James McWilliams Asks Us to Dream of Vegan Utopias, Not Pastured Meat Utopias

Time to dissect another James McWilliams piece. Like the rest of McWilliams’ repertoire, this one is about how McWilliams doesn’t like any kind of animal product consumption whatsoever.

In “The Myth of Sustainable Meat,” he writes:

“Grass-grazing cows emit considerably more methane than grain-fed cows.”

Okay, now that’s a fair start. Some research suggests that the opposite is true, but most research currently supports McWilliams, I think. What McWilliams doesn’t mention is that grass-fed cows are less carbon- and nitrogen-intensive than grain-fed because growing that grain releases greenhouse gases, even if the cows don’t release as much during digestion. And pasture – unlike feedlots – can serve as a carbon sink.

As for methane, scientists are working on ways to reduce the methane that cows and other ruminants release. For instance, feeding ruminants flax, oregano oil, cashew shell oil and high-sugar rye grasses, or changing cows’ intestinal bacteria could all help reduce animal methane emissions.

And hey, if methane is the problem and methane-emitting animals are the villains, why isn’t McWilliams declaring open season on all methane-emitting wild animals? We should be hunting those methane-emitting menaces to extinction.  

McWilliams continues:

“Pastured organic chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming.”

This statistic could also be correct, but organic and pastured aren’t inextricably linked. Makenna Goodman wrote an article arguing that the disadvantages of organic pastured chickens make non-organic pastured chickens a better option for humans and chickens.

Could McWilliams’ statistic apply to pastured non-organic chicken? It’s hard to say without knowing where he got it.

McWilliams persists:

It requires 2 to 20 acres to raise a cow on grass. If we raised all the cows in the United States on grass (all 100 million of them), cattle would require (using the figure of 10 acres per cow) almost half the country’s land (and this figure excludes space needed for pastured chicken and pigs).

If that’s true, then the US wouldn’t raise so many cows. As grass-fed cows gobbled up more and more real estate, land and meat costs would become prohibitively expensive and would put a stop to cows’ manifest destiny schemes.

Enough commenters posted similar points on McWilliams’ article that he tried to refute them on his blog Eatingplantsdotorg.wordpress.com (one of the weirdest URLs I’ve ever seen). There he writes:

The premise that higher priced meat would lead to reduced consumption is, as far as it goes, accurate. In fact, that’s the only way we’re going to achieve sustained reduced consumption–make animal products radically more expensive. The problem, however, is that no matter how many boutique operations emerge, we’re never going to see the price of animal products collectively rise to the point that it mitigates consumption.

The reason is skyrocketing global demand. Normally, increased demand would lead to increased price–and that may happen, but nowhere near to the extent that it would reduce consumption. Here’s why: this demand virtually dictates that no matter how many expensive options arise, industrial operations, by virtue of their efficiency, will always dominate as the leading form of production–a form of production geared to lower the price of animal products.

This is pure equivocation. Commenters on his article said that if the US switched over to grass-fed-cows only, as in McWilliams’ hypothetical, cows wouldn’t overrun the country (despite taking up more land) because they would be too expensive and so people would eat less cow. To address this, McWilliams substitutes a new hypothetical in which intensively raised cattle are now part of the equation. Sure, that’s more a plausible future, but proposing a new hypothetical doesn’t address whether or not his original hypothetical made sense.

Later in the Eatingplantsdotorg.wordpress.com entry, he says:

I’ll concede that to argue that small scale animal farming would “work” if we all just ate less meat makes sense in theory. But the reality–the entrenched nature and growing demand for affordable animal products globally–suggests that we’d be better off fighting to end the production of animals altogether.

If the world is too selfish, thoughtless and greedy to go for grass-fed cows and eating less meat, how are you going to convince the world to go vegan? Pasture-raised animals wouldn’t satisfy the world’s current demand for meat, true, but a purely vegan agriculture is even worse at satisfying that demand. 

McWilliams is behind the times on this one. Partially inspired by Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, many other vegans are accepting that getting omnivores to eat less meat is a more realistic strategy than convincing everyone to go vegan. 

Back to the New York Times entry:

Advocates of small-scale, nonindustrial alternatives say their choice is at least more natural. Again, this is a dubious claim. Many farmers who raise chickens on pasture use industrial breeds that have been bred to do one thing well: fatten quickly in confinement. As a result, they can suffer painful leg injuries after several weeks of living a ‘natural’ life pecking around a large pasture. Free-range pigs are routinely affixed with nose rings to prevent them from rooting, which is one of their most basic instincts. In essence, what we see as natural doesn’t necessarily conform to what is natural from the animals’ perspectives.

This is a trifling point, but I agree with it. It’s difficult to define what natural means and it’s suspect to defend a practice just by slapping that label on it. As vegan haters of “the naturalistic fallacy” say, “natural” isn’t automatically desirable. If it were, everyone would be anti-civilization primitivists. Many people do see certain benefits in whatever might be deemed “natural.” If pasture-raised meats have some of those benefits, it’s more effective to list those benefits rather than say we gotta love it because “it’s natural.” 

McWilliams goes on:

The economics of alternative animal systems are similarly problematic. Subsidies notwithstanding, the unfortunate reality of commodifying animals is that confinement pays. If the production of meat and dairy was somehow decentralized into small free-range operations, common economic sense suggests that it wouldn’t last. These businesses — no matter how virtuous in intention — would gradually seek a larger market share, cutting corners, increasing stocking density and aiming to fatten animals faster than competitors could. Barring the strictest regulations, it wouldn’t take long for production systems to scale back up to where they started.

This is quite likely true, but I don’t see his point. We shouldn’t buy meat from farms that treat their animals better because a world where that is the only type of farm is unlikely? Should we not buy vegan take-out because a world with only vegan restaurants is unlikely? If there were somehow a vegan world for a second, pretty soon some people would get a hankering for animal products, would hunt and fish them, and raise them for food again (assuming domesticated animals hadn’t yet been extinguished). Does this mean no one should ever go vegan?

McWilliams says:

All this said, committed advocates of alternative systems make one undeniably important point about the practice called “rotational grazing” or “holistic farming”: the soil absorbs the nutrients from the animals’ manure, allowing grass and other crops to grow without the addition of synthetic fertilizer. As Michael Pollan writes, “It is doubtful you can build a genuinely sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients.” In other words, raising animals is not only sustainable, but required.

But rotational grazing works better in theory than in practice. Consider Joel Salatin, the guru of nutrient cycling, who employs chickens to enrich his cows’ grazing lands with nutrients. His plan appears to be impressively eco-correct, until we learn that he feeds his chickens with tens of thousands of pounds a year of imported corn and soy feed. This common practice is an economic necessity. Still, if a farmer isn’t growing his own feed, the nutrients going into the soil have been purloined from another, most likely industrial, farm, thereby undermining the benefits of nutrient cycling.

This is true of every form of agriculture that relies on fertility imported from elsewhere, including the agriculture that supplies McWilliams’ vegan food. (Or does McWilliams buy only veganic-organically grown products?)

Still, to the extent that omnivores say that animal farms are always closed, self-sustaining systems whereas vegan agriculture must always import fertility, McWilliams is right to point out that this isn’t true. However, it’s disingenuous of him to reference Joel Salatin as “the guru of nutrient cycling,” with Salatin’s “Polyface” implied as the omnivore’s ideal, when a previous comment discussion on McWilliams’ blog pointed out that not all omnivores see Polyface as an ideal. As Adam Merberg notes, in Meat: A Benign Extravagance, small-scale animal farming advocate Simon Fairlie is skeptical of Polyface. In fact, Fairlie’s skepticism entirely concurs with McWilliams’ own:

Of all the carbon added to Salatin’s pastures over the years, some will have come directly from the atmosphere; but a proportion will have come, directly or indirectly, from another farm in the form of soy, corn or whatever feed Salatin buys in.

However productive Polyface may be, it is in a sense only half a farm, and it doesn’t help to analyse the carbon sequestration on one half, without knowing what is happening on the other. In the case of Polyface if the feed is bought from a responsible organic grower, it may well be that the carbon sequestration on the two farms added together is positive. But in another situation it could well be different. There are plenty of stock farmers who bump up the productivity and (perhaps unwittingly) the organic matter on their farm by buying in feed from a chemical grain farmer who has stripped the carbon content of his fields close to the bottom threshold. (208)

Where Fairlie would disagree with McWilliams is over McWilliams’ implication that Polyface represents the best animal farms can do, and that if Polyface imports fertility, then all aspiring sustainable animal farms must do the same.

McWilliams writes:

Finally, there is no avoiding the fact that the nutrient cycle is interrupted every time a farmer steps in and slaughters a perfectly healthy manure-generating animal, something that is done before animals live a quarter of their natural lives.

As Melissa McEwen points out, this isn’t a problem since new animals are bred, so there are living manure-generators waiting in the wings.

McWilliams continues:

When consumers break the nutrient cycle to eat animals, nutrients leave the system of rotationally grazed plots of land (though of course this happens with plant-based systems as well). They land in sewer systems and septic tanks (in the form of human waste) and in landfills and rendering plants (in the form of animal carcasses).

McWilliams loves to bash animal agriculture with arguments that are just as effective against vegan agriculture. At least this time he admits that’s what he’s doing.

The overarching point of this article seems to be that we shouldn’t support pastured animal agriculture because it impacts the environment and will never realistically supplant factory farming. But then why support vegan agriculture, which also impacts the environment and will never realistically supplant factory farming? 

Obviously this is because James McWilliams prefers a theoretical vegan utopia than a theoretical pastured meat utopia. 

--Tagged under: Environment--

--Tagged under: James McWilliams--

Vegetables: What Big Agriculture and James McWilliams Have In Common

James McWilliams has written another anti-meat column for The Atlantic. That’s his beat after all. Let’s see if it contains any fallacies.

Here’s McWilliams:

I’ve repeatedly argued that supporting alternatives to the industrial production of animal products serves the ultimate interest of industrial producers. The decision to eat animal products sourced from small, local, and sustainable farms might seem like a fundamental rejection of big business as usual. It is, however, an implicit but powerful confirmation of the single most critical behavior necessary to the perpetuation of factory farming: eating animals. So long as consumers continue to eat meat, eggs, and dairy — even if they are sourced from small farms practicing the highest welfare and safety standards — they’re providing, however implicitly, an endorsement of the products that big agriculture will always be able to produce more efficiently and cheaply. And thus dominate.

The logic of this argument — that you shouldn’t buy more ethically acceptable versions of items that are usually produced unethically because this could be seen as endorsing the unethical version — could be used against purchasing everything from shirts to soy beans. Should we not buy clothing from manufacturers paying their employees a living wage because wearing ethical clothing could be seen as an endorsement of clothing on the whole, which is more often than not made by underpaid workers? Should we not buy tomatoes from the farmers market because that would endorse tomatoes, which are most efficiently produced by slave migrant labor?

Just because McWilliams has “repeatedly argued” this point doesn’t mean it makes sense.

He continues:

Until the act of eating animals itself is made problematic, “voting with our forks” will be little more than a vacuous slogan. Critics claim that it’s unrealistic to expect a substantial transition to veganism, and advocate the support of small-scale animal farms as a more achievable alternative. What’s truly unrealistic, however, is the expectation that small, more eco-friendly and “humane” farms will permanently defy economic logic and convince a meaningful percentage of meat and dairy eaters to spend substantially more money to buy a nobler egg or pork chop. I’d bet on a massive transition to veganism before a massive transition to economic irrationality.

How is it irrational to spend more money on animal products from farms you approve of because you don’t like animal torture, but rational to never eat animal products again for similar reasons? Becoming an “ethical omnivore” does have its costs. You usually have to pay more for animal products, though if you’re not afraid of offal or less popular animals, you can often get meat on the cheap. At a farmers market near me, you can get a whole wild rabbit for £4, and half a pig’s head for a little more than that: about a week’s ration of meat for two people for around £10. True, so-called “ethical omnivores” often can’t eat meat when they’re at restaurants or in other situations where they don’t have control over the ingredients, and thus they have to eat like vegans sometimes (or take the bivalve option if there is one). But unless vegans practice freeganism or are cool with eating bivalves, insects and other animal products that fit vegan ethics, they always have to eat like vegans, making “convenience, habit and taste” even harder to satisfy for them than for ethics-minded omnivores. After all, ethical omnivores can eat the vegan option but vegans can’t eat the humane meat option. So how is veganism less of a sacrifice and thus less irrational than eating only humane meat?

It’s irrational to knowingly pay more for something that doesn’t contain any additional value. It’s not irrational to pay more for humane meat because if you care about animal treatment, it’s a much better product than factory farmed meat. As long as there are people who care about animal suffering but don’t see anything wrong with intentionally killing animals for food, there will be a market for humane meat.

And really, McWilliams doesn’t think people behave in economically irrational ways? How would he explain the existence of name brand cereals when the generic store versions are so much cheaper (just to give one of endless possible examples)? And unlike humane meat vs. factory farmed meat, there’s not even a discernible difference between Rice Krispies and Crisp Ricies.

McWilliams again:

A point that’s germane to this issue, but frequently muted, is how the preexisting power and amorality of industrial animal agriculture enables it to manipulate the rhetoric of alternative animal-based systems to its profitable advantage. Agribusiness has been conspicuously nonplussed by the rise of the food movement, shrugging its shoulders as it markets itself as “sustainable,” “supporting family farms,” and steadfastly oriented toward the “welfare” of animals. Industry grasps, then thrills in manipulating, the axiom that language is both cheap and powerful. Industrial machinations are helped along by the fact that the food movement’s buzzwords are slackened catchphrases that allow the largest pig farm on the planet to advertise itself as “humane” and “sustainable.” This fungible verbal lexicon, with every well-meaning new term appropriated by the marketers at Big Ag, is the food movement’s Achilles’ heel.

Translation: never trust labels. If you care about the conditions of the farm you’re buying from, research it. Just because corporations co-opt buzzwords doesn’t mean that the original idea behind “humane” no longer exists.

McWilliams writes:

A recent confirmation of this point is the emergence of an organization called humanewatch.org. Contrary to how it sounds, HumaneWatch is the self-appointed watchdog — think Cujo — of a group that actually does watch out for dogs, and many other animals, with admirable dedication: the Humane Society of the United States. Calling HSUS a “stealth animal rights organization” that’s stealing money from the public to promote secret agendas, humanewatch.com is a propaganda tool of the Center for Consumer Freedom. According to Source Watch, CCF is “a front group for the restaurant, alcohol, tobacco, and other industries” that “run media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, health advocates, doctors, animal advocates, [and] environmentalists.” Its website offers a sordid example of how the pursuit of sustainable animal agriculture, so long as the consumption of animal products is encouraged, easily plays into the hands of influential industrial interests.

If we are to take any tangible point from McWilliams’ paragraph before this one, it would have to be that we shouldn’t support small-scale animal farms because corporations that don’t care about animal welfare can easily steal and distort the language of humane meat suppliers. Yet to illustrate this point, McWilliams says that the Humane Society of the United States (a pro-animal organization that McWilliams seems to support) has had its name co-opted and distorted by the odious pro-meat group the Center for Consumer Freedom. So if we can’t trust humane meat suppliers because cruel corporations have taken their language, shouldn’t we not support the Humane Society of the United States now that their language has been co-opted too?

Right now industry is merely stealing words, concepts, and websites. In the unlikely event that mass economic irrationality prevails, and there is in fact a statistically meaningful transition to supporting the non-industrial production of animal products, what’s to stop industrial agriculture from building a few token sustainable farms where the animals are pastured, pampered, and publicized? Most of the small-scale animal farmers I know are literally living hand to mouth. Tyson’s or Smithfield wouldn’t suffer such hardships.

So if there is a massive change toward supporting non-industrial animal farming, this will actually be worse for non-industrial farmers because large agriculture corporations will act like the best non-industrial farmers and raise some of their animals humanely, thus competing with them more directly? Interesting.

If it were the case that Smithfield and Tyson decided to get in on some of the humane animal action, ethical omnivores would then face the dilemma that vegans face now: should they buy food that fits their ethics from a company that otherwise doesn’t? If the answer is yes, then - like vegans who buy vegan food produced by non-vegan companies - they will consider buying humane meat from Smithfield or Tyson. If not, they’ll continue to buy from the small-scale farmer. And they might still choose the small farmer for other reasons anyway, perhaps because they’d rather support them than a corporation, even though both produce meat from non-tortured animals.

If there were more ethical omnivores and this prompted big companies to try to satisfy that demand by meeting ethical omnivore standards, they could siphon off some of the dollars that would have gone to small-scale farmers. But with more ethical omnivores on the whole, there would still be plenty left to support small farmers. Either way, there would be more humane farming, so I’m not sure I see the problem.

We’ll never beat Big Ag at its own game. Those of us concerned with the myriad problems of industrial agriculture will make genuine progress toward creating agricultural systems that are ethical, ecologically sound, and supportive of human health only when we pursue alternatives that are truly alternative. The most immediate and direct way to take a step in this direction is to stop eating animals.

“Big Ag” makes vegetables, fruits and grains as well as animal products. If buying meat directly from farmers or raising animals for food in your backyard doesn’t accomplish anything because big corporations also raise animals for food, then growing your own vegetables or buying vegan food also will fail because it too is trying to beat Big Ag at its own game. Why is McWilliams selectively lashing out at meat when all his arguments apply equally to vegan food?

Oh right. Because he’s vegan.

--Tagged under: James McWilliams--

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

The (Mostly Anecdotal) Evidence for a Vegan Diet

Many ex-vegans and ex-vegetarians quit for health reasons, but animal agriculture abolitionist James McWilliams doubts their credibility in his post “The Evidence for a Vegan Diet,” saying:

Perhaps inspired by Lierre Kieth’s The Vegetarian Myth, a book that chronicles the author’s losing battle with a plant-based diet, bloggers have clogged foodie networks with angst-ridden accounts of fatigue, sickness, hair loss, anxiety, diminished sex drive, and mental breakdown after quitting animal products. The problem with these accounts, as far as I can tell, is that those who made the vegan leap (and I praise them for doing it) did so without doing due diligence on the details of intelligent veganism. Someone can live on potato chips, pot, and cherry soda and call himself a vegan. Many recidivists have evidently tried to do just that.

McWilliams then goes on to imply that if only all vegans ate at restaurants like the vegan macrobiotic spot Casa de Luz in Austin, the above issues would never happen:

For me, the most persuasive evidence supporting a healthy vegan diet is anecdotal. The vegans who frequent Casa de Luz, my breakfast (and often lunch) destination, are paragons of good health. Many of them are significantly older than I am — in their 50s, 60s, and 70s — but they rock on with glowing intensity, looking much younger (in some cases by 20 years) than they are. Every now and then a local vegan hero will drop in — John Mackey (founder of Whole Foods), Rip Esselstyn (pioneer of the Engine 2 diet), a noted musician who will remain unnamed — and we’ll gawk in admiration. The everyday reality, though, is that a dozen or so ordinary people with whom I eat have done extraordinary things as a direct result of intelligent veganism. They’ve conquered obesity, chronic disease, depression, and a host of food-related disorders by exclusively eating an exciting diversity of plants. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned by eating with seasoned vegans it is this: the diet empowers.

Dude, I used to work at Casa de Luz. I volunteered there off and on for a couple of years before I finally got a job there, which I kept for about a year; I quit to leave Austin for New York, where I quickly got a job at the quasi-macrobiotic vegan restaurant Angelica Kitchen. It’s all about who you know: one of the managers at Angelica was the daughter of a manager at Casa de Luz. I worked there for about a year too, and it was only six months after my Angelica run that I quit veganism because of angst-riddenness, fatigue, sickness and brain fog. I still had some Angelica Kitchen hijiki in my freezer when I started loading up on salmon and eggs. And look at the blog I write now! Are you sure that telling vegans to eat at Casa de Luz is a good idea, McWilliams?

McWilliams makes scientific claims for veganism to bolster his anecdotes, but fails to cite sources for his claims that:

a low-fat vegan diet can substantially mitigate the impacts of type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and Parkinson’s disease. Veganism reduces the risk of colon cancer. … Veganism is more effective at combating obesity than other prescribed diets, such as that promoted by the National Cholesterol Education Program.

He also quotes vegan activist Dr. Michael Greger saying, “A plant-based diet is like a one-stop shop against chronic diseases.” But what about these vegans, Dr. Greger?!

Admittedly, when I reference vegan health issues, I fail to cite studies about brain fog in long-term vegans, but I don’t try to make grand health claims about veganism on this blog (…anymore). The the only direct claims I’d make about health and veganism now are that: some nutrients are harder or impossible to get on a vegan diet without supplementation (I’m including “non-essential” nutrients because some bodies are better at manufacturing them than others), a more varied diet has good potential to be healthier than a less varied diet and veganism is a less varied diet (but of course it depends on what constitutes the added variety in the diet and on the person), and many people quit veganism after feeling horrible and then feel better once they start eating animal products again.

Anyway, after referencing a little science, McWilliams then re-emphasizes, “I could continue in this scientific vein, but again, it’s the stories of personal transformation that make the biggest impression.”

Though there are vegan success stories, as McWilliams says, there are plenty of vegan failure stories too, and not all of these ex-vegans subsisted on potato chips and pot. In fact, vegan RDs Jack Norris and Ginny Messina have suggested that it’s ironically the most health-obsessed vegans who often end up failing the most, because they restrict too much — such as raw foodists and the clientele at Casa de Luz, many of whom are terrified of nightshade vegetables and refined soy products.

Here’s an anecdote for you, McWilliams: Michio Kushi, founder of the macrobiotic Kushi Institute, got colon cancer at 81. He fortunately survived, but his wife died of cervical cancer at 78. And unless it’s changed since I left, they sell Kushi’s books at Casa de Luz, including The Cancer Prevention Diet and The Macrobiotic Approach to Cancer.

McWilliams is right that many new vegans experience health improvements. This isn’t surprising, since veganism inspires many people to switch from a junky mainstream diet to a fruit- and vegetable-heavy one, which cuts out a lot of harmful foods. The problem, many ex-vegans theorize, is that veganism often swings the pendulum too far in the other direction — from excess to deficiency. Which means that early improvements are no proof that everyone benefits from being vegan for life. 

So if you want to go after the ex-vegans, McWilliams, you’ll need to do better than suggesting that all failed vegans were non-supplementing, chip-addicted potheads who skipped too many Casa de Luz Guatemalan nights.

(Thanks for the tip, Stella)

--Tagged under: James McWilliams--

James McWilliams Explains Why We Must Not Eat if We Believe in Science

B.R. Myers is the most articulate anti-meat scold at The Atlantic, but James McWilliams is the most prolific. His recent contribution to the food debate, “Foodies vs. Darwin: How Meat Eaters Ignore Science,” starts off like a less interesting version of Myers’ “The Moral Crusade Against Foodies,” with finger wags aplenty at food writers who care more about gustatory pleasure and supporting humane animal farming than grumpy asceticism and vegan abolitionism.

Fortunately, McWilliams escapes Myers’ shadow later in the article when he brings up evolution, something that McWilliams claims meat eaters clearly ignore if we persist in dining on the bodies of other animal beings despite our familiarity of the original Animal Liberation, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. McWilliams writes:

“Nature,” Aristotle wrote in Politics, “has made all animals for the sake of man.” For Christians, of course, that role belonged to God.

But Darwin and Mendel, with their theories of evolution and genetics, put an end to this self-serving fantasy of dominion. They did so not only by scientifically situating humans in the same category as non-humans (animals), but by undermining the assumption that humans, as Waldau puts it, are “the pinnacle of and reason for creation.” Today, enlightened neo-Darwinists embrace the idea that shared genetic heritage—and often profoundly similar genetic structure—between humans and non-human species confirms the interrelatedness and continuum of all animal life. And this, as I see it, changes everything.

When humans and non-human animals are part of a continuum, rather than qualitatively distinct forms of life, human meat-eaters confront a serious quandary. It becomes incumbent upon us to forge a contemporary justification for carnivorous behavior. Aristotle and Genesis will no longer do. By undermining the long-held basis of inherent human superiority over non-human animals, the science of evolution obliterated the framework within which thoughtful carnivores long justified their behavior. As it now stands, human meat-eaters, unless they reject modern science, support the killing of non-human animals without the slightest intellectual or ethical grounding.

McWilliams conveniently glosses over the fact that Darwin wasn’t a vegan. But maybe that’s okay. Jesus wasn’t a Christian either.

Nevertheless, I think it’s McWilliams who is misreading Darwin, not meat eaters. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin said, “I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.” If Darwin was right, this means — according to McWilliams’ premise — that it is morally wrong to eat anything at all.

And according to a study called The common ancestry of life: “A formal demonstration of the Universal Common Ancestry hypothesis has not been achieved and is unlikely to be feasible in principle. Nevertheless, the evidence in support of this hypothesis provided by comparative genomics is overwhelming.”

Morally, then, we should not eat. Unless we ignore science.

McWilliams’ point hinges on a premise that he accepts as a given and never defends. He fails to explain what our genetic similarities to other lifeforms has to do with whether or not we can eat them. At least when animal rights philosophers credit sentience as the morally relevant factor, they’re being specific. But not only does McWilliams never explain why shared genetic heritage and structural genetic similarities demands veganism, he also never tells us how similar is similar enough to grant admission into our moral sphere.

Since we might possibly share a genetic heritage with all life on the planet, it’s no good to look at that to determine what we can eat. Unless McWilliams wants to clarify that he means the most recent genetic ancestors. But does that mean that we can’t eat chimpanzees but can eat bonobo chimps? Better for him to steer clear of that one and see if structural genetic similarities can mandate veganism.

McWilliams says that we need a new justification for eating animals now that we know we are on a genetic continuum with them. But of course we are on a genetic continuum with plants too. For instance, according to the Standford School of Medicine, we have 15 percent of our genes in common with mustard grass. McWilliams has unwittingly given ammo to defensive omnivores who like to shout, “What about plants?!” The task for McWilliams, then, is to define just exactly where on this genetic continuum we can start eating.

Naturally, any number that he picks will be arbitrary and self-serving. Hint: He needs to figure out the highest percentage of genes we have in common with any vegan food and then say that everything more similar to us than that is what we can’t eat.

--Tagged under: James McWilliams--

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