I read the letters to the editor in response to Gary Steiner’s vegan op/ed. They were full of empty excuses from nonvegans trying to justify eating animals. But there was one good one. It said:

“Go vegan, go vegetarian, go humane or just eat less meat. It’s all good advice from the point of view of doing better by animals.”

Obviously, I’d like to see the world go vegan tomorrow. But I know that won’t happen. And I also know that less harm is better than more harm. So if you’re going to cause harm to animals, the environment, and your health, do less harm. Eat fewer animal products. Cut back on meat!

So, that letter made sense. But a whole lot of the other letters were full of nonsense. For example:

“When we plant and harvest crops that vegans would find acceptable to eat, many animals are killed and their habitats are destroyed.”

The vegan solution is demonstrated by Mark Middleton’s fantastic graph:

It’s simple: vegans kill far fewer animals than nonvegans. FAR fewer.

Being vegan isn’t about being perfect. It’s about reducing or eliminating the ways in which humans unnecessarily force animals to live, breed, and die. It’s about taking animals’ interests into consideration and acting responsibly and compassionately.

Another wacky letter snippet:

“vegans must tread a very narrow line to avoid all sorts of deficiency diseases”

Untrue. Vegans do not have to work very hard at all to eat healthily. The USDA even has some simple guidelines, for example: “Sources of protein for vegetarians include beans, nuts, nut butters, peas, and soy products (tofu, tempeh, veggie burgers)” and “Iron sources for vegetarians include iron-fortified breakfast cereals, spinach, kidney beans, black-eyed peas, lentils, turnip greens, molasses, whole wheat breads, peas, and some dried fruits (dried apricots, prunes, raisins).”

To eat healthily, I simply eat a wide variety of colorful plant-based foods, including some fortified foods.

The old ‘meat is part of the food chain’ argument made its way into the letters section:

“Wolves eat sheep. Tuna eat mackerel. We are animals ourselves — and are no more (or less) than the animals we consume, or than the predators that would otherwise consume them.”

Wolves hunt and kill other animals, but they don’t factory farm. Most of the time when wolves hunt, they don’t even successfully kill. They spend a lot of time stalking and chasing, less time killing and eating. The wolf has to work hard for a meal of meat. But humans, we just go to the supermarket or the restaurant and pick up a package of dead animal that’s been bred and killed for us. That’s not the ‘food chain.’

And finally, one pessimistic, apathetic letter included comments about how suffering is inevitable and death is a part of life and so on in an attempt to distance consumption choices from responsibility. But then the writer admitted the truth that they feel overwhelmed by the enormous problem of factory farming and animal commodification:

“Were I also to internalize the pain experienced by animals, I’d simply shut down. Whose lot could that possibly help?”

My response it that there’s no need to internalize the pain experienced by animals. The need is to do something about it. To take a stand and make a difference. It’s really not all that difficult to start eating more vegan meals and fewer nonvegan meals. Transitioning gets easier every day. Make it even easier with vegan recipes and vegan meetups.

Sections: Vegan Et Cetera
Topics: backlash, excuses, Gary Steiner, justifications, letters to the editor, nonvegan, ny times, op/ed, veg, Vegan