Environmentalists Vs Vegans: WTF??
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Every now and then Treehugger, the electronic newsletter produced by Planet Green (part of the Discovery networks), features an article that raises the question of eating animal products.
The latest is an article on the Mercy for Animals undercover investigation of chick hatcheries (the video was featured here on Sept 2).
What is difficult to digest here (in addition to the video itself) is the reaction on treehugger. The comments are similar to those I have seen time and again in environmental journals or blogs. Just a few examples:
Have you ever seen a cat play with a small animal? Ever seen a bird being gutted by a hawk while it was still alive?
Nature is far more cruel than this. Get over it there are bigger battles to fight.
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If the good Lord didn’t want baby chicks to die in a giant industrial mangling machine, he wouldn’t have made them so tasty!
Get over it. That’s where food comes from. If dainty urban liberals are wetting their lace panties over this, maybe they need to get out of their bubble. The real world ain’t going to change to suit their phobias.
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If we can’t have compassion for each other, how can we possibly have compassion for these chicks?
I’m all for animal rights and I hate to see things like this, but Bob is right, there are much more important battles to fight when there is human cruelty in the world. I care for my fellow man more than I care for a chicken.***
Meat is Murder. Tasty, tasty murder.
There are other comments that recognize our obligation to these animals, fortunately, but for the most part there is vast indifference to the connection between factory farming and the environment, and of course indifference to the suffering of animals compared to the desire to eat animal products.
I note that this site (treehugger) does not necessarily represent environmentalists in general, that it maybe represents more accurately the members of the general public who now and then take an interest in the environment. But these types of comments do typically pop up on environmental sites, so there seems to be a disconnect there that affects more than Al Gore.
Because I consider myself a major environmentalist this unnecessary divergence between these two important movements disturbs me deeply. I recently had a chance to write for a new publication in my area that focuses on local food and sustainable living. Clearly I felt I belonged there. But it wasn’t long before I realized I’d have to gut my deeper feelings, reduce my references to animals and veganism, and possibly even report on “happy farms” in my area. Before I had gotten too far into the conversation with the meat-eating publisher I decided to walk away.
I am done with apologizing for being a vegan. I’m done apologizing for giving a damn about animals. I would very much like to be more active in the environmental community, be able to connect more with others, but I am going to have to start where I live and reach out from there.
photo of tree in Los Osos Oaks Preserve by Judith Lautner
Those comments are so typical I almost wonder if they’re paid shills who work for the anti-vegan group, the CCF. I mean, seriously, how tired are those lame excuses?
There is nothing environmentalist about grinding male chicks to death. Nothing.
The ironic thing about this divergence is that going vegan is one of the best things one can do for the environment. Anyone who takes an interest in the environment ought to take veganism seriously rather than deride it. It is absolutely unintelligible to me how otherwise intelligent people fail to make the connection between environmentalism and veganism over and over. Why are people happy enough talking about hybrid cars, energy efficient appliances, and reducing air-travel, but won’t even consider reducing their consumption of animal products (let alone cut them out completely)? Everybody seems to think that the way we produce our food is somehow “natural”, when in fact industrial farming is a relatively recent phenomenon, and there is nothing “natural” about it. It harms animals, it is bad for our health, and most notably in this context, it is extremely bad for the environment. Going vegan (or at least reducing the consumption of animal products) is, as a matter of fact, one of the easiest, most affordable (much more so than, say, buying a hybrid car or buying a new fridge, etc.) and most effective ways to do something positive for the environment. Anyone can do it, and you can start doing it right away!
Not only should we not apologize for being vegan, we should actually be more outspoken about it, especially when it comes to the relation between veganism and environmentalism!
At TreeHugger, I commented:
Given that this is an environmental website, it should be well understood that we can only continue with these farming practices for so long before there is no choice and we all (or nearly all) must go vegan. We simply haven’t got the available land or the tolerance for air and water pollution that these factory farms require.
Grow up. Get real. Get honest. Get vegan.
The lack of compassion exhibited in those comments is really sad. As human beings I think we have a moral and ethical responsibility to “do no harm” – not only to the environment but to our fellow animal beings as well. I can’t understand how you can profess compassion for “bigger and better” or “humans” but not for defenseless animals who experience joy, sadness, pain, surprise, guilt, loneliness, etc. just like we do.
Nothing much to say about being an environmentalist – except that before I became vegan I didn’t even recycle… Now I actually have & use and aluminum can crusher & shun plastic bags. Veganism is a gateway to planetary health too.
But the callous comments made in response to the macerated chicks: I was reading opinions on Huffington Post – The writer came up with this thought, “There should be a giant press and this way it would crush them all painlessly”. My… isn’t she the life of the party!
Bea, that’s horrifying, that comment.
I, too, went veg first and then focused on the environment. No vegan I know is careless in this regard. I know I am generalizing but perhaps our awareness of others is at the root of it.
A real environmentalist has to make changes in their personal life, otherwise what’s the point? I think the root of all the ignorance and coldness displayed in those comments is the fact that many people see animal cruelty as some kind of ‘necessary evil’, which is a very twisted way of justifying a person’s bad habits and indifference.
Those comments are almost certainly the work, if not of paid shills, their willing dupes. They are word for word the kind of filth that you read at Peta-sucks.com. They care as much about he environment as they do about animals, which is not at all. If someone want to make me feel guilty about supporting AR, they will also have to make me feel guilty about supporting womens rights, civil right, opposing slavery, hating rape and child abuse; it’s not going to happen.