A few weeks ago I wrote that veganism was nothing but a symbolic act. That inspired a retort from vegan dietitian Jack Norris, who quoted a paper called Expected Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism. In it, Jason Gaverick Matheny (founder of New Harvest, a company developing lab-grown meat) argues in sciencey prose that a single vegetarian’s meat abstinence could lead to fewer animals being raised for food:

Since there are 20 million customers per threshold unit, and only one of these customers will actually complete the unit of which his or her purchase is a part, the probability of my completing a unit is one in 20 million. That means by buying meat I have a one-in-20 million chance of affecting the production and slaughter of one billion animals.

Hey, Kevin Costner decided a presidential election with his one vote in Swing Vote, so it could happen. It probably won’t, but Matheny believes that since you cannot be 100 percent sure you don’t make a difference, you can’t argue against vegetarianism on the grounds that it’s never effective on an individual level. So I guess I was wrong.

Here is what I said:

Plenty of meat eaters care about the ethics of food, even though vegans scoff at the idea of ethical animal killing. In my case, when I grocery shop, I buy mostly organ meats. And when I go to a restaurant, I look for the organ option the way a vegan looks for the vegan option. I do this because I think fewer animals will need to be raised and killed if more of the animal parts are used. In that sense, I am accomplishing exactly what vegans are — fewer animals are being born. (But I recognize that my consumer choices are almost totally insignificant in this regard; like veganism, this is a symbolic gesture).

If Matheny’s findings are correct, I should have been less definitive. It would have been more accurate to say “like veganism, this is all but a symbolic gesture.” The 1-in-20-million figure means that veganism technically isn’t pure symbolism, but with odds like that, calling yourself an animal liberator for avoiding animal products would be like someone calling themselves a millionaire for buying a lottery ticket.

Except you know when you lose the lottery. As Matheny points out, you can’t confirm whether or not you’re the one to cast the deciding vote against meat. That is what allows vegans to operate under the delusion that they are making a difference, even though they almost certainly are not.

And you can drop the “almost certainly” if a vegan’s goal is to improve life for existing animals. Unless they engage in direct action like freeing animals or arson, the most vegans can hope to do is reduce meat demand enough that farmers breed fewer animals into existence (farmers do not release animals when demand for meat goes down). This does absolutely nothing to address the problems of factory farming, which means ethical omnivores have vegans beat as far as improving animal lives.

But even if a vegan is satisfied with the goal of bringing fewer farm animals into the world, there is no perceived difference in animal numbers or the environment that a vegan can attribute to themselves. From the point of view of an individual vegan, veganism might as well be symbolic, even if 1 out of 20 million times it isn’t.

And then there are cases where veganism is overtly symbolic, like not eating animal products even when there is no possibility of stimulating demand for them. It’s not always possible to know when this is the case, but turning down meat even though it’s about to be thrown out is an obvious one. Eating grains rather than eating the small animals killed to grow and harvest grains is pointless. So is getting rid of non-vegan clothes or furniture that you had from before you were vegan, or not eating eggs from well-treated chickens (chickens aren’t aware of their property rights to those eggs, and you’re not going to bring any male chicks back to life). Of course avoiding oysters is symbolic as hell. 

But there are plenty of non-symbolic aspects to veganism too, some of which Norris and Matheny failed to note. The problem is, the good non-symbolic stuff is mostly abstract and indiscernible, whereas the bad non-symbolic stuff is what really counts.

Positive Ways Veganism is Not Symbolic (complete)

* You theoretically might be the person who leads to a decrease in the number of animals raised for food, though you will never know this.

* Avoiding the guilt of participating in what is seen as an immoral activity. 

* Stimulating a market for new kinds of processed foods. Vegans can gauge their progress by the number of packaged products with a green “V” on them.

However, the most dramatic effect that veganism has is on vegans and the people around them, not animals or the environment — and that effect is mostly negative.

Negative Ways Veganism Is Not Symbolic (abridged)

* Greater risk for nutritional imbalances. Humans are omnivores, which means that a vegan diet is not optimal for us. So unless vegans stay current on nutrient recommendations, deficiencies may creep in. Even if they do everything vegan authorities tell them to do, that might not help, since people are different and not everything is known about nutrition.

* Less delicious food. But this one is mitigated by the lowered culinary standards that vegans accept over time.

* Guilt. The main point of veganism is to avoid the guilt of intentionally participating in the suffering of animals, but vegans often discover new sources of guilt, especially if there is an environmental component to their veganism. Radically modifying your diet in response to a perceived injustice, even though it seems to accomplish nothing, opens yourself up to feeling responsible for other problems you can do nothing about (the existence of plastic, for instance). Attempting to save the world through personal consumption habits can develop into eco-neurosis.

* Encouraging obsessive tendencies. It’s not enough for vegans to avoid large chunks of meat or cheese. They have to check every label and interrogate waiters to make sure small amounts of animal products don’t slip into their food. The psychological aversion to animal products that goes along with this can make vegans feel ill if they find out something they ate had animal products in it.

* Alienation. Hunger from lack of vegan food or revulsion at the presence of non-vegan food makes it harder for vegans to enjoy social situations and special events. Sometimes the inconvenience is daunting enough to make vegans stay home.

But vegan alienation goes deeper than this. Book titles like Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World and Living Among Meat Eaters: The Vegetarian’s Survival Handbook provide some indication of how alone vegans feel in their sanity. In his blog entry called Hoodlum Omnivores, David Horton writes:

Today, when plant-based foods are known to be so perfect for us, the whole thing of farming and killing animals seems so obviously crazy. Vegans probably feel that the worst trouble for us is in reminding ourselves we live as fearlessly as we do amongst such a big bunch of hoodlums. These ‘hoodlum’, weird-habited humans comprise around 99% of all humans on the planet.

Vegans can still be friends with that 99 percent of us, but they must do so despite our weird and murderous ways, which is rife with potential for cognitive dissonance. Veganism makes vegans judge us even if they aren’t normally judgmental people. As George Dvorsky explains in Meat Eaters Are Bad People, veganism is not just a personal decision with no implications for anyone else. If meat is wrong, that applies to everyone.

People often think that vegans are high on moral superiority, but that’s only sometimes true. It’s not fun to think that 99 percent of the world’s humans are hoodlums… it’s depressing! Naturally this gives many vegans a dim view of humanity, and what human wants to have that?

Veganism can also compromise friendships in the other direction — omnivores don’t always want to spend time with people who think they are immoral or evil. Just as vegans prefer not to date meat eaters, sometimes the feeling is mutual.

And do you really want to accept a philosophy that will have you equating animal use with human slavery?

So no, veganism is not only symbolic. To be more precise, I should have said that the positive effects of veganism are largely symbolic. Unfortunately, the negative aspects of veganism are a lot more real. Your odds of affecting animal production with your vegan diet are slim; the odds of making your own life and the lives of those around you more difficult and unpleasant are much better.