History of the American Dietetic Association’s Vegetarian Position Papers, Part Three: 1988

A milestone for vegetarianism came in 1988, when the American Dietetic Association (ADA) published a position paper written by vegetarian dietitian Suzanne Havala. At last, the mainstream nutrition organization sanctioned the vegetarian diet as healthful. Havala is nutrition educator for Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, N.C., and is establishing a group of vegetarian dietitians within the ADA. This past summer, she worked with Cornell University researcher T. Colin Campbell to help compile data gathered for the China Health Project.

— “A Positive Position,” Vegetarian Times, Dec. 1990, p. 55

1988 paper title: “Vegetarian Diets — technical support paper”

Position statement: “It is the position of The American Dietetic Association that vegetarian diets are healthful and nutritionally adequate when appropriately planned.”

Authors

Primary: Suzanne Havala, R.D. (vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons)

Secondary: Johanna Dwyer, D.SC., R.D. (non-vegetarian)

Reviewers

Phyllis Acosta Dr. P.H., R.D. (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist)

George Eisman, R.D. (vegan for ethical, environmental and health reasons)

Alice Marsh, R.D. (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist)

Connie Metcalf, R.D. (vegetarian at the time for environmental and health reasons)

Patricia Mutch, Ph.D., R.D. (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist)

U. D. Register Ph.D., R.D. (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist)

Kathleen Zolber, Ph.D., R.D. (vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist)

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--Tagged under: American Dietetic Association--

--Tagged under: SeventhDay Adventists--

--Tagged under: Health--

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

For Vegans, Human Health Comes Before Animal Lives

Most vegans and meat eaters agree: the lives of animals are not worth enough for us to willingly sacrifice our health for them. Vegans just don’t think that giving up animal products entails such a sacrifice.

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan writes:

There is no question that meat is a nutritious food. In particular, it is a source of complete protein, containing all the amino acids essential for human health and vitality. If it were true that these nutrients were not otherwise obtainable, then the case for eating meat, even given the rights view, would be on solid ground. If we were certain to ruin our health by being vegetarians, or run a serious risk of doing so…and given that the deterioration of our health would deprive us of a greater variety and number of opportunities for satisfaction than those within the range of farm animals, then we would be making ourselves, not the animals, worse-off if we became vegetarians. Thus might we appeal to the liberty principle as a basis for eating meat, assuming the other provisos of that principle were satisfied.

To concede the necessity of meat in a healthy diet is to concede more than is meat’s due. The essential amino acids are essential, that is true; but there are alternative ways to obtain them, ways that do not rely on meat. … Certain amino acids are essential for our health. Meat isn’t. We cannot, therefore, defend meat-eating on the grounds that we will ruin our health if we don’t eat it, or even that we will run a very serious risk of doing so if we abstain. Any “risk” we run can be easily overcome by taking the modest trouble required to do so. (337)

In Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer approvingly quotes the American Dietetic Association’s vegetarian position paper giving its stamp of approval to a vegetarian diet, and writes:

I don’t think that individual health is necessarily a reason to become vegetarian, but certainly if it were unhealthy to stop eating animals, that might be a reason not to be vegetarian. It would most certainly be a reason to feed my son animals. (145)

In Animal Liberation, Peter Singer writes:

Apart from the tastiness of their meals, people contemplating vegetarianism are most likely to worry about whether they will be adequately nourished. These worries are entirely groundless. … Nutritional experts no longer dispute about whether animal flesh is essential; they now agree that it is not. If ordinary people still have misgivings about doing without it, these misgivings are based on ignorance. (179 – 182)

And later in Practical Ethics, Singer persisted:

If animals count in their own right, our use of animals for food becomes questionable. Inuit living a traditional lifestyle in the far north where they must eat animals or starve can reasonably claim that their interest in surviving overrides that of the animals they kill. Most of us cannot defend our diet in this way. People living in industrialized societies can easily obtain an adequate diet without the use of animal flesh. Meat is not necessary for good health or longevity. Indeed, humans can live healthy lives without eating any animal products at all… (54)

In “Vegan Power: Anecdotes of Inspiration”, James McWilliams writes:

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.

Whether you are convinced by a book such as The China Study or not, there’s no disputing the fact that a diet rich in plant-based, unprocessed food is a smart diet. My point here isn’t to suggest that a diet including modest amounts of lean meat can’t be healthy. It surely can be. Instead, I want to reiterate the equally healthful consequences of a healthy vegan diet. I can brook a million excuses for why a person simply cannot go vegan — cheese! yogurt! cream in my coffee! — but the assertion that veganism, when done right, isn’t healthy is just plain bunk.

In Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog, Gary Francione writes:

It is in no way necessary for human beings to eat meat or other animal products. Indeed, voices as mainstream as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Dietetic Association have now recognized that a completely plant-based diet, supplemented by vitamin B-12, can provide the human body with sufficient protein, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients to maintain excellent health. For health-related reasons, animal foods have been coming under greater suspicion within the mainstream scientific community. Even the most traditional health care professionals are urging a reduction in our consumption of meat and other animal products; others are calling for the elimination of such products from our diet. It is an uncontested fact that vegetarians have lower rates of many forms of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, gallstones and kidney stones, and other diseases. And we seem to hear on an almost daily basis of illnesses—ranging from simple food poisoning to more exotic maladies such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob (“mad cow” disease)—connected with eating meat. Countries that have shifted from plant-based diets to meat-based diets have experienced increased rates of obesity, heart diseases, and cancer. So not only are animal food unnecessary for our health; they may very well be detrimental to it. (14)

Finally, here’s Francione in an article called “Veganism: Morality, Health, and the Environment”:

We have a moral obligation that we owe to ourselves to be healthy; ingesting products that cause us harm is a form of violence we inflict on ourselves. The empirical evidence becomes stronger each day that animal products are not only not needed for health; they actually cause harm to our bodies in all sorts of ways. Even small amounts of animal products can be harmful. Just as we have a moral obligation not to smoke cigarettes (even a “few”), we have an obligation to make sure that the things we put in and on our bodies (remember that what you put on your skin gets into your body!) do not cause harm. We owe this obligation not only to ourselves, but to the humans and nonhumans who love us and who depend on us. … So, in the end, although I maintain that the moral argument in favor of animal rights and the spiritual argument in favor of nonviolence are the most important notions, we also have moral obligations to ourselves (and to the humans and nonhumans who depend on us) to maintain and improve our health.

Francione doesn’t provide a citation for his assertion that we have moral obligations to maintain and improve our health; but if he’s sticking to that, he’s committed himself to a strange position for someone who philosophizes for soy milk. Not only is meat immoral… so are vegan cupcakes! Even better, if it turned out that a diet with animal products was healthier than one without one, we wouldn’t only have the option to give up veganism: we’d be morally obligated to eat meat!

But of course Francione is convinced that animal products don’t need to be part of anyone’s healthy diet. So are Regan, Singer, Foer, McWilliams, Norris, Messina, Paleovegan and just about every other well-known advocate of veganism.

So what if they changed their minds on this issue and decided that humans, or a lot of them at least, were healthier when their diet included animal products? Apparently, they’d be fine with these humans eating meat. Even vegan leaders allow a health exception to veganism: it’s just that they see this exception as almost entirely theoretical. Notice that when ex-vegans quit veganism for health reasons, most vegans don’t say, “You should have sacrificed your health if you truly cared about animals.” Instead they say, “You did veganism wrong.”

The difference between many vegans and meat eaters, then, is empirical rather than philosophical. No one is saying that animals are worth making big sacrifices over. One side just thinks that veganism is a big sacrifice, and the other side thinks it isn’t.

Yeah, there are plenty of meat eaters who think that meat is unhealthy or unnecessary for health, and yet eat it anyway. And there are also some vegans who would stay vegan even if they started to suspect that it was causing them health difficulties. Those few martyrs aside, though, if vegans were a character in The Wire, they’d be Dante—not Brandon. Vegans are cool with giving up animal products when they think all they’re losing is some measure of habit, convenience, tradition and taste. But if their health starts to nosedive and they don’t think they can fix it without animal products, they’re suffocating salmon and chucking baby chicks into grinders in no time.

Hey, what about the fucking animals, guys? What’s a little brain fog and fatigue when we’re talking about animal lives?

Vegans rarely tire of citing The China Study’s case against animal products or the ADA’s claim that a vegan diet is appropriate for all stages of the lifecycle. But why should it matter whether or not veganism is healthy? It’s not like it would be worth killing hundreds of animals a year just to live longer or have a spring in your step, would it?

Harish at Counting Animals recently crunched some numbers and determined that going vegetarian “saves more than 406 animals each year—a vegetarian saves at least an animal a day!” And that’s just udder-sucking, chicken-period-thieving lacto-ovos. No doubt Harish would find that vegans “save” even more.

Granted, “saves” is a stretch in this context, since what vegans are actually doing is preventing animals from being born through their inaction, something vegans would have been much better at doing by never being born. As for the specific numbers, meat eaters clearly eat less than an animal a day if they’re mostly eating bigger ones like cows, pigs and lambs. Still, meat eating obviously creates a demand for killing animals, whether the motive is taste or health. And if it’s anything like 406 a year, per person—a number Harish says is conservative—that’s a lot of animals to kill just because you feel miserable without a daily dose of flesh to improve your mood. Sure, a lifetime with severe depression sucks, but could that justify taking an animal’s life every day?

For vegans, the answer to this seems to be “yes.”

If veganism were guaranteed to kill you within three months, almost no one would go vegan. If it merely shaved a minute off your life, this probably wouldn’t be much of a deterrent at all. But what if veganism tended to reduce human lifespans by 50 years? At first that seems like a big chunk of your own life to give up for any cause. But look at the trade-off: if you live to 100 instead of 50 because you ate meat every day instead of never, you’ve (arguably) killed at least 40,600 extra animals just to selfishly enjoy a bonus half century. Even if all those animals were killed only a year before the end of their average lifespans, which they almost certainly weren’t, this would imply that 50 years of your life is worth more than 40,600 years of the lives of other animals. Harsh, man. It’s not like it would be these animals’ fault if humans had a nutritional need for animal products.

Yet none of the major animal rights advocates is willing to say that everyone should go vegan even if it kills us.

In veganism, human health comes before the lives of other animals. Vegans just happen to think you don’t need animal products to be healthy. If they thought otherwise, most of them would eat animals… no matter how many animal lives it took to cure their brain fog.

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

--Tagged under: Health--

--Tagged under: Ethics--

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--

Do Animals Have Inherent Value? (abridged)

Angus Taylor’s Animals & Ethics: An Overview of the Philosophical Debate delivers on its title’s promise: it summarizes the philosophical debate over animals, often phrasing points more clearly than the philosophers did themselves. One of the key figures in this debate is Tom Regan, author of The Case for Animal Rights, and Taylor applauds him for his main contribution to the animal rights debate, “inherent value”:

The key concept in Regan’s philosophy is inherent value. Inherent value is a quality that Regan attributes to every creature that (to put it briefly for the moment) has a life that matters to it. To say that a being has inherent value is to say that it has a value that is independent of any use that it may have for others. Inherent value, then is to be contrasted with instrumental value. To have inherent value, in Regan’s view, is to have the fundamental right never to be treated merely as an instrument, or means, for others. …

The kind of autonomy that Regan says many animals possess is preference autonomy. To have preference autonomy, as he defines it, is to have preferences and the ability to initiate action with a view to satisfying them. In Regan’s view, preference autonomy is the key to having a life that matters to oneself, to being what he calls the subject-of-a-life. Those who are subjects-of-a-life are those who ‘have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their being the object of anyone else’s interests (Regan 2004a, p.243). Regan believes that normal mammalian animals of at least a year in age meet this criterion and thus have inherent value and hence moral rights. Birds are probably subjects-of-a-life, and some other creatures may be too (Regan 2003). …

Now, asks Regan, what is it that accounts for our ascription of inherent value to someone, regardless of whether that individual is a genius or a moron, regardless of whether that individual is a morally responsible agent? What relevant similarity can we point to among individuals who have inherent value? Regan answers that what plausibly accounts for our ascription of inherent value to them is the fact that the individuals in question have lives that matter to them, that fare well or ill for them, independently of their usefulness for others…

Further, in Regan’s opinion, this inherent value that we ascribe to persons depends neither on the quality of their experiences nor on whether they are saints or sinners. All who have inherent value have it equally, he says, and it does not matter whether someone is Mother Teresa or an unscrupulous used-car salesperson. (67 – 70)

Taylor does a good job of summing it up, but I thought I’d better consult the original. At the beginning of Chapter 7 of The Case for Animal Rights, Regan unveils his core concept, using slightly more obscure terminology than Taylor:

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--Tagged under: Ethics--

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

Why Not Buy Some Snake Oil With Your Animal Millions? (On CarpeVegan)

In the beginning of 2010, I interviewed Jed Gillen, author of Obligate Carnivore: Cats, Dogs & What it Really Means to be Vegan, a book that is ostensibly about why vegans should raise their companion animals—even cats(!!!)—as vegans. As I said in the introduction to that interview, I got that book because I was sure this Jed Gillen had to be a ludicrous dogmatist with no grasp on reality, which would have made his book the perfect reference for an entry I was thinking of doing on vegan pets. Vegan cats!

But the book was not what I expected. I thought it would be unintentionally hilarious and absurd. Instead it was intentionally hilarious and even persuasive. I was almost left thinking that if I had a pet, I would want to make that little omnivore or carnivore vegan. The book also made me feel a little nostalgic for my vegan days. I abandoned my vegan pet entry idea and contacted Jed for an interview instead.   

I’ve met up with Jed a number of times since then, and a few months ago he told me that he and his friend Joe Haptas were developing a vegan culture site called CarpeVegan; Jed asked if I wanted to contribute. Of course I did. My first post, “Why Not Buy Some Snake Oil With Your Animal Millions?”, went up today. It takes a look at Erik Marcus’ “Animal Millionaire” concept, a motivating device he invented to inspire vegan activists, which would be fine except that it’s a quasi-pyramid scheme. Fortunately it’s an imaginary one.

Someone commented on my CarpeVegan bio to ask why they wanted me to contribute when people looking for a dose of anti-veganism could just come to my blog. Well, for one thing, some people who read CarpeVegan aren’t looking for a dose of anti-veganism and will be tricked into taking one now. But also, my blog has strayed a bit from its origins of poking fun of vegan leaders and the cultural aspects of veganism. I’ll be doing more of that on CarpeVegan.

Plus my posts there will be a lot shorter.

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

Michael Greger MD is sort of in the Jack Norris/Ginny Messina camp of science-based vegan nutrition experts, but he’s a doctor rather than a dietitian; he also appears to be convinced that veganism (especially if low fat) is the healthiest possible diet.

Norris and Messina, who wrote the recent Vegan For Life, are optimistic about the health benefits of veganism, and I get the feeling that they think it’s possible that a properly supplemented vegan diet could turn out to be the healthiest way to eat. But their approach is more akin to making the best of a bad situation. Morality shackles give vegans less flexibility in their diets and Messina and Norris try to help them work around nutritional challenges so they never have to go back to immoral foods. Greger, however, promotes nutritionally informed veganism as the best way to eat for health reasons, even if you think animal lives are a complete joke.

Until now, Greger has mostly been known to vegans for his lectures at veg fests, where he would talk about about the latest in nutrition. His schtick was to list vegan foods—white potatoes, tofu, wheat gluten, raw mushrooms, blue-green algae, olive oil, coconut milk, etc.— and ask the audience whether they thought the food was “helpful, neutral or harmful.” Vegans are always devastated to learn that he believes coconut milk, raw mushrooms, blue-green algae and white potatoes are harmful (unless they follow a form of veganism that already restricts some of those foods, in which case they feel vindicated), but Greger ends his lectures on an optimistic note, proclaiming that vegans who supplement B12 and avoid harmful vegan foods are the healthiest people in the world. Vegans really love that part.

