On Harm in Veganism
Ah, a love affair has ended . . .
If you haven’t dropped by Invisible Voices to read Earth Balance, palm oil, rainforests and RAN and its 27 comments (so far), I highly recommend it.
Many vegans, particularly the ones with a Buddhism, Hinduism or Jainism bent, talk about the principle of Ahimsa, which is a practice of non-injury, nonviolence and/or harmlessness of living beings. What I appreciate most about Deb’s post about Earth Balance (and also Roger’s comment on yesterday’s post that brings up a similar issue), is that the reality for vegans is that non-injury is impossible for all of us reading this right now and living in the developed world.
The questions are: What are your priorities? And where do you draw lines?
I had written Deb that given all of the problems with Earth Balance, the small farmer around the corner who has a cow or two and makes his own butter probably causes less harm than the manufacturers of Earth Balance. And though I certainly won’t be buying butter made from cow’s milk, it’s pretty clear to me that Earth Balance isn’t the answer, as convenient it is, and as perfect it is as a butter substitute.
Because I’m not a chef or baker, I can get around this issue. I can bake with vegetable or coconut oil, sautee with olive oil, and ditch desserts with frosting. Since when is dessert a dietary requirement, anyway?
This topic reminds us that there is a cost for the production of our delectable vegan products, and that cost often takes the form of the death, displacement and abuse of people and/or animals, as well as a level of injury of the earth that will take generations to heal.
And once we become aware of the costs of a product, regardless of the physical ingredients therein, can we really call it vegan (if it involves harm to sentient nonhumans)?
Perhaps I can indulge myself a little and try to bring a few thought threads together. I said in a recent Animal Person comment http://www.animalperson.net/animal_person/2008/06/what-are-your-t.html that vegans should have a conversation about the harm to nonhuman animals caused by the production of plant foods for the vegan diet. I also said the product of such a conversation should/could be incorporated into our claims-making about human-nonhuman relations.
I also contributed to Smith’s blog about veganism being murder, if meat is: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10381465&postID=6487065200964079837&isPopup=true
I believe this issue to be very important in terms of the evolution of animal advocacy – especially in the light of the recent moves to condemn ‘purity’ (meaning staying true to moral principles). Gary Francione, as ever, hit a very large nail on the head in his recent Vegan Freaks interview (Pt two: http://veganfreakradio.com/index.php?id=143 ) when he expressed his irritation about animal advocates joining in with the lie that veganism is difficult [he was talking about in the USA at the time] and only ‘the special people’ can accomplish it and stick to being vegan.
This recent claim, which I’ve noted on many fora lately, is as negative as it is wrong. I will tell anyone who says veganism is hard to time travel to 1979 when I became vegan. Compared to those days – and to think how very difficult it must have been for Donald Watson’s generation who were told they would surely die if they lived as vegans – being a contemporary vegan is a breeze.
Animal rights theory – in Francione’s view and probably that of Regan’s too – puts veganism as the moral baseline for an animal rights social movement. By contrast, the current “animal rights movement” appears to be busy telling people that consistent veganism is fanatical, or extreme, and why not enjoy the luxury of a bit of meat and dairy now and again (I shudder to think what the human rights version of that would be). This issue of harm in the vegan diet serves to strengthen the claim that veganism should be the moral baseline.
For veganism is not the end of the matter. Veganism is but the beginning. A mass vegan movement, acting as a political force, will give us the opportunities to bring about the changes needed to forge a non-violent world. A vegan society will be motivated to end (or reduce substantially) the deaths caused in plant production. Only an inconsistent and bizarre flesh eater would do the same unless there was some environmental or human reason for doing it. Already they show their connivance with animals’ rights violations when they dine on the muscles of others and consume the baby food of another rights bearer.
Putting aside the issue of expecting animal welfarists to ‘do’ animal welfare, and so that’s where they will focus campaign time, energy and money, Francione is also right in his claim that the animal movement could have brought us much further along this road than it has. Just consider one initiative – the recent ‘victory’ of getting KFC to gas millions of chickens in gas chambers (in eight or so years). We might consider what would have been the result if all the funds eaten up by this five or six year campaign (1) had been spent on vegan education, (2) had been spent also on forming vegan support networks in local communities and (3) and had employed/funded someone to begin looking at the harms involved in vegan food production.
I'm honestly shocked by the reaction. I've never thought of Earth Balance as some sort of vegan staple. In fact, I never even heard of it until pretty recently. It's MARGARINE. No one needs margarine. More than that, it's not a vegan company. They make dairy products, too. So it's not like they've had clean hands before this information came out…
I guess I just underestimated the huge vegan fan base of the stuff because people seeom to be reacting as though the world is going to end unless we all boycott Earth Balance. If I boycott Earth Balance, that will probably result in a whole $5-$10 or so a year they won't receive from me.
And if a large group of vegans boycott Earth Balance, you know what will happen? They'll just stop making a vegan version for us. They've already grabbed the 'organic' and health-conscious market, you know, the people who don't care if there's a little whey in their margarine? They'll just go the route of so many other companies and ignore the vegan market. Or worse, they'll get bought by a bigger company that will deliberately destroy the vegan products in order to beef up sales of their other brands.
It all seems so strange to me… I'm not trying to be a pain. It just sounds the same as worrying about Oreos (which there's palm oil in those, too). I mean, it's margarine. It's not a health food.
And I guess I'm just way more interested in more concrete activism. I don't really like boycotts (and no, veganism is NOT a boycott). But if we're going to talk about boycotts, let's talk about the palm oil boycott. Other stuff with palm oil includes:
Oreos
some Genisoy products
Silk products
Newman O's
Uncle Eddie's Vegan Cookies (some)
lots of other margarines
some Westsoy products
some Rice Dream products
various other soy milks
Luna bars
Tofutti Cuties (and other Tofutti products)
a whole bunch of body lotions and stuff like that (including Kiss My Face)
If we choose to focus on Earth Balance as a way to target our energy and create change, fine. But let's just make sure it's strategy, not just plain willy-nilly 'let's boycott something every Tuesday' kind of thing.
Elaine,
I'm not surprised, as in my own life, I make all of my own desserts (except Laura's Wholesome Junkfood). And when visitors come or when I'm doing my vegan education, two products I mention or have around are EB and Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk. Visitors can see how easy it is to NOT use animal products and still get the taste they're used to, which is very important for some people, particularly at the beginning. When they go home, they often call me before their next grocery trip to ask for the names of EB and the almond milk. And that's huge, especially if they have kids or bake a lot (and when they eat the muffins and pancakes and cookies I bake, I'm sure to have the egg-substitute conversation). So is EB important to ME for my own life? Not really. But it helps enormously in my dealings with others, because even if they're on board with not hurting anyone, if they don't have a substitute that's acceptable to them, they can easily be swayed to some kind of alleged "humane" product, and then I have to have THAT conversation. But a good substitute makes the whole process more effective and efficient.
For me.
Oy. While I don’t want to unfairly downplay the legitimate concern that Deb and others have over secondary effects and complicated issues surrounding various food and other items that don’t contain animal products, and I realize the concern is about a serious matter, it is quite a slippery slope to venture into all the ways so many products produced in a global economy harm humans, nonhumans, and the environment.
We can talk about Earth Balance, but we can also talk about the taxes we pay to our “first world” government, the fuel we buy for our cars, the fuel that a global economy uses to provide for the lifestyles we live, the offspring we produce in a world with 6 billion humans, the millions of nonhuman deaths resulting from harvesting crops, the comparison of the personal benefits and externalized harms of middle-class living in an industrialized economy as compared to the personal harms and externalized benefits of poverty living in a subsistence economy, just to name a few of the many very serious problems of the world that are difficult to avoid contributing to *unless we become fully self-sufficient subsistence farmers and stop having children.* Gross injustice and harm are ubiquitous, and so is our personal contribution to them.
If we can ever get to a point where we aren’t INTENTIONALLY breeding, raising, and slaughtering billions of animals annually (over 50 billion annually worldwide) for the sole purpose of consuming them and their bodily fluids, THEN I’ll start looking under all of the other thousands of rocks to find the next worse problem to focus on and boycott certain vegan products. Sadly, as easy as it is to be vegan, I have my doubts about whether we’ll ever even get that far as a society before we manage to self-destruct in one of the many ways our current technology makes possible, much less to the point of not contributing to the myriad of other very serious problems in the world.
My point is that all but the most ascetic of us must draw a moral baseline at some place, and that for most people, completely avoiding the consumption of animal products is an excellent, sensible, commendable, and even obvious place to draw that moral baseline. In fact, most people at this time in history won’t even draw the line anywhere close to veganism. The closer to purity (i.e. subsistence farming in poverty) we draw the moral baseline, the more people we exclude from even considering our position.
Okay, now I’m going to go off and read some Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Freud to remind myself of what most humans are usually like. 😉 j/k
A couple of months ago, I read in my local co-op (PCC) newsletter that Earth Balance also uses diacetyl in its butter flavoring. This month's PCC newsletter, in the "Letters to the editor" section, someone wrote a letter asking for clarification, because she (like myself) could not find any mention of diacetyl on the ingredients label of Earth Balance butter/margarine.
The following is PCC Nutrition Educator Goldie Caughlan's reply:
"The Earth Balance company says it's trying to reformulate its spreads — both organic and non-organic — to eliminate diacetyl, although it apparently is present in very small amounts. Earth Balance indicates it did not know there was diacetyl in the butter flavoring.
"Keep in mind that there have been no studies on the safety — or lack of safety — in eating the particular butter flavoring that contains diacetyl. The concern comes with beating it, as in sauteing or baking. The fumes emitted are linked to lung damage but the studies are not good regarding how much exposure, etc.
"We suggest you write the company, saying how much you've liked the product and ask when they'll reforumlate. Meanwhile, PCC continues to offer Earth Balance because of the demand by vegans."
Those effected the most are the workers who breathe in the fumes: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/347255_diacetyl14.html. It seems to me that Earth Balance is not a very responsible company. The palm oil issue aside (though obviously very important), their claim that they didn't even know that their product contained diacetyl is either completely fishy or indicates their irresponsibility when it comes to their awareness of the ingredients/chemicals contained in their own products.
Though I applaud PCC for pointing out this discrepancy and for eliminating Earth Balance in their food products (pastries, etc.) at their in-store bakeries, I recently noticed (on their labels) that they are using palm oil and palm shortening in lieu of Earth Balance!
Anyway, I thought everyone who commented on this blog entry offered valid comments. Should it be an earth-shattering event to eliminate Earth Balance from one's grocery list? – not really. Should one, however, focus much of one's energy on boycotting Earth Balance? I would say no, it's not really one of the bigger issues in the world of veganism, like Dan points out (and I agree with everything he had to say – even his pessimism about the high potentiality of humankind's self-annihilation before it achieves a substantial vegan society). Bob Torres's book Making a Killing did significantly influence me into becoming more aware of how products are manufactured and to take into account the effect of injustice or harm it does to workers and society; so, now I do try to pay attention to the life history of a product. Refraining from consuming Earth Balance would simply be one of the smaller things I do to become a socially responsible consumer – that's all.
On the subject of veganism being easy or difficult… I have come to the conclusion recently that it is all relative. It was difficult for me to become vegan in the beginning. For some, it is difficult, for others it is not. Is it less difficult to live today rather than a hundred years ago when there was less technology (washing machines, cars, etc.)? I would say that the answer to that would vary from person to person, subject to various relative factors in a person's life. It's a fact that many people who have become vegan found it difficult when first starting out. I won't sugarcoat things (say it's easy) just to draw people into seeing my point of view. Some people will find the journey to veganism difficult, others won't. *People are going to have their own personal experiences regardless of my own experience and my own opinion on the subject.* Let people try it and decide for themselves whether it is difficult or easy (a rather small issue)…either way they should take it upon themselves to do what is morally right (the bigger issue).
Dan, I hate to say it, but comments like yours are EXACTLY why the environmentalists roll their eyes when vegans tell them that they're not really environmentalists. So, at the very least, if you're not willing to react to the fact that you've just learned a product you likely use often is harmful to the environment, to the people, and absolutely deadly to the animals who live there, well, please don't accuse environmentalists of not being environmentalists. They'd likely roll their eyes and call you a purist, right?
After all, Earth Balance is something any vegan could give up easily. It isn't a necessity, and it is clearly very harmful, and it kills a lot of animals. All the reasons we tend to give for why everyone (especially people concerned about the environment) should give up their animal products.
Roger, I really like the way you said "Veganism is the beginning." I only wish everyone saw that clearly!
Dan: "unless we become fully self-sufficient subsistence farmers and stop having children." That was my gut response too. 35 years ago – I decided the world was "full enough" and opted out of children…. Really, as "beautiful" as they are, there's just too many carbon beings on the planet.
"If we can ever get to a point where we aren’t INTENTIONALLY breeding, raising, and slaughtering billions of animals annually (over 50 billion annually worldwide) for the sole purpose of consuming them and their bodily fluids, THEN I’ll start looking under all of the other thousands of rocks to find the next worse problem to focus on and boycott certain vegan products."
That deserved repeating. I feel terrible about the consequences of palm-oil…. I will undoubtedly make efforts to avoid this ingredient…. Adding to the list I avoided all my life: no children, no animal products, now no palm-oil…. Soon I think the only way I will have no impact (and lead a truly "vegan" life) is to cancel my own existence.
Remarkably, I'm with Dan on this one. Hi Dan!! (waving) If we start to examine the toll on wildlife from the manufacture of our food products, we'd basically be left only with produce grown in our yards. And I imagine that required disturbing the living spaces of insects and other wildlife for our benefit.
Now, I understand addressing outright avoidable production, and doing the best to reduce the effects of growing crops for consumption. But I'm not sure using certain products that have questionable methods overrides the effects of turning butter-loving Americans vegan at this point. Something to ponder…
Kim,
Hi! (waves back) 🙂
Deb,
I’m not vegan for the environment, and I agree with environmentalists that one need not be vegan to be a “real environmentalist” (i.e. I would roll my eyes, also). That said, moral issues aside and focusing ONLY on the environment, as an environmentalist, one should reduce (but not necessarily eliminate) one’s consumption of animal products in the same way one reduces the use of an automobile.
For me, ethical questions regarding the environment are *utilitarian* questions where the goal is to maximize the use and benefit for the greatest number of beings (human and nonhuman). I see the environment as having *only* utility value as resource, not inherent value as a being. In contrast, ethical questions regarding human and nonhuman beings are *deontological* and *rights-based* questions where the goal is to protect the important interests of sentient beings with inherent value in not being used solely as resources for others’ benefit and not being property. Another way of saying it is that, for me, the environment is truly a *thing* (like a tool) to be used sustainably, while animals (both human and nonhuman) are *beings* who deserve justice and compassion and the right not to be used solely as “things” or as tools.
This difference between a utilitarian and a deontological rights way of looking at the two issues explains why I’m vegan (because nonhumans have the rights stated above) and why I would not be vegan if my only concern was over the environment (it’s plausible that we could reduce our animal consumption and find ways of producing “cleaner” animal products and make light quantities of animal product consumption environmentally sustainable).
About Earth Balance “killing a lot of animals”, I would point out that so does vegan crop harvesting “kill a lot of animals”. In fact, driving cars over 30 mph on interstate highways “kills a lot of humans” annually. And so does paying taxes to the US government “kill a lot of animals (human and nonhuman). The point I was making is that if we stick to trying to eliminate the direct and intentional killing that we cause and try to get others to do the same, we’ll be way ahead of where we are now. If we start down the road of trying to eliminate ALL killing, including indirect and unintentional side-effect killing, there is no non-arbitrary place to draw a moral baseline other than fully self-sufficient sustenance (poverty) farming, and such a lifestyle is utterly implausible for the vast majority of “first worlders”. If you choose to reply to this post, I ask you, where should we draw the line? I can think of dozens of other things we vegans engage in that are as bad as Earth Balance in terms of number of animals (human and nonhuman) killed per vegan – buying veggies at the grocery store being one of them!
Dudes, dudettes, I don't know why dudettes is underlined like I misspelled it and dudes is not. Anyways, I think if we stop buying EB and other palm oil products and maybe tell them that's why we're not buying their stuff, then they can switch to soybean oil and charge us a little more, or maybe someone here wants to start selling eco-friendly vegan whipped margarine? I'll buy one. I have had the same tub of EB for a couple months now, I just use oil mostly. I have this pump and spray bottle with olive oil that works for toast even. Love! Ciao!
Dan, my line is pretty simple – known and avoidable harm is to be avoided.
Earth Balance (and frankly any product with palm oil in it) is a luxury convenience item, not something necessary for anything other than pleasing our taste buds.
When you talk about vegetables and grains, you're talking about survival now, and I'm not advocating mass suicide. I do actually try to grow as much of my own food as possible, however, as well as purchase organic food (which is better for the earth, the animals and the people, even if it doesn't allow for other harm reduction), and as much of it from farmers markets (which around here mean local farmers) as possible.
Taxes can be avoided, but it is difficult and has some level of personal risk involved that I'm not currently willing to take on (i.e. imprisonment). You can ask Mary more about that if you're interested, because she was close to someone years ago who avoided paying taxes for ethical reasons.
Driving is another great point, and I try to drive as little as possible, taking metro and bus when I can. In the next few weeks I'm going to start bike commuting.
That probably sounds extreme to you…but then veganism sounds extreme to most people.
We know it isn't. Neither are, actually.
So, there you go, there's my line.
And for whoever might think that I spend a lot of time in my boycott of earth balance, or that I shouldn't spend so much time in my boycott of earth balance and should instead spend time in vegan advocacy…well, frankly, the 15 seconds I save by not stopping to pick up the earth balance isn't something I can really add to the ledger in either direction.
"After all, Earth Balance is something any vegan could give up easily. It isn't a necessity, and it is clearly very harmful, and it kills a lot of animals. All the reasons we tend to give for why everyone (especially people concerned about the environment) should give up their animal products."
Deb, I disagree. There is a difference in kind. One harm IS the product, the other comes from the production of the product.
Veganism isn't a boycott. Animals and their secretions aren't food. They aren't entertainment. They aren't clothing. They aren't products, commodities, property…
A boycott is a TEMPORARY refusal to purchase certain PRODUCTS. Since animals aren't/shouldn't be products, vegans don't treat them as products. Thus, veganism is NOT a boycott.
However, a boycott is a type of negotiation with the product maker. A boycott is saying to the producer "When you stop making your product by doing XYZ, then I'll start buying your product again."
So, when we say vegans (or environmentalists or human rights activists) should boycott Earth Balance, we MUST consider the effect our boycott will have. Will it convince the producer to stop using slave labor and destroying the environment or will it convince them to stop making vegan products?
Elaine, as far as I'm concerned, anything using Palm Oil isn't ethical. Go into the politics of a boycott, if that's important to you, but that doesn't change my personal stance. I avoid harm wherever I can. Palm oil and Soy oil are certainly easy to avoid, and well worth avoiding.
Palm oil: kills animals, destroys rain forests, enslaves people.
How much worse does it get?
Do you really want to go down the path of supporting something that is unethical on the fear that a boycott might push them to make something even worse? I've heard that same argument used by pushers of happy animal products. Didn't buy it then, not buying it now.
OK, then it's moral purchasing, not a boycott.
Obviously, make your own decisions about what to buy or not buy.
I'm just saying there is a big difference between palm oil to a dead cow. One can be produced in a method that doesn't hurt anyone. The other cannot. We're not against palm oil in the same way that we're against milk. The analogies between vegans and environmentalists concerning consumption are wrong when they're based on this assumption that all products have the same moral value. They don't. There is a BIG difference between plant products and animals products. Animal products are the direct result of harm. With plant products it just depends. Some producers are not harmful and others are.
My point is that if your goal is to avoid contributing to harm, then fine, abstain from purchasing palm oil. And you'll probably want to abstain from all palm oil, not just EB. If your goal is to convince palm oil manufacturers to stop destroying the environment and/or using slave labor, you might want to think about how best to target your energy to have that effect. A boycott could work, or it might backfire depending on who is involved and how. But there might be better approaches.