I’m curious, do you consider veganism more than “morally safe” if the meat-eater takes scrupulous care to source pasture raised and what we might call “artisanally slaughtered” meat and other animal products?
It kind of makes sense to me that veganism and being anti-abortion would go together—the points of view harmonize well. I personally have the opposite view, and think that both abortion and eating ethically raised meat are basically fine, even though many factory farming practices are apalling and there are probably some cases in which I would be disturbed by how a particular abortion played out.
I tend to think that it’s a combination of extended pain, awareness of death, and a principle of granting individual liberty to a conscious, aware individual that makes it impermissible to kill, and these don’t apply in the case of abortion or in the case of ethical animal farming and slaughter. However, I personally fail routinely to take fully scrupulous care to avoid factory farmed meat (although I have plans to do better starting in the fall, when that will become more logistically possible), and I also acknowledge that it’s hard to be sure of where your animal products come from. Furthermore, I could be wrong about the extent of the distress of consciousness-level of even putatively ethically farmed livestock, and for these reasons, despite me thinking meat-eating is theoretically fine, I think that in practice, uncertainty makes veganism “morally safe.”
Thanks for the response! I think the care required to be a “morally safe” meat eater would have to be very scrupulous indeed. Effectively, one would have to be vegan when eating food bought by others, unless they are confident that the buyer shares their philosophy of scrupulously verifying humane raising and slaughter.
Almost all restaurants optimize for cost reduction when sourcing their animal products, so one would eat vegan at restaurants. This also means being vegan for Uber Eats, street food, food at the baseball game, etc.
Anytime one goes to a friend’s house, they shouldn’t eat the friend’s meat, unless they know the friend shares their philosophy, or they had the friend specifically buy the meat for them. This means being vegan or extremely scrupulous for barbecues, hangouts, etc.
I scrupulously kept kosher during my childhood and adolescence, which seems to require a similar level of effort. I almost never ate out, except at the single-digit restaurants in my town which were certified kosher. At baseball games, I had drinks but not food. I didn’t eat any meals prepared at my non-religious or non-Jewish friends’ houses, unless it was obviously raw (like a carrot) or in kosher packaging (like kosher snacks).
Let me tell you, that was a lot of work! Even though veganism is much more restrictive, I actually find it far easier to keep, since it’s relatively easily verifiable and communicable.
I’m sure that it would be difficult to eliminate all unethical meat consumption, and I applaud you for trying before you went entirely veg*an. I don’t have a very absolutist take on it. “Morally safe” is a relative term to me, and I don’t feel like a moral disaster has occurred if I eat factory farmed meat once in a while. It’s a bit like how I approached COVID safety: I will accept greater levels of harm/risk in order to enjoy a socially meaningful experience than I will in circumstances that are less meaningful. Similarly, I’ll eat ethical meat at home and not worry about the origin of the meat when eating out or at a restaurant. I think that if everybody followed this policy, that would represent a radical improvement in the way we treat animals.
I guess on a broader level, I’m interested in small dietary interventions that still make a big difference in terms of decreasing one’s marginal contribution to animal cruelty. It’s way easier for some people to reduce meat consumption and shift toward pasture-raised meat and home-layed eggs in their home cooking than it is for them to become vegetarian/vegan or to rigorously check the origins of all meat consumed at restaurants and social occasions. That doesn’t apply to everybody, of course—for some, it’s more straightforward to cut out meat entirely, others are more committed to eliminating meat on ethical or compassion grounds, and still others simply can’t afford meat unless it’s factory-farmed, enforcing a binary choice between veg*ism or unethical meat consumption.
A third aspect is social and signaling considerations. I have a lot of respect for veg*ans such as yourself who took a principled ethical stand and fought for it despite social pressure and inconvenience. I think that can be very persuasive to some people, although unfortunately as you may have experienced, some people will be rude or frustrated by it. I think there is room for modeling multiple approaches to reducing unethical meat consumption, and one of them is the “80% is good enough” approach that I’m trying to practice. Big tent meat reduction?
I think there is room for modeling multiple approaches to reducing unethical meat consumption, and one of them is the “80% is good enough” approach that I’m trying to practice. Big tent meat reduction?
Just in case it wasn’t clear in my post, I am very interested in this approach as well! I applaud you for thinking along these lines. Every little bit helps. This Future Perfect article titled “the difference you make when you eat less meat” does a great job of showing how eating less meat can make a big difference in terms of animal welfare and climate concerns.