Now Greger has started a blog on his website, Nutrition Facts. Like the pro-vegan Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Nutrition Facts is a very sciencey, authoritative, unbiased sounding name that gives no hint that the goal is to promote a complete avoidance of animal products. Even the about page doesn’t mention veganism or Greger’s ethical commitment to ending human use of animals, though it does say that he’s the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society.

To draw attention to the blog, Greger is posting a new video on it every single day for a year. Today’s video is called “Antioxidant power of plant foods versus animal foods.” If this video happens to be your only exposure to nutrition science, you might come away thinking that antioxidant content is the most and possibly only important consideration when selecting your food sources.

Just be sure not to eat coconut milk.

--Tagged under: Health--

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

Why Stun One But Shoot the Other?

After seeing an agricultural scientist shove his arm into a fistulated cow, Marianne Thieme went vegan and founded Party for the Animals, a Dutch political party devoted to advancing animal welfare. They won two seats in Dutch parliament, which is now on the verge of passing Party for the Animals’ law to rescind the legal exemption allowing Jews and Muslims to kill animals for food without stunning them first. Vegans have often said that Kosher and Halal slaughter methods are worse because animals prefer to be knocked unconscious before they die. William Wallace animals aren’t.

In her defense of the law, Thieme hinted at the vegan trope that animal rights is the natural conclusion of the ever-expanding march for equality:

“Here in our society we no longer accept that animals must suffer,” says Ms Thieme. Religious groups have often opposed progressive social change, she adds. “We saw the same thing with women’s rights.”

The animals are justifiably a little pissed that Thieme didn’t just ban slaughter altogether, but hopefully they’ll understand that these things take time.

An interesting implication of this law, which the meat-eating supporters of it might be overlooking, is that if it should be illegal to kill an animal for food without stunning the animal first, then hunting ought to be illegal too.

Of course many meat eaters find hunting to be barbaric, so maybe they won’t mind if that eventually has to go too.

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

--Tagged under: Ethics--

Abolitionist vegan Eric Prescott has added a new interview to his documentary series on vegans in North America, this one with his puppet master Gary L. Francione. Francione used the opportunity to rehash all of his usual talking points, but I still found a couple of interesting moments. At one point Francione says:

The predicate for veganism is already set. Most of us already accept all of the moral views that are the predicate for becoming a vegan. We all believe it’s wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering and death on animals. Alright, so, now the next question becomes ‘what do we mean by necessity?’ Well, whatever it means, whatever abstract meaning it has, if it has any meaning whatsoever, its minimal meaning has to be that it’s wrong to inflict suffering and death on animals for reasons of pleasure, amusement or convenience. Because if it’s alright to inflict suffering and death on animals for reasons of pleasure, amusement or convenience, then you’ve got a loophole that’s now so large you can drive a truck through it. … We have no choice. Veganism is the only rational, logical response to accepting that it is morally wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering and death on animals.

I like this quote because it is such a classic logical vegan thing to say. The reason to not make animals suffer is to avoid logical errors! But Francione is incorrect if he thinks there are no loopholes in vegan logic. The survival exemption to veganism, for instance, opens the exact same loophole that Francione says we open by allowing animal use for pleasure/amusement/convenience.

It’s also good to know that “we have no choice” but to accept veganism. Does this not render the idea of being a “moral agent” meaningless? How much agency do we moral agents have if our beliefs are pre-determined and inescapable? If a moral agent has no choice but to accept veganism, we don’t have moral free will. And if we don’t have moral free will, how are we any different from animals who are morally permitted to eat other animals because they don’t have a capacity for morality? 

Of course Francione talked about veganism versus humane animal products. That’s his jam:

I’m often asked, what do you do if somebody says, ‘I understand what you’re saying. But I’m not ready to go vegan right away. Should I eat cage free or, you know…’ I say ‘No no no. You can go vegan right away. It’s not difficult. Trust me. It’s not difficult. It’s easy.’ ‘Well, but I’m not sure…’ ‘Okay, look. We’ve had this conversation. You’ve acknowledged that you think that eating animals and animal products is not morally justifiable. Okay. Then that’s your conscience. If you’re going to continue to eat ‘em. That’s a decision you’re making in the face of your assessment that it’s not morally justifiable. However, let me say this to you. If you feel you can’t do it right away, and I would disagree with you — you can. If you feel you can’t, then go vegan in stages. Go vegan for breakfast for three weeks. You’ll see that you’re not going to die. Your arms and legs don’t fall off. You know, you don’t go blind. And then you go vegan for lunch for a couple of weeks. And then you go vegan for dinner. And boom! There you are, you’re a vegan. …

Rather than spending several hours tabling at your local community college about why kids should be eating cage-free eggs, try to explain to those kids why they shouldn’t be eating eggs at all, or any other animal products. Are you going to convince them all? No. But you know what, you’ll convince some… And it will grow. It’s a zero sum game. Every dollar of resource, every minute of labor that we spend focused on welfarist regulation is a dollar less and a minute less of labor than we’re spending on promoting veganism and abolition. ‘Wha, but well what about the people who are never going to become vegan?’ You know what? Let’s worry about those people once we’ve gotten everyone who will become vegan. … Once we do that, then we’ll worry about the people who aren’t going to change.

I’m not sure why Francione thinks it is okay to tell someone to go vegan in increments if they think they can’t do it right away, but it is not okay to suggest they use animal products from small farms while they make the transition. His aversion to admitting a difference between factory farmed and humanely raised animal products is especially perplexing when someone who absolutely refuses to become vegan but would consider consuming humane animal products asks what to do. The way Francione deals with this is to refuse to grant the premise of the question. “I am not going to go vegan, so should I eat humane animal products?” “Just go vegan.” “I’m not going to.” “Go vegan in stages.” “I already said that I don’t want to go vegan. At all. Ever. No matter what. So should I get my raw lamb testicles from a farmers ma…” “GO VEGAN!”

Francione says we will deal with these stubborn lamb testicle addicts later because until every potential vegan is vegan, the opportunity cost of talking to die-hard meat eaters about humane animal products is too great. He gives no indication of what his game plan will be once that day arrives, maybe because thinking about that for even one second would steal a thought that he could have expended on veganism.

Interestingly, this concern with opportunity costs gives strength to the otherwise useless defensive omnivore critique that animal activism detracts from human activism. If Francione can’t say a word in favor of humane animal products no matter the context because that would take time from his vegan work, then holding vegan bake sales for animal shelters or donating to farm sanctuaries really does take financial resources and time from human causes. Why do you love animals and hate humans, vegans?

In the example Francione gives, however, there is zero opportunity cost to recommending humane animal products over factory farmed products. There is no potential vegan behind this person who Francione could be converting to veganism instead. Hypothetical Stubborn Meat-Eating Woman is telling Francione that nothing will stop her from eating animal products, but she would consider buying humanely raised animal products if Francione thinks that’s better. Francione’s abolitionist dogma has him so straight-jacketed that it impossible for him to do anything other than act like a malfunctioning “go vegan” bot who sputters “go vegan” in response to every input.

The reason Francione is so opposed to acknowledging anything even remotely better about animal products from small farms is his focus on animal rights rather than suffering reduction, and his belief that the property status of animals makes it impossible to improve their treatment in significant ways.

Francione is right that the property status of animals and their poor treatment are linked, but his conclusion that there can be no difference between factory farms and small humane farms doesn’t match reality. Since animals do not appear to have a concept of property rights, their property status is relevant to them only as far as it affects how they are treated. So a humane farm would be better for animals if the farmers did manage to treat their unsuspecting herd with kindness even while drooling in anticipation of slaughter day. This isn’t fantasy — there are indeed farms where animals are treated better than in intensive operations.

If property status were all that mattered, beings seen as resources would always be tortured, and beings seen as ends in themselves would never be tortured. But there are counterexamples on both sides. By insisting that property status settles everything and thus there is no moral difference whatsoever between factory farms and humane farms, Francione is implying that treatment of animals never matters as long as they aren’t thought of as resources. This logic would allow Francione to torture his rescue dogs since he calls them companion animals instead of pets. It would also be okay for farm sanctuaries to torture the animals under their care because they don’t see the animals as resources to be killed and used for food.

One response Francione might try is to say that to torture a being is in itself a form of self-gratification, an exploitative use of that being for your own ends. And thus, torture automatically signifies that you think of the victim as property. Let’s say it’s true that punching someone means you think of them as your property. This doesn’t help Francione’s case; all it does is suggest that there can be multiple levels of property status. If torture is an indication of property status, then animals who are made to suffer before dying are treated more like property than those who are treated well before dying. Isn’t the latter still better even though it also includes property status?

In Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or The Dog?, Francione gives permission to a hypothetical guy trapped on a mountain to kill and eat rabbits in order to survive. If using an animal for food means you think of him or her as property, these rabbits now have property status in the eyes of the starving plane crash survivor. In Francione’s view, that puts the mountain’s rabbits in the same position as animals raised for food. Would Francione see no difference between this guy trying to kill the rabbits as painlessly as possible, and intentionally torturing them before killing and eating them? Since Francione has allowed the starving man to eat the rabbits, and since Francione has said there’s no moral difference between varying amounts of suffering when it comes to using animals for food, he then has to be okay with the gratuitous torture of the wild bunnies!

If someone had me cornered and said he could either torture and then kill me or just kill me, would I say, “It makes no difference because either way you are treating me as property”? No! I would say, “I choose painless death!” If someone kidnapped Francione’s dogs and said, “I can either kill your dogs painlessly or I can torture them for days before killing them — which do choose? By the way, if you say, ‘Just don’t kill them,’ I will take that to mean that you want me to torture them first,” would Francione still be incapable of making the distinction between better and worse treatment of animals?

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

--Tagged under: Ethics--

Vegan Deaths and Their Non-Diet-Related Causes

One of the hazards of achieving meaning through diet is that your legacy is heavily dependent on how long you live. If you say your diet is the best, and then you die young of a health failure, it messes up everything. Your opponents will quietly cheer your death as a validation of their nutritional and moral worldview and your followers will either abandon you or strain to explain why your death had nothing to do with what you ate.

Not all vegans claim that veganism is the healthiest diet, or that it makes you immune to chronic disease and early death. Yet most vegans can’t help but associate meat, dairy and eggs with heart attacks and cancer, so if a vegan does die early of one of those red meat diseases, it can’t be due to nutrition. A better explanation is that they were doomed from the start.

Leslie Cross

Leslie Cross, who founded the Plant Milk Society, was a great friend of mine. He died comparatively early, well, in his early 70s, I think, and, in a letter he sent me, shortly before he died, he mentioned that, as a child, he’d fallen heavily from a gate and the authorities thought he might not recover and, I think, if he had an early death for a vegan, it may have been the consequence of that.

— “Interview With Donald Watson on Sunday 15 December 2002”

Frey Ellis (1918 - 1978)

The [Vegan] Society was grateful to add to its membership Dr. Frey Ellis, who took a special interest in vegan health. He educated vegans about the health benefits of vegan diets, about the care necessary in bringing up children as vegans, and about B12, which had been discovered in 1949. … Dr. Ellis became a council member and vice president of the Vegan Society in 1961 and was its president from 1964 until he died in 1978 [at the age of 59 - pdf]. This gentle man worked to show the scientific world that a vegan diet could be nutritionally adequate.

[No explanation is given for the early death, but his obituary (linked to in the above pdf) says, “He bore his last illness with great courage and with unfailing courtesy.”]

— “Becoming Vegan”

H. Jay Dinshah (1933 - 2000)

H. Jay Dinshah, 66, who as the leader of the American Vegan Society was an advocate for life without violence toward animals or humans, died on June 8, apparently from a heart attack while working in his office in Malaga, New Jersey [after 43 years of veganism]. Both sides of his family had a history of congenital heart problems, relatives said. …

Mr. Dinshah was raised as lacto-vegetarian from birth by his parents, the late Dinshah P. Ghadiali and Irene Grace Hoger Dinshah. His diet in later years consisted of fruits, salads, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.

— “Jay Dinshah, 66, American Vegan Society Leader”

George Ohsawa (1893 - 1966)

Macrobiotics founder George Ohsawa died of a heart attack at the age of 73. Macrobiotics allows for the eating of fish occasionally but Ohsawa believed brown rice was the ideal food and that the best diet was one consisting entirely of grains.

According to macrobiotic advocate Kaare Bursell, the seeds for Ohsawa’s premature demise were planted ten years earlier in West Africa when Ohsawa demonstrated the dangers of consuming too much “yin” by drinking alcohol and excess water and walking around barefoot. This extreme behavior gave him a deadly blood condition (“African Sickness”), which he cured by abruptly turning his blood yang with a meal of brown rice, aduki beans and sea salt. Unfortunately, this merely sent the blood parasite into hiding — waiting until Ohsawa’s next dietary slip-up.

This dietary misstep occurred 10 years later when Ohsawa was attempting to create a macrobiotic beer. As some of you may know, beer is dangerously yin. Ohsawa hoped to correct this of course, but first he had to taste-test his experimental batches, which hadn’t yet arrived at the perfect yin/yang balance. These sips created the yin condition in Ohsawa’s blood that the dormant parasites had been waiting for. This killed one of the world’s foremost authorities on nutrition, and now beer is doomed to be yin forever.

— Paraphrased from “The Alchemycal Pages”

Michio and Avaline Kushi

[Michio and Aveline Kushi] wrote books on Japanese macrobiotics back in the 60’s and have been at the forefront of the macrobiotic movement. Aveline died after nine years of cervical cancer at the young age of only 78.

Japanese women have a very long lifespan generally. She got radiation and possibly other medical treatments. Michio now has colon cancer at 81. These two are not good inspirations for health and longevity, yet they held themselves up as role models for a diet and lifestyle in harmony with the universe. …

It is no secret Michio smoked cigarettes and drank coffee for decades. We don’t know what, if any, bad habits Aveline had because Japanese people are generally secretive and keep their affairs close to the chest. Chances are Avenline had her own bad habits she didn’t reveal.

We will never know if they were under heavy stress or had an unhappy marriage. Divorce is considered “bad form” in Japan, and it is far better to stay together in an unhappy marriage than get divorced. We will never know what really went on, or didn’t go on, in the Kushi household. Aveline is gone, and Michio isn’t talking. …

I am very thankful to the Ohsawas, Kushis and other traditionalists who brought macrobiotics to America decades ago.

— “Why the Kushi’s Have Cancer”

Notice how I conveniently left out that Vegan Society founder Donald Watson lived to the age of 95 after 60 years of veganism, and “forgot” to mention all the meat eaters in the history of the world who died even earlier than Frey Ellis. Do I really think I can fool you guys so easily? 

--Tagged under: Health--

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

--Tagged under: Vegan Cult--

"Exciting news, I’ve been asked to work for the T. Colin Campbell Foundation as the rebuttal guy. Colin read my rebuttal to the now infamous recent critique of the China Study. He was so impressed, particularly with my understanding of the etiology of cancer, that he asked to meet me in person. So I did, twice. Colin was thrilled to meet me. I was rather astonished how impressed he was with what I wrote, considering that I don’t have any background in science. I was a music major in college and grad school. To put things into perspective, he actually sent what I wrote to the director of Forks Over Knives (the upcoming documentary about him and Caldwell Esselstyn) to explain the science behind the book. He said my understanding was ‘perfect’ and that I explained the subject better than he could. This guy has been active in the field for 5 decades and has been involved in making highest level health policy decisions in the US."
— “B” at 30 Bananas A Day

--Tagged under: Health--

--Tagged under: Vegan Leaders--

--Tagged under: Vegan Quotes--

--Tagged under: Featured Entries--

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