1. People need to have access to food that is good for them, their history, culture and biological needs.
2. Food needs to be raised, cultivated, slaughtered and marketed in ways that are safe, humane, and environmental for people and animals
3. Comparing animal livestock to slavery or other human systems of torture, genocide, concentration camps, etc. is offensive to those who have endured those systems and diminishes and desensitizes people to those systems.
4. Manure, a mainstay of organic farming is as much an animal product as meat, milk, eggs and leather. (The same goes for blood and bone meal which are also used as fertilizers). I don’t know how anyone can think she can step out of that reality. In an organic garden/farm, the carnivores are the good guys, because the herbivore “pests”– that’s what they’re called– eat the crops. Farming is cruel to plant eating insects, snails and other absconders.
5. Condemning eating dogs or horses while having no problem with killing cows, ducks, chickens, sheep and goats is cultural bigotry and self righteousness.
6. There’s a circle of life and for many species, either as carnivores or omnivores it includes eating meat.
7. There are some medicines that come from animal products and discussing the morality of eating meat without considering that, is outright ableist, and in trajectory, genocidal.
8. Industrialized society, specifically settler colonialist entities are disconnected from the trajectory of most of our actions. food is no exception.
9. I have raised and slaughtered my own food. i am aware of the process.
10. Whenever we save money on something it means a person is probably only making 2$ a day on that product. that outrages me.
11. People going about their lives as if other people weren’t in prison unjustly and inhumanely or being bombed by the empire, that outrages me.
12. The conditions that workers endure to put food on our table, that outrages me.
13. I really see no moral difference in outcome, all things relative, if someone knows where meat comes from and if they don’t. Dead is dead. Though I do think more awareness would bring about greater food justice to people and animals.
14. I have no idea how animal rights activists “check” themselves. it’s not like Bessie The Cow can say to you “Hey, I know your intentions are good, and you’re really up there with that human savior syndrome, but you don’t really represent my interests. You see, i’ve been historically selectively bred specific to a particular human need for thousands of years, and if they stopped breeding me, I would cease to exist, my species would cease to exist. so unless you’re expecting to have a herd of cattle as pets, or are demanding huge public spaces for us to roam freely, , which really defeats the environmentalist arguments, I really don’t see how all your efforts don’t simply result in extinction for me and my cow peeps.”
15. Would that food police, food fascists, evangelical vegans and animal “rights” activists focus their outrage in responding to environmental racism, food deserts, equitable access to food, food choice and healthy food options.
16. I support species rights– the rights of species to endure. I support environmental policies that protect people and animals.
17. The dismissing of the eating of meat as “simply cultural” is another example of cultural imperialism and racism. Let us instead support traditional food production, which is often much more consistent with humane treatment and environmental safety and stewardship. We must respect historic and traditional hunting grounds, animal domestication, agriculture, family and communal farms and permaculture.
18. Live and let live– I don’t see meat eaters going around demanding everyone eat meat, as part of an essential political mandate. (Though the bullying of vegans and vegetarians to eat meat, by meat eaters they know is also unacceptable behavior.)
19. Animal “rights” movements that don’t address the issues of DISability access to society, including to autonomous food choices and body autonomy and don’t denounce Peter Singer and PETA are not allies in any struggle for social justice. so just don’t even talk to me. you weren’t talking to me anyway. i wasn’t really human– or animal, for that matter.
The animal “rights” movement has a seriously problematic history of racism, sexism, classism and ableism, so anyone who is advocating for animal “rights”, needs to center these issues in their politic and severely separate themselves from the mainstream animal “rights” movement.
20. The “animal ownership is slavery, meat is murder” argument AND the environmentalist argument are incongruous with each other. Either meat is slavery and murder and after the dictatorship of the vegan proletariat, there will be wild herds of formerly selectively bred domesticated animals, maintained at human expense, having the same environmental impact they have now, except that they won’t become meat, OR the total extinction or partial extinction of entire species so as to not have that environmental impact. Either way, these domesticated animals will nave no autonomy from human decision making, and as such will continue to be subjected to human authority.
21. The insistence that one diet would work for everyone is cruel, supremacist, racist, ableist and patronizing. Whenever we assert that our lifestyle, diet, way of life, habits and morals are the only correct ones we are asserting arrogance and hegemony. Check that and check yourself!
22. The issue of environmentalism including veganism as individual choice is a distraction from capitalism in general. We can all recycle and compost and think that’s going to make a difference while corporations run amuck and unchecked. That’s where the attention needs to be, in real struggle against this hegemony that is destroying the earth, and not on appeals of guilt and the illusion that this is simply about personal choice for those who have the option of actual choice.
23. The racism, ableism, sexism and classism that is embedded in the animal “rights” movement prioritizes animals above entire groups of people, and that allows those with certain choices to assume a false moral high ground without actually challenging systemic oppression.
White savior syndrome, paternalism, self righteousness, unchecked provides outlets and platform for legitimizing white patriarchal ENabled ruling class hegemony; the antithesis of real social change, providing the illusion of social justice without actual justice.
24. Animal “rights” essentially is used to take away from or even perpetuate systemic oppression against marginalized people. In that regard, it will never really be about animal “rights” but will instead simply support abuses of people by means of a meaningless distraction.
25. For many activists who include veganism in the larger issue of social justice but continue to insist that meat is murder and slavery, maintain this position of moral supremacy over people they are in “solidarity” with. It’s one way entitled activists can maintain the moral high ground in the context of systemic oppression and inequalities in the movement.
(In numbering these points I am not suggesting a hierarchy of importance. I’m simply counting.) um meat, i love you let me count the ways.
Some source material that inspires me to fight on, even when I’ve been raided and interrogated by the food police (new material added regularly. Newest posts are at the top of the list):
“Though many of these actions are worth taking, and colleagues and friends of ours are focused on them in good faith, a fixation on voluntary action alone takes the pressure off of the push for governmental policies to hold corporate polluters accountable. In fact, one recent study suggests that the emphasis on smaller personal actions can actually undermine support for the substantive climate policies needed.”
If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/veganism-intensively-farmed-meat-dairy-soya-maize
“So there’s a huge responsibility here: unless you’re sourcing your vegan products specifically from organic, “no-dig” systems, you are actively participating in the destruction of soil biota, promoting a system that deprives other species, including small mammals, birds and reptiles, of the conditions for life, and significantly contributing to climate change.
Our ecology evolved with large herbivores – with free-roaming herds of aurochs (the ancestral cow), tarpan (the original horse), elk, bear, bison, red deer, roe deer, wild boar and millions of beavers. They are species whose interactions with the environment sustain and promote life. Using herbivores as part of the farming cycle can go a long way towards making agriculture sustainable.
There’s no question we should all be eating far less meat, and calls for an end to high-carbon, polluting, unethical, intensive forms of grain-fed meat production are commendable. But if your concerns as a vegan are the environment, animal welfare and your own health, then it’s no longer possible to pretend that these are all met simply by giving up meat and dairy. Counterintuitive as it may seem, adding the occasional organic, pasture-fed steak to your diet could be the right way to square the circle.”
Going Vegan Isn’t the Most Sustainable Option for Humanity http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/going-vegan-isnt-actually-th
“A group of researchers has published a study in the journal Elementa in which they describe various biophysical simulation models that compare 10 eating patterns: the vegan diet, two vegetarian diets (one that includes dairy, the other dairy and eggs), four omnivorous diets (with varying degrees of vegetarian influence), one low in fats and sugars, and one similar to modern American dietary patterns.
What they found was that the carrying capacity—the size of the population that can be supported indefinitely by the resources of an ecosystem—of the vegan diet is actually less substantial than two of the vegetarian diets and two out of the four omnivorous diets they studied.”