I think basically all of veganism is just degrees of this harm reduction approach. Someone like Brian Tomasik might look at my supposedly vegan lifestyle and weep, seeing that I crunch springtails underfoot when I walk in my lawn, I buy some produce that was grown with pesticides, and I buy non-vegan products for my wife and other family members.
If more people took your 80% approach there would be far fewer conscious animals tortured in tiny cages. Which would be a huge win.
I have experience with that: eating meat at home but rather strictly not at restaurants for exactly the reasons you mention: it tends to simply be almost impossible to find a restaurant that seems to serve not-crazily-mistreated animals.
Doing that as vegan-in-restaurants (instead of vegetarian-in-restaurants) is significantly more difficult, but from my experience, one can totally get used to try to remain veg* outside but non-veg* at home where one can go for food with some expectation of net positive animal lives.
Few particular related experiences:
Even people who knew me rather well, would intuitively totally not understand the principle. I at times kind of felt bad to buy meat when they’re there as I knew they thought I’m vegan and will be confused, even though I would have told them time and again I simply avoid conventional meat/in restaurants and/or at their place etc.
I’m always astonished at the so many people who supposedly care about animals do the other way round: In restaurants they eat meat but not at home. Weird, given it’s so obvious in the restaurants is the worst stuff ((and they’re not the kind of perfect EA where a dollar saved would be used towards most effective causes, which could naturally complicate the choices))
Restaurants indeed do, behaviorally, absolutely not care about animal welfare. For a food animal welfare compensation project we tried to get a bunch of restaurants to accept that we source higher-welfare meat for them, without them having to pay anything for it. It was in almost all places not possible at all: (i) Even just the slightest potential logistical extra step and/or (ii) potentially a reputational fear from anything about their usual sourcing being leaked to the unconscious public, seemed to make them reluctant to participate.
(Then, I don’t want to praise my habits; I hope I find the courage again to become more vegan sometime, as everything else feels like inflicting unacceptable suffering and/or wasting a lot of money on expensive food, and I’m not sure my ‘maybe it helps my health’ justifies it/there must be better ways. All my sympathy if someone calls health a bad excuse for non-veganism, but I definitely maintain, if it’s not about health questions, once one gets used to avoid meat and/or animal products, it only becomes easier over time, in terms of logistics and getting to know tasty alternatives, either simply only outside or also at home)
Thanks for the information!
I’m curious, do you consider veganism more than “morally safe” if the meat-eater takes scrupulous care to source pasture raised and what we might call “artisanally slaughtered” meat and other animal products?
It kind of makes sense to me that veganism and being anti-abortion would go together—the points of view harmonize well. I personally have the opposite view, and think that both abortion and eating ethically raised meat are basically fine, even though many factory farming practices are apalling and there are probably some cases in which I would be disturbed by how a particular abortion played out.
I tend to think that it’s a combination of extended pain, awareness of death, and a principle of granting individual liberty to a conscious, aware individual that makes it impermissible to kill, and these don’t apply in the case of abortion or in the case of ethical animal farming and slaughter. However, I personally fail routinely to take fully scrupulous care to avoid factory farmed meat (although I have plans to do better starting in the fall, when that will become more logistically possible), and I also acknowledge that it’s hard to be sure of where your animal products come from. Furthermore, I could be wrong about the extent of the distress of consciousness-level of even putatively ethically farmed livestock, and for these reasons, despite me thinking meat-eating is theoretically fine, I think that in practice, uncertainty makes veganism “morally safe.”
Thanks for the response! I think the care required to be a “morally safe” meat eater would have to be very scrupulous indeed. Effectively, one would have to be vegan when eating food bought by others, unless they are confident that the buyer shares their philosophy of scrupulously verifying humane raising and slaughter.
Almost all restaurants optimize for cost reduction when sourcing their animal products, so one would eat vegan at restaurants. This also means being vegan for Uber Eats, street food, food at the baseball game, etc.
Anytime one goes to a friend’s house, they shouldn’t eat the friend’s meat, unless they know the friend shares their philosophy, or they had the friend specifically buy the meat for them. This means being vegan or extremely scrupulous for barbecues, hangouts, etc.
I scrupulously kept kosher during my childhood and adolescence, which seems to require a similar level of effort. I almost never ate out, except at the single-digit restaurants in my town which were certified kosher. At baseball games, I had drinks but not food. I didn’t eat any meals prepared at my non-religious or non-Jewish friends’ houses, unless it was obviously raw (like a carrot) or in kosher packaging (like kosher snacks).
