivores. This trendy use of "carnivore" as a buzzword in mainstream media articles ranting against veganism or animal rights has really gotten old. Kluger then goes on to say that if a cow wanted to -- and could -- eat you, she would, as if the fact that if a cow suddenly became a carnivore and might eat you is justification right off the bat for the continued human consumption of cows. (It's basically a spin on the whole "Lions eat other animals, therefore we should do what lions do" line of reasoning.)

How many logical fallacies and falsehoods can one man stuff into a single paragraph, you've always wondered? Now you know:

The hard truth is, we eat meat, we love meat, and our bodies are built to digest meat. It would be nice if we could pick the stuff off the trees, but we can’t. So apologies to goats and pigs and cows and chickens and fish and lobster and shrimp and all the other scrumptious stuff that flies and walks and swims, but you’re goin’ down.

Just because we do something doesn't justify continuing to do it. "Loving" the taste of something (e.g. cigars, handfuls of sugar, antifreeze, etc.) doesn't justify continuing to consume it. As for picking the stuff on trees? I'm guessing that Kluger has never eaten a fruit or nut in his life.

Kluger basically says that in response to the guilt humans may feel as the result of their consuming animal products that they have two options: He mocks the first, which he says is to go vegan ("try that for a week") and suggests that the second is to morally absolve ourselves of wrongdoing -- to convince ourselves that we're still nice folks even if we continue to engage in behaviour we know is unethical. He brings up animal intelligence as a means to shrug off our exploitation, citing the deadbeat dad of the animal rights movement, Peter Singer, as having told him that "there’s very little likelihood that oysters, mussels and clams have any consciousness, so it’s defensible to eat them.” History has shown, however, that Singer is no advocate for other animals. For Kluger to cite him as a sort of authoritative voice to add weight to his own argument that it's alright to eat some of them? It's sort of laughable. At least it's laughable to anyone who has kept up with reactions in animal rights circles to Singer's blatherings in recent years.

Kluger uses this as a springboard to further discuss animal intelligence (calling the chicken "as sublimely dumb an animal as ever lived") and uses the terms "intelligent", "mindful" and "conscious" interchangeably. He writes that most people agree that "the more mindful an animal is, the less defensible it is to eat it" and that, the more one tends to eat a certain species, the lower one tends to rate that species' "consciousness". Basically, our perceptions alter -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- so that we are able to shrug off what we might otherwise deem wrongful behaviour. This isn't really rocket science, though. It's hardly ground-breaking news. Anyone who's ever interacted with a child who's done something bad and who attempts to make excuses for it gets this. Heck, anyone who works in addiction counseling sure as heck gets it, too. It's cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization at its finest. We try to save face. We try to make ourselves feel better about the things we may say or do which we know we shouldn't say or do. Nobody wants to feel guilty and we scramble to alleviate our guilt.

Kluger ends his article saying that however we feel about what we inflict upon others, that it's ultimately up to us to "make our own peace in our own way with what's on our plates". In response to this, your average abolitionist animal advocate would say: "Y'know what? I have an easy solution for you that will allow you to live with yourself in an authentic and meaningful way without the self-deception and without exploiting others." Kluger, on the other hand, gets it backwards and views this self-deception -- this compartmentalization -- as a "necessary skill for a species with a conscience like ours trying to make its way in a morally ambiguous world". So rather than sit back and suss things out and consider not participating in the exploitation, Kluger opts for the self-deception, calling it "ethical expedience" and attempting to prop it up with relativism. "Pay your own check and the meal is up to you."

This is what Time Magazine calls journalism, just when I thought that popular mainstream media couldn't possibly become more disgraceful.

Foer and Chipotle Partner to Make Eating Animals a More Pleasurable Experience

m.of.the.maritimes@gmail.com (Mylene Ouellet) — Fri, 23 May 2014 19:32:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've thought of Jonathan Safran Foer. He last came up in a discussion a few years ago when I had been corresponding about animal ethics with a Jewish cultural anthropologist. My acquaintance had expressed that as long as 1) he "knew" that another animal had received periodic chin scritches while being raised for slaughter, and that 2) as long as most of his dining on animal products revolved around "parts otherwise wasted" (e.g. he would go to pricey restaurants to feast upon a pig's roasted tail or on calf brains, for instance), he felt that he was doing his "bit" to be an ethical eater. He was a huge fan of Michael Pollan's and of the whole "nose-to-tail" part of the slow food movement. He was also a lover of Jonathan Safran Foer's work, whether fiction or non-fiction.

Though always respectful, our discussions became increasingly heated as we spun around in circles. He would rehash the same old, same old arguments commonly raised by "happy meat" proponents; I would volley back with the actual facts concerning other animals' treatment outside of factory farms and would redirect to emphasize sentience and the ethics of use. I teased this Ivy League educated and tenured professor that he couldn't argue his way out of a paper lunch bag when it came to ethics.

Our ethics debates aside, we discussed a variety of other things and he ended up sharing quite a bit with me about Jewish culture and identity. It was Passover and our conversation had shifted to focus on Pesach traditions revolving around food. He was planning to host a Seder for his adult children and his daughter's new boyfriend, as it turns out, was a vegetarian. We discussed the symbolism of the foods served on the traditional Passover Seder Plate and I shared with him the changes some Jewish vegan friends had incorporated into their own annual traditions. My acquaintance taught me about the Haggadah used at Passover Seder and -- see, it really does all tie together -- brought up that Jonathan Safran Foer had just written The New American Haggadah. He forwarded me links to reviews, which helped further explain what the Haggadah means and what it is. (Along with Pollan and Bittman, Foer was also one of my acquaintances ethical food-related inspirational figures. His Haggadah was apparently generally received with a bit of "meh".)

I'd written about Jonathan Safran Foer a few years prior to all of that. When Eating Animals had been released, I had been sent a review copy and after scanning a dozen pages of it, had balked at putting myself through reading a single page more. A few months later on a nearly 24-hour bus trip to Pennsylvania (don't ask), I brought the book to read. I figured that somewhere between snoozing and staring out the window, I could force myself to work through the welfarist text. On the way back, I spent almost 16 hours stranded in a Montreal bus station in a snowstorm, took all of the notes I'd tucked into the book and wrote a lengthy blog post I've never published. Over the years, I've thought of finishing it up to publish it, but all it would point out is how Foer's just one of these sorry excuses for an animal advocate that I'd like to see slip into obscurity. He's non-vegan and has promoted animal exploitation. He has described veganism as an "end goal" rather than a starting point and has publicly dismissed abolitionists as absolutists.

He has come up less and less often in online discussions in recent years, which has left me pleased. His name popped up in my newsfeed today, though, in an article on a restaurant trends site I follow. It seems that Foer has decided to partner up with the welfarist-beloved Chipotle fast-food chain to spearhead a new project intending to feature the words of popular authors on its bags and beverage cups -- Foer's words, as well. I traced a link back to a Vanity Fair article about it.

Foer apparently found himself sitting in a Chipotle restaurant by himself one day, bored. "Why not offer something interesting to Chipotle's overwhelmingly non-vegan customers -- like my non-vegan self -- to look at as they sit eating their animal products? Why not attempt to enhance their experience as they sit and dine upon the parts and secretions of others?" Foer seems to have thought to himself. He soon wrote to Chipotle CEO Steve Ells:

I said, 'I bet a shitload of people go into your restaurants every day, and I bet some of them have very similar experiences, and even if they didn’t have that negative experience, they could have a positive experience if they had access to some kind of interesting text,'" Foer recalled. [...] I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to just put some interesting stuff on [your cups and bags]? Get really high-quality writers of different kinds, creating texts of different kinds that you just give to your customers as a service.’”

Chipotle thought his proposed project, called "Cultivating Thought" was a fabulous idea. Anything to enrich its customers' experience, to make them happy -- to potentially boost sales! And organized and endorsed by none-other than "happy meat" supposed maker-of-vegans Jonathan Safran Foer? How could they refuse. When Vanity Fair questioned Foer concerning whether he, a vegetarian, might have had apprehensions about getting into a business relationship with a company that sells meat?.

“There were things that I had to at least think about, like the fact that they serve meat, and I don’t eat meat,” Foer said. “And the fact that they’re a sizable corporation, and that I don’t tend to get involved with sizable corporations any more than I have to, and the fact that I have no interest in marketing for anyone or endorsing anything.

Oh, where to begin? Maybe with his passing reference to having had an issue with the "meat" Chipotle serves? Foer is, of course, a non-vegan. I don't remember if he addressed this directly in Eating Animals. I don't think so. His focus in the book was mostly on animals raised for their flesh and I seem to recall Foer suggesting (whether in the book or in interviews concerning it) that he would have less of an issue consuming animal flesh if he was 100% certain that the animal had not been factory farmed. So the fact that Chipotle also serves animal products other than meat seems irrelevant to Foer and, given his decision to go ahead with his project, the fact that Chipotle serves meat isn't a serious issue for him, either. (It's still so bizarre to me that so many have credited him with being such a great voice for veganism or animal rights.)

As for his having no interest in marketing for anyone or endorsing anything? His initiating and leading this campaign, in and of itself, is an endorsement of Chipotle. In turn, endorsing Chipotle means endorsing animal exploitation. That's fairly clear. But you see, Foer sits on the Board of Directors of Farm Forward, welfarist animal agriculture facilitators extraordinaire. Farm Forward's mission is to mobilize the general public against factory farming and to promote more sustainable animal agriculture.

Its staff is mostly comprised of overpaid professional welfarists -- a few who have been hands on involved in helping "happy meat" farms become hugely successful. Its Board of Directors includes an academic whose life's work revolved around welfare reform. According to his Farm Forward bio: "In his research, he is developing methods of 'asking' farm animals what they feel about the conditions in which they are kept and the procedures to which they are subjected." It also includes John Mackey, who is Chairman of the Board and co-CEO of "happy meat" market Whole Foods. Chipotle is praised several times on the Farm Forward website for its more "humane" animal product sourcing practices. In fact, Farm Forward's Board of Directors also includes Frank Reese, who owns and operates Good Shepherd Ranch, which according to Farm Forward itself has been a chicken supplier for Chipotle.

No endorsing? No marketing? Albert Camus once wrote: “When silence or verbal trickery helps to maintain an abuse that needs to be ended or suffering that needs to be soothed, there is no choice but to speak out and show the obscenity disguised by a cloak of words.” It's unfortunate that with all of the research Foer completed to write Eating Animals that he was unable to recognize the extent of his own speciesism. Given that it was written in close collaboration with Farm Forward and that it's now more or less treated as Farm Forward's bible, it's not altogether surprising.

It's mostly sad to me that as gifted a wordsmith as he is, he uses his talent again and again to both facilitate and promote animal exploitation. Whether he does so by spreading and sustaining the "humane myth" that there could ever be an acceptable and ethical manner in which to enslave and slaughter others to serve them up at a fast-food joint, or whether he partners up with Chipotle to enrich the experience of those who provide demand for this continued enslavement and slaughter, his writing becomes no more than a weapon used against other animals. "What's the kindest thing you ever did?" begins Foer's own writing piece contributed for Chipotle's "Cultivating Thought" campaign.

What's the kindest thing, indeed, Jonathan?