Carrying capacity of U.S. agricultural land: Ten diet scenarios https://www.elementascience.org/articles/10.12952/journal.elementa.000116/
“Strategies for environmental sustainability and global food security must account for dietary change. Using a biophysical simulation model we calculated human carrying capacity under ten diet scenarios. The scenarios included two reference diets based on actual consumption and eight “Healthy Diet” scenarios that complied with nutritional recommendations but varied in the level of meat content. We considered the U.S. agricultural land base and accounted for losses, processing conversions, livestock feed needs, suitability of land for crops or grazing, and land productivity. Annual per capita land requirements ranged from 0.13 to 1.08 ha person-1 year-1across the ten diet scenarios. Carrying capacity varied from 402 to 807 million persons; 1.3 to 2.6 times the 2010 U.S. population. Carrying capacity was generally higher for scenarios with less meat and highest for the lacto-vegetarian diet. However, the carrying capacity of the vegan diet was lower than two of the healthy omnivore diet scenarios. Sensitivity analysis showed that carrying capacity estimates were highly influenced by starting assumptions about the proportion of cropland available for cultivated cropping. Population level dietary change can contribute substantially to meeting future food needs, though ongoing agricultural research and sustainable management practices are still needed to assure sufficient production levels.”
Local animal rights advocates protest Indigenous hunt near St. Catharines https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/11/14/local-animal-rights-advocates-protest-indigenous-hunt-near-st-catharines.html “A counterprotest, comprised of mostly Indigenous people, showed up to support the hunters. Bonnie Emmerson said objection to the harvest is racist and that her attendance reaffirms a chasm between people in the area.“It’s here,” she said. “It’s live.”Protestors in prior years have yelled at her and criticized traditional songs, she added.“If we weren’t here, it would be different for the hunters,” Emmerson said. “They’ve been spit at, had things thrown at them for basically exercising fundamental rights as Indigenous people.””
Before you Criticize the Food Choices of Others http://meloukhia.net/2010/03/before_you_criticize_the_food_choices_of_others/“Food policing is an area in which all sorts of assumptions are made about class and ability status. It goes hand in hand with the idea that people have an obligation to be healthy, that all bodies are the same so there’s only one way to be healthy, and that there is virtue in eating “right” as dictated by current authorities in the food world. Like, say,MichaelPollan,whoiseditorializedfawningly in numerous publications all over the planet for his “simple” and “helpful” food rules.
Unspeakable Conversations (Should I have been killed at birth? The case for my life.) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/843688/posts“He insists he doesn’t want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like min…”
Stanford research shows Aboriginal hunting practice increases animal
populations https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2013/pr-fire-aborigines-wildlife-102913.htmlThe way that Aboriginal people in Australia go about hunting monitor lizards for food, based on “dreaming,” leads to many more of the lizards, rather than fewer.
“The truth is there is no meal we can eat without killing. None. A trip to your local grocery store for tofu and spinach leaves may not include a single animal product but the harvesting of such food costs endless animal lives. Growing fields of soy beans for commercial clients means removing habitat from thousands of wild animals, killing them through deforestation and loss of their home. Songbirds and insects are killed by pesticides at legion. Fertilizers are made from petroleum now, and those fields of tofu seeds are literally being sprayed with oil we are fighting wars over. Deer died for that tofu. Songbirds died. Men and women in battle died. And then when the giant tofu factory harvested the beans they ran over those chemical oil fields of faux-food with combines that rip open groundhogs, mice, and rabbits. Tear apart frogs and fledgling birds. It is a messy and bloody business making tofu or any of that other non-murderous food.What about organic tofu and vegetables? That doesn’t include chemical fertilizers and the companies are mindful? Right? Well, that is correct. But if you are not using oil to fertilize your crops then you are using organic material: manure, blood, bone, fish, etc. You may be a vegetarian but your vegetables are the most voracious of all carnivores. That small farm at your local green market needed to lay down a lot of swine blood, cow bone, and horse poop freeze-dried in bags marked “ORGANIC” to grow those carrots so big and sweet. Animals are an integral part of growing food for us, as food
themselves or creating the materials that feed the earth. And the earth must be fed.”
In Bed With Frida Kahlo 
Pingback: Wielding Your Power Carefully – Things I Need to Say Out Loud in Public
Regarding point 14: and then there is the issue of reparations!