The Gastropocene: What makes food ethical?
BEYOND Beyond Meat- Mainstream, capitalist veganism is colonialism
Do you know where your food comes from? How is the food on your table grown or produced? These questions highlight the core injustices of capitalism, aka modern day colonialism and also open up a multitude of solutions to mobilize for systemic change. Humans have throughout our existence tended to the landscapes that rewarded us with food, food that we consume for sustenance from these nurturing relationships with all components of our local ecosystems. However, colonialism entered the picture, invaded and destroyed ecosystems, severing our sacred relationships with each other, animals, plants and our land.
This newsletter series will breakdown how it is not meat but rather the industrialized capitalist system that all food is produced in that is driving climate change and explore political & decolonized systemic solutions to sustain & protect our planet. So far, we have the following parts planned in the series:
Chapter I: Beyond Beyond Meat: What makes food ethical?
Chapter II: Meet your Meat: Dissecting green capitalism- the environmental impact of the vegan industry, crop production & livestock
Chapter III: What does ethical meat-consumption (historical, present) or decolonized veganism look like?
Each chapter will also be paired with a livestream. Check out the flyer with details at the end of this piece! Livestream on 10/9 at 9 PM EST
Conversations around veganism are inherently loaded
Wholesale conversion of not just western but indigenous and eastern diets to a vegan diet is yet another form of colonialism and erases individual and communal relationships with local ecosystems, foodways and histories. If food is foundational to our identity, demanding communities erase those connections is yet another cleaver hacking at our tenuous relationships with our ancestors. Universal veganism ultimately further removes humans from our local conditions; if we were to look at the Maya, the milpa systems for growing food were designed to turn crop loss from wild animal consumption into an opportunity to harvest massive amounts of protein at the cost of a bushel of corn. Their swidden agricultural system not only improved and increased the carrying capacity for wildlife, but was predicated on their place as intermediaries within that system, converting inedible forage into protein that we can consume. The contexts & relationships of both stewards and mediators was far more valuable than fencing attempts would ever be. Mainstream veganism is a fence between humanity and the ecosystems they live within.
Colonialism separated humans from nature, not meat consumption
Ecosystem stewardship and the idea that the natural world is outside of us has become a narrative in several acts over several hundred years, beginning with the removal of peasants from the commons to the removal of people from landscapes, starting with indigenous people here in North America and accelerating with the enclosure of private property from hunting and gathering in the 19th century and ultimately the Adirondack Park in 1892, when it was decided by state agencies that the people who lives in the mountains weren’t capable of stewarding the ecosystems around them. The removal of people from the non-industrialized world has continued as we have been further separated from our foodways, from our foods, and from our local ecosystem. We don’t know the farmers growing our food or the tailors making our clothes. We don’t have direct, loving, caring relationships with animals or plants which creates a reciprocal cycle as the land we nurture unconditionally provides us with sustenance. Instead, food is now a product sold for profit by violent corporations.
Unfortunately, we individualize this condition as a failure of ourselves. It’s not a criticism of individuals that children can recognize brands and not species, it is in the interests of our economic system to turn every object including the world outside of capitalism into objects to be consumed, and if not consumable, inaccessible. Every survival necessity is a commodity mass produced with a globalized colonial plantation model that has 1 goal- put the least in to get the most out, aka profit maximization. It is this system of endless wealth accumulation and hoarding by the 1% that leads to abuse of humans AND all non-human life forms like plants and animals alike.
All of us ‘saying no to meat’ will not solve the climate crisis
What does it mean when we talk about living with our ecology? It means that we learn and align ourselves with the cadences of nature, Learning the ways in which our stewardship can increase natural deer and turkey populations for harvesting, while recognizing how harvesting deer not only keeps those same populations healthy but also increases the ability of understory trees to grow and continue the process of reforestation across the country. It means understanding the relationships between tree density and nut and fruit production, understanding which native species will thrive with little demand from us while producing dense, healthy crops. It means giving space for nature not just in appropriated spaces but within our daily lives and daily habits. This means that our diets are fundamentally framed on where we live, not some ideal espoused on a philosophy to be stamped onto the ecology around us.
How does capitalism abuse animals, humans, plants & all of Earth alike?
Capitalism, aka modern day colonialism, is killing our home planet. It objectifies, commodifies and exploits everyone and everything on Earth. Animal abuse defines meat and dairy industries because this is how innately violent colonial/ capitalist systems of mass production operate. The same systems are responsible for the abuse, torture and destruction of humans, plants, microbes and our entire planet itself. In addition to all life forms; land, water and natural resources- all equally valuable and important components of our complex ecosystems are extracted as raw materials for profit.
However, Indigenous, Black, Brown communities for millennia have sustainably and ethically relied on plants, animals and microbes for food by considering all non-human life forms as our equal partners and kin in a complex web of relationships where inter and intra-species collaboration sustains balance in a local ecosystem. Mainstream veganism (dominated largely by white, privileged people who have limited practical knowledge about growing and producing their own food) advocates for “green capitalism”, falsely claiming that a global switch in personal diet choices to plant-based foods is sufficient to thwart climate change. This is a form of modern-day colonialism that continues to destroy the planet under the guise of social justice and animal rights. It also ignores the devastating environmental impact of plant-based diets (crop production) under capitalism and the vegan industry itself.
What is colonial mainstream veganism?
Corporations that are responsible for ecological destruction and climate change love to create “carbon footprint” PR campaigns to blame and deflect accountability to individuals while continuing their violent business practices that exploit the planet. The same insidious strategy is at the heart of mainstream narratives that demonize meat consumption as an individual “moral” failing instead of targeting corporations and the state controlling all food production. Personal consumption of plant-based products and blanket avoidance of meat or dairy products will not save our planet just like individuals cutting carbon emissions will not shift the course of the environmental crisis which is caused by fossil fuel corporations and industrialized agriculture. White supremacy and colonial domination defines this approach where problems are reduced to individuals rather than systems. For example, the U.S. military is the largest oil consumer on the planet- a fact regularly ignored by mainstream environmental movements.
Indigenous communities (including those that rely on hunting, fishing, trapping etc) challenging fracking, fossil fuel corporations, tar sands and habitat destruction are on the front-lines of the fight for our planet. The Global South faces the major brunt of the climate crisis due to imperialism and neocolonialism. Yet, mainstream veganism blames and scapegoats meat-consuming communities (a majority of poor/ working class communities & the Global South) for the destruction of our planet and takes on the “white man’s burden” to push for a global one-size-fits-all plant-based diet model in an effort to “save the world” while actively inflicting harm on and erasing the knowledge of countless traditional Indigenous food systems. Black, Brown, Indigenous meat-consuming communities are categorized as “savage” and “backward” while veganism is considered the only “civilized”, moral form of human progress that should be universally adopted (even if it’s impractical, impossible & harmful to many ecosystems).
As Indian environmentalist and vegetarian Vandana Shiva explains:
Factory farming of livestock is definitely a very important contributor of greenhouse gases, especially methane. But normal livestock — grass fed — are important for a sustainable solution. The problem with many of these studies has been that they take the most industrial practice, for example factory farming for meat…and extrapolate it to the world. As if the whole world treats its livestock in the torturous way that factory farming does… Livestock are absolutely key. The tragedy is on the one hand we’ve got those who would put animals into factory farms — and that is the source of methane emissions, not free-grazing livestock…And there’s the problem that those who think they love animals push for a situation where there will be no animals. So we need to avoid both these extremes that are anti-animal by denying an effective role for the animal, and an effective role of a farmer. And I think it comes from the paradigm that assumes that both humans and animals can only have a predatory relationship with nature. No, we can have a harmonious relationship with nature.
Industrial crop production harm animals & drives climate change just as much as slaughter houses on factory farms
What about the destructive environmental impact of palm oil, soya bean, rape oil or sunflower oil and the erosion of soil or decline in pollinating insects and birds due to the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides in capitalist crop production? What about the monocrop plantations with large-scale mass production of a single type of grain or fruit or vegetable that lead to loss of biodiversity and habitat destruction? Many small mammals like rabbits, hares, deer, moles; insects like bees, grasshoppers, beetles; wild birds and microbes like fungi are killed each year to protect crops and exponentially expand large industrial plantations at the expense of local wildlife. Plant-based diets are responsible for the deaths of just as many animals and birds as slaughter houses in the capitalist livestock industry.
The global shift from animal to vegetable oils and fats in the last 4 decades has led many mass animal extinctions. Canola, sunflower, soya bean, coconut and palm oil production are a primary driver of deforestation and mass animal extinction or near annihilation of many species including orangutans, pygmy or Sumatran elephants, tigers, rhinos, lions, etc. Rape seed oil production has led to a 30% decline in the bee population. Natural ecosystems are burned down to make room for plant-based diets under capitalism. Deforestation drives biodiversity loss and is the second largest contributor to global warming, after fossil fuel combustion which is also the backbone of capitalist crop production.
Meat consumption is critical for many communities who lack year-round access to plants or live in food deserts and can be ethical
More than a quarter of the world lives in dryland regions like in Sub-Saharan Africa facing severe year-round droughts with poor soil fertility due to colonialism’s mineral extraction practices while a quarter live in tundra climates closer to the North or South poles where the long winters make crop production impossible for the majority of the year. These farming and hunting communities rely heavily on animal meat when access to plants is severely restricted by their ecological context. Mainstream environmentalists blame carbon emissions due to beef herds on many of these communities who would starve with a vegan diet. Believe it or not, the fancy tofu, vegan imitation meats and nut milks aren’t easily or readily available for communities who have no relations with those foods.
Communities of color living in urban food deserts or Indigenous reservations often lack access to grocery stores with affordable, healthy produce and cheap meat-based fast foods or bodegas are their only option, especially for larger families, unemployed or houseless folks. What about Black & Brown people who make up the vast majority of our incarcerated prison populations? Are they able to be easily picky about their diet choices? Veganism is not “healthy” when you are unable to access any food, let alone access the critical macro and micro nutrients needed for survival.
Colonial vegan saviorism projects hierarchies onto nature
Mainstream veganism cares for animals based on their perceived proximity to humans or subjective human-like characteristics while often failing to care about the abuse of all other life forms including Black, Brown and Indigenous humans. As Aggie Frasunkiewicz writes:
“In this regard, humans are entitled to animals as commodities, food, a source of companionship, and objects of violence and eroticism. It is important to note that anthropocentrism centers only one specific type of human – the white human/settler. Black, Indigenous, and people of colour are systematically pushed to the peripheries of what it means to be human… Veganism within a Western context is characterized by colour-blindness, and an upper-middle class privileged lifestyle. Corey Lee Wrenn explains that after the abolition of slavery, the Nonhuman Animal rights movement was in fact a manifestation of white supremacy (2). In their advocacy for anti-cruelty laws, the movement intentionally targeted lower class people and people of colour as the perpetrators of violence against animals. In its early stages, animal rights activism in the United States relied on biblical concepts of stewardship and morality, combined with American exceptionalism. Missionaries, government officials, and other agents of the early animal rights movement linked kindness to animals to human progress, targeting subsistence hunting practices, and other instances of animal use of rural African Americans, Indigenous peoples, and people on the margins of society (Pearson).”
Solutions- more to be discussed in the next parts
The real solutions should be around addressing the systemic reasons for carbon being released into the atmosphere– urban and concurrently suburbanization, deforestation, habitat destruction, and continuous extraction. These solutions don’t come from wide-reaching proposals like the Green New Deal; in fact, corporations are gearing up for the Green New Deal because what it offers is much like the rise of the fake meat industry– an opportunity to rebuild entire sectors of the economy in a world where globalism has reached its natural growth capacity and saturated its market. Rebuilding an already existing economy under the guise of necessity allows capital to continue to repackage and exploit the same markets repeatedly.
What does it mean for us to truly design autonomous ethical food systems divested from the exploitation of animals, plants, humans and all life? How can we build a world that allows for a multitude of worlds to exist with diverse food systems based on whatever makes the most sense for each ecological niche?
Why is the hyperfocus on meat destructive?
Why continue to use the judgmental, higher-than-thou, individualistic argument for veganism that deems all meat-eaters as “immoral” even if we have plenty of evidence to know that stopping ecological collapse requires systemic change not “better individual diet choices”? Mainstream veganism fails to address capitalism & colonialism as roots of our oppression. Their solutions either harm and scapegoat communities of color or actively exploit them when it is convenient like using traditional vegetarian or vegan traditions from Black, Brown, Indigenous communities as “examples” to advance their selfish interests. Often, animal abuse is likened to slavery or colonialism merely as an opportunistic talking point by white vegans who never mobilize for our communities’ liberation from state and capitalist oppression. Privileged vegans will deem veganism as the best universal choice for the world and spread their gospel far & wide, and it is critical for you to see these actions as colonialism and call it what it is. Mainstream veganism aims to serve as a colonizer at worst or a cop at best policing our communities without serving, caring for and understanding them.
To vegans who may be jarred reading this piece-
We understand that addressing our internalized oppression and colonialism is alway deeply uncomfortable but an opportunity to radicalize. If you still decide to uncritically cling to vegan supremacy- the idea that everyone must be vegan to be moral- then we ask that you reflect on the core motivation of your veganism. Are you doing this because you truly care about the planet and all life forms that are collaboratively sustaining each other? Or are you simply clinging to a self-centered narrative to claim moral superiority over others and rid yourself of any real accountability? Are you truly seeking to be as moral as possible and ‘do good’? Or do you merely just want others to perceive you as ‘good’? It is critical that you examine any ideas rooted in self-righteousness and saviorism. It is vital that you care about animals in all their complexities including their nuanced ties to our unique ecosystems and all the life forms they depend on and vice-versa.
In summary:
We love this planet- our fellow humans, animals, plants, microbes… equally. We do not believe in hierarchies between life forms and believe that to fight ecological collapse we must forge and cultivate deep relationships with all living and non-living components of our local ecosystems. We believe that our food-consumption practices will vary with our ecological niches. The needs of communities vary based on what is needed to sustain their respective ecosystem.
We think capitalism is the problem which leads to the abuse of humans, plants and animals for profit.
Even in a world without capitalism, we think that plant-based food practices may make sense for some and not for many- this innate diversity should be honored, cultivated and sustained.
Ethical meat consumption and ethical veganism are possible as has been demonstrated by many Black, Brown, Indigenous communities but there is no one-size-fits-all diet that is ethical when enforced globally- this is colonialism.
Join our livestream discussion on the topics discussed in Chapter 1 of The Gastropocene series!
Have any questions or thoughts that we can answer/ discuss on the livestream?
There where so many valid points in this article and I completely agree that it’s complicated and it would be classist and ableist to push a single diet on everyone. It’s colonialist to push individual solutions to systemic problems and many vegans lack that nuance. I stand by veganism being a helpful choice for reducing suffering and using less resources due to animals farmed eating and using resources farmed on land that also leads to deforestation and ecological harm. I also believe the treatment of animals in factory farms is significantly more cruel than other methods of producing animals products. I understand I come from a position of privilege and valid reasons for not being vegan are plenty including emotional, financial, and time resources as well as cultural ones. And while vegan products also cause harm, factory farmed animal products cause an amount of significant harm that I’d like to avoid funding until we can achieve more systemic change.
It's a tricky spot when you are privileged, don't live in a food desert, and most of the meat around you is factory farmed. As well as most of the plants. And oils. Maybe meat and plants are "organic" but still factory farmed. It's tricky when you live in a place where when people do own enough land to finally ethically grow meat, there STILL isn't enough land to turn a profit while doing enough rotational grazing to save the soil and deter erosion. Animal grazing also requires deforestation.
It's tricky when the answer is changing the entire system - the food system, the colonial capitalist system, but that future doesn't seem close by. So then all you are left with is your individual choices, in the present moment. And then what? Harm reduction seems like all that's left in our power while we are surviving capitalism and trying to find a group to join that seems like it's starting or furthering a revolution. And it really really seems like, from the evidence, and from a position of privilege, harm reduction on an individual level is all we have right now. And that seems like vegetarianism/veganism, at least as these colonial capitalist systems prevail.