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.
I’d ask that you read the newsletter again but without a colonial perspective because we’ve already responded to your statements but it doesn’t seem like you’ve read it with that open minded willingness to truly learn without projecting. It’s absolutely colonial logic to enforce that there’s 1 solution that everyone must adopt that you arbitrarily consider “ethical” when it’s not, not even a little bit. You’ve cherry picked what you prefer to see and tell yourself is ethical but vegetarian, vegan products under capitalism are just as destructive no matter the privilege you have, in fact the more privilege you have, the more you are consuming from exploitative industries in many ways because these products are suddenly more “accessible” to you. Again, there’s no reason you should dictate what other folks from other communities with different ecological niches, traditions, histories & local practices should be eating based on your subjective world view. That includes you not determining what “privilege” is and deciding how other people should eat to be considered “moral”- meat consumption has been ethical outside the chains of capitalism and colonialism & still is being done that way in many communities. So you can speak for yourself without trying to take on the colonial burden of spreading a niche food practice to everyone - that’s an embodiment of colonialism.
I did not hear her say in this comment that for everyone everywhere veganism is the only ethical choice. I did hear her say that veganism is a valid individual choice from a place of harm reduction.
But from the content of the piece, she's making a really clear case that it we can't really honestly make the claim that this is most obvious trajectory towards "reducing harm" - furthermore, it's insufficient. If we actually want to be responsible for ourselves and the betterment of the world we live in, we can't just obfuscate our agency to a handful of capitalistic, consumerist "swaps" that proclaim to be better for the world when they just scaffold and maintain the industrial machine as it is. Harm reduction is also subjective (and really depends on how you understand the nature of life and death) and the topic of veganism is incredibly complex. In my studies of it, I've seen many many vegan proponents advocate for Brazilian soya to just be fed to humans (some in higher echelons of government, even), I've seen people say that even if it was more environmentally destructive, they would still want to enforce global veganism for the animals, and I've read comments of people talking in horribly racist ways about cultures who still practice the "immoral" traditions of eating meat (saying stuff like "fuck your culture if your traditions involve meat-eating"). Human health can be harmed by veganism; lands, foodways, food sovereignty can be enclosed upon (colonized) in the promotion of the agenda; and ecosystems further destroyed by industrial agriculture. If we want to base our lives around harm-reduction, we can't be myopic about what that actually means. Only in the mythology of the individual can we believe that it's enough to just change your diet to make the world a better place (which is exactly what the WEF wants you to believe).
Also just saying all those points and more have been stated in the piece in multiple ways- saying 1 type of diet globally enforced is “harm reduction” is a form of colonialism. It doesn’t reduce any actual harm & it just repackages the white savior burden to “civilize the savages of their meat eating ways” moral superiority complex. It doesn’t actually address the systems of oppression killing the planet & every life form on it- it further emboldens them under guise of morality and animal liberation. Just like all capitalism and colonialism, this is green capitalism/ colonialism. There’s a difference between saying “X people practice Y tradition, belief system, spiritual rituals, ways of being etc” and then saying “X people are superior to everyone else & everyone else should practice Y tradition because it is clearly moral than the backward, uncivilized traditions of the rest of the world”. No one is telling people not to be vegan- but when mainstream vegans go around telling the world that everyone must be like them and that the rest of our millennia old traditional food systems rooted in our cultures that have legitimately protected the earth for eons are “immoral”, then that’s neocolonialism and they can F off because yes we will fight for a world where multiple worlds can co exist not 1 global 1 size fits all supremacy enforced food model. “Harm reduction” ? I mean telling the rest of the world to sever their relationship with their land, their traditional knowledge, their local ecosystems just so some people can claim they are morally superior is far from that- it’s the basis of how oppressive systems keep being reformed and not abolished. Colonialism was just reformed to capitalism and capitalism keeps reforming itself by co-opting everything and feeding into peoples individualism which is what created green capitalism and mainstream vegan supremacy is a part of that. It also misdirects peoples efforts from systemic change while ridding them from accountability and further destroys the planet with the vegan capitalist industry under the guise of “eco friendly, cruelty free” bullshit when it’s none of that.
Again, the piece dives into everything and more chapters will come.
This reads like a "center for consumer freedom" propaganda piece geated towards duping the left. There are so many falsehoods in this I'd have to write a post twice as long to address them all, and given your delivery, I'm not sure it's worth it. The tl;dr version is that almost everything you attribute to veganism is from animal agribusiness. You're doing the industry's job for them, which is business as usual, but calling it "anti-capitalist" is a joke and tokenizing indigenous people to do it is even worse. Something tells me you've already been corrected about these things though as they're really common knowledge that not even agricultural data sites deny.
You can't possibly believe everything you've said here, right? You seem like an intelligent person who allowed their own biases and cognitive dissonance rather than what's actually happening guide this article. It happens to scientists, too, as I'm sure you know.
Also these memes are really really bad. Like worse than people who write, "mmm bacon." Never pegged you for an edgelord who tells deliberate lies to defend planetary annihilation and cruelty towards those who inhabit it with us. But, you learn something new every day.
It's not necessarily about black/brown or accessibility. Sometimes it's about health of the individual who may have gut issues and unable to eat vegetables, fruits, etc. We can be stuck with diets not of our own choosing. We eat what we are able to safely consume. People with diverticulitis avoid certain foods. People with IBS-d and other digestive disorders avoid fruits and vegetables. People eat what they can, not necessarily what they choose.
Thanks so much for this article. What is the best way to cite your articles? Just a normal link, and people can sign up if they want to read more? Or also a link to your instagram?
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.
I’d ask that you read the newsletter again but without a colonial perspective because we’ve already responded to your statements but it doesn’t seem like you’ve read it with that open minded willingness to truly learn without projecting. It’s absolutely colonial logic to enforce that there’s 1 solution that everyone must adopt that you arbitrarily consider “ethical” when it’s not, not even a little bit. You’ve cherry picked what you prefer to see and tell yourself is ethical but vegetarian, vegan products under capitalism are just as destructive no matter the privilege you have, in fact the more privilege you have, the more you are consuming from exploitative industries in many ways because these products are suddenly more “accessible” to you. Again, there’s no reason you should dictate what other folks from other communities with different ecological niches, traditions, histories & local practices should be eating based on your subjective world view. That includes you not determining what “privilege” is and deciding how other people should eat to be considered “moral”- meat consumption has been ethical outside the chains of capitalism and colonialism & still is being done that way in many communities. So you can speak for yourself without trying to take on the colonial burden of spreading a niche food practice to everyone - that’s an embodiment of colonialism.
I did not hear her say in this comment that for everyone everywhere veganism is the only ethical choice. I did hear her say that veganism is a valid individual choice from a place of harm reduction.
But from the content of the piece, she's making a really clear case that it we can't really honestly make the claim that this is most obvious trajectory towards "reducing harm" - furthermore, it's insufficient. If we actually want to be responsible for ourselves and the betterment of the world we live in, we can't just obfuscate our agency to a handful of capitalistic, consumerist "swaps" that proclaim to be better for the world when they just scaffold and maintain the industrial machine as it is. Harm reduction is also subjective (and really depends on how you understand the nature of life and death) and the topic of veganism is incredibly complex. In my studies of it, I've seen many many vegan proponents advocate for Brazilian soya to just be fed to humans (some in higher echelons of government, even), I've seen people say that even if it was more environmentally destructive, they would still want to enforce global veganism for the animals, and I've read comments of people talking in horribly racist ways about cultures who still practice the "immoral" traditions of eating meat (saying stuff like "fuck your culture if your traditions involve meat-eating"). Human health can be harmed by veganism; lands, foodways, food sovereignty can be enclosed upon (colonized) in the promotion of the agenda; and ecosystems further destroyed by industrial agriculture. If we want to base our lives around harm-reduction, we can't be myopic about what that actually means. Only in the mythology of the individual can we believe that it's enough to just change your diet to make the world a better place (which is exactly what the WEF wants you to believe).
Yup- Sign off everything you said!
You bring up a lot of good points here. This conversation needs a lot more nuance. I’ll think on these.
Also just saying all those points and more have been stated in the piece in multiple ways- saying 1 type of diet globally enforced is “harm reduction” is a form of colonialism. It doesn’t reduce any actual harm & it just repackages the white savior burden to “civilize the savages of their meat eating ways” moral superiority complex. It doesn’t actually address the systems of oppression killing the planet & every life form on it- it further emboldens them under guise of morality and animal liberation. Just like all capitalism and colonialism, this is green capitalism/ colonialism. There’s a difference between saying “X people practice Y tradition, belief system, spiritual rituals, ways of being etc” and then saying “X people are superior to everyone else & everyone else should practice Y tradition because it is clearly moral than the backward, uncivilized traditions of the rest of the world”. No one is telling people not to be vegan- but when mainstream vegans go around telling the world that everyone must be like them and that the rest of our millennia old traditional food systems rooted in our cultures that have legitimately protected the earth for eons are “immoral”, then that’s neocolonialism and they can F off because yes we will fight for a world where multiple worlds can co exist not 1 global 1 size fits all supremacy enforced food model. “Harm reduction” ? I mean telling the rest of the world to sever their relationship with their land, their traditional knowledge, their local ecosystems just so some people can claim they are morally superior is far from that- it’s the basis of how oppressive systems keep being reformed and not abolished. Colonialism was just reformed to capitalism and capitalism keeps reforming itself by co-opting everything and feeding into peoples individualism which is what created green capitalism and mainstream vegan supremacy is a part of that. It also misdirects peoples efforts from systemic change while ridding them from accountability and further destroys the planet with the vegan capitalist industry under the guise of “eco friendly, cruelty free” bullshit when it’s none of that.
Again, the piece dives into everything and more chapters will come.
This reads like a "center for consumer freedom" propaganda piece geated towards duping the left. There are so many falsehoods in this I'd have to write a post twice as long to address them all, and given your delivery, I'm not sure it's worth it. The tl;dr version is that almost everything you attribute to veganism is from animal agribusiness. You're doing the industry's job for them, which is business as usual, but calling it "anti-capitalist" is a joke and tokenizing indigenous people to do it is even worse. Something tells me you've already been corrected about these things though as they're really common knowledge that not even agricultural data sites deny.
You can't possibly believe everything you've said here, right? You seem like an intelligent person who allowed their own biases and cognitive dissonance rather than what's actually happening guide this article. It happens to scientists, too, as I'm sure you know.
Also these memes are really really bad. Like worse than people who write, "mmm bacon." Never pegged you for an edgelord who tells deliberate lies to defend planetary annihilation and cruelty towards those who inhabit it with us. But, you learn something new every day.
It's not necessarily about black/brown or accessibility. Sometimes it's about health of the individual who may have gut issues and unable to eat vegetables, fruits, etc. We can be stuck with diets not of our own choosing. We eat what we are able to safely consume. People with diverticulitis avoid certain foods. People with IBS-d and other digestive disorders avoid fruits and vegetables. People eat what they can, not necessarily what they choose.
Thanks so much for this article. What is the best way to cite your articles? Just a normal link, and people can sign up if they want to read more? Or also a link to your instagram?