Let me tell you, that was a lot of work! Even though veganism is much more restrictive, I actually find it far easier to keep, since it’s relatively easily verifiable and communicable.
I’m sure that it would be difficult to eliminate all unethical meat consumption, and I applaud you for trying before you went entirely veg*an. I don’t have a very absolutist take on it. “Morally safe” is a relative term to me, and I don’t feel like a moral disaster has occurred if I eat factory farmed meat once in a while. It’s a bit like how I approached COVID safety: I will accept greater levels of harm/risk in order to enjoy a socially meaningful experience than I will in circumstances that are less meaningful. Similarly, I’ll eat ethical meat at home and not worry about the origin of the meat when eating out or at a restaurant. I think that if everybody followed this policy, that would represent a radical improvement in the way we treat animals.
I guess on a broader level, I’m interested in small dietary interventions that still make a big difference in terms of decreasing one’s marginal contribution to animal cruelty. It’s way easier for some people to reduce meat consumption and shift toward pasture-raised meat and home-layed eggs in their home cooking than it is for them to become vegetarian/vegan or to rigorously check the origins of all meat consumed at restaurants and social occasions. That doesn’t apply to everybody, of course—for some, it’s more straightforward to cut out meat entirely, others are more committed to eliminating meat on ethical or compassion grounds, and still others simply can’t afford meat unless it’s factory-farmed, enforcing a binary choice between veg*ism or unethical meat consumption.
A third aspect is social and signaling considerations. I have a lot of respect for veg*ans such as yourself who took a principled ethical stand and fought for it despite social pressure and inconvenience. I think that can be very persuasive to some people, although unfortunately as you may have experienced, some people will be rude or frustrated by it. I think there is room for modeling multiple approaches to reducing unethical meat consumption, and one of them is the “80% is good enough” approach that I’m trying to practice. Big tent meat reduction?
Just in case it wasn’t clear in my post, I am very interested in this approach as well! I applaud you for thinking along these lines. Every little bit helps. This Future Perfect article titled “the difference you make when you eat less meat” does a great job of showing how eating less meat can make a big difference in terms of animal welfare and climate concerns.
I think basically all of veganism is just degrees of this harm reduction approach. Someone like Brian Tomasik might look at my supposedly vegan lifestyle and weep, seeing that I crunch springtails underfoot when I walk in my lawn, I buy some produce that was grown with pesticides, and I buy non-vegan products for my wife and other family members.
If more people took your 80% approach there would be far fewer conscious animals tortured in tiny cages. Which would be a huge win.
I have experience with that: eating meat at home but rather strictly not at restaurants for exactly the reasons you mention: it tends to simply be almost impossible to find a restaurant that seems to serve not-crazily-mistreated animals.
Doing that as vegan-in-restaurants (instead of vegetarian-in-restaurants) is significantly more difficult, but from my experience, one can totally get used to try to remain veg* outside but non-veg* at home where one can go for food with some expectation of net positive animal lives.
Few particular related experiences:
Even people who knew me rather well, would intuitively totally not understand the principle. I at times kind of felt bad to buy meat when they’re there as I knew they thought I’m vegan and will be confused, even though I would have told them time and again I simply avoid conventional meat/in restaurants and/or at their place etc.
I’m always astonished at the so many people who supposedly care about animals do the other way round: In restaurants they eat meat but not at home. Weird, given it’s so obvious in the restaurants is the worst stuff ((and they’re not the kind of perfect EA where a dollar saved would be used towards most effective causes, which could naturally complicate the choices))
Restaurants indeed do, behaviorally, absolutely not care about animal welfare. For a food animal welfare compensation project we tried to get a bunch of restaurants to accept that we source higher-welfare meat for them, without them having to pay anything for it. It was in almost all places not possible at all: (i) Even just the slightest potential logistical extra step and/or (ii) potentially a reputational fear from anything about their usual sourcing being leaked to the unconscious public, seemed to make them reluctant to participate.
(Then, I don’t want to praise my habits; I hope I find the courage again to become more vegan sometime, as everything else feels like inflicting unacceptable suffering and/or wasting a lot of money on expensive food, and I’m not sure my ‘maybe it helps my health’ justifies it/there must be better ways. All my sympathy if someone calls health a bad excuse for non-veganism, but I definitely maintain, if it’s not about health questions, once one gets used to avoid meat and/or animal products, it only becomes easier over time, in terms of logistics and getting to know tasty alternatives, either simply only outside or also at home)