Meegan,
I agree that most vegetarians are like you imagine:
“A vegetarian does not substitute dairy and eggs in place of flesh, they are consuming dairy, eggs, and flesh and choose to eliminate flesh”
Consider the omni’s pepperoni pizza versus the vegetarian’s veggie pizza. The vegetarian replaced the pepperoni with veggies, not with extra cheese.

Again, I think it’s telling how many vegans here say things like “I would have gone vegan earlier if someone would have presented an abolitionist message.” Rather than take personal responsibility for their choice to refrain from going vegan sooner, they blame welfarists. STOP EXPECTING OTHERS TO DO THE HARD WORK OF ENDING ANIMAL EXPLOITATION AND JUST GET MORE INVOLVED YOURSELF.

Want a peace and love type of website that doesn’t have images of pigs going off to slaughter? CREATE ONE.
Want an organization that truly embodies the abolitionist perspective you’d like to see in other organizations? CREATE ONE.
Want to do “creative nonviolent vegan education”? DO IT.

You say you went to college too, while in college you practiced critical thinking along with logic, pointing out EVs condescention and then being condescending to her isn’t critical thinking or logical relative to anything useful, neither was name calling, (as in smarmy)

I know that You know that when you visit AR websites that there is a high likelihood that there will be pictures of animals similar to the pigs being shunted off to slaughter on several of them, you made it clear that you’d prefer not to see them, well fine, however it seems to me that there is something else going on here (please correct me if I’m wrong), I feel given the above obvious fact that there are upsetting pictures in several websites that you have something else on your mind, and it seems to me that you don’t like EV or that you are unhappy with her use of vegansoapbox in portraying graphic animal pictures, I’d say stop coming back here or deal with it, she’s not going to stop using graphic pictures and videos.

There is another approach, move on from the name calling and your own condescension and use the critical thinking you developed in college and apply it to the more serious issue of critquing abuse of non humans, it’s vastly more important, and better for you too at an emotional level

I was not referring to graphic videos. I was referring to the image at the top of this blog of the pigs on their way to be slaughtered. Good gravy, does the head patting condescension ever end?

“2. Since you are personally, regularly offended by images here and elsewhere on the web, may I suggest that you learn how to disable images in your web browser? It has the side benefit of making the pages load faster ;D”

I really, really, really believe you think you are oh so much smarter than nearly everyone else on the face of the planet, as evidenced by your smarmy responses. The proof is in such brilliant statements such as (my personal favorite) “As I understand it, meat eating hasn’t increased. What has increased is a) the population of meat eaters and b) the amount of meat those people eat.”

“Sorry if that sounds condescending. It probably is. Please know, though, that I understand and respect your position. In fact, in college I was strongly against all forms of graphic images. HOWEVER, during college my views on the issues of free speech and graphic images evolved.”

This may shock you, but I went to college too! AND as if that isn’t enough, my views on many issues changed too! In fact, one of my very favorite subjects was a logic course. I frequently use the things I learned in that course to do what is called critical thinking. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, maybe even tried it a time or two. Not an easy thing to learn, and good luck with your progress in it. You may get there eventually. Oh, did that sound condescending? It probably was.

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It just seems like energy wasted, they are going to be killed. Thanks for the blog. I think that this debate elevates the topic regardless of what we think and the further it goes the closer it comes to critical mass. The more scholarly, dry, and academic for this topic the better as this is the audience which alters public policy.

The distinction of personhood ultimately lends credibility in the courtroom and then the minds of the masses (eventually). I think as far as this dialogue goes we are only speaking of the more developed nations- where slavery is lower in numbers. I do appreciate the research you’ve done but the slavery numbers are somewhat misdirected (not entirely).

I will continue to support some welfare campaigns in my free time- but the bulk of my time and energy is for abolition. I most likely will not put energy into opposing any effort toward bettering any life. Again thanks for the excellent writing.

A vegetarian does not substitute dairy and eggs in place of flesh, they are consuming dairy, eggs, and flesh and choose to eliminate flesh, from my perspective that’s awesome, beef cattle, veal, chickens bred for food, sheep, pigs, are all spared from death, chickens that provide eggs, cows that provide milk and it’s by product of cheese are not, so I feel there is a significant enough difference to recommend vegetarianism as an alternative to being vegan.

Sometimes the abolitionist argument is that it would be more beneficial to spend our time and energy promoting vegan/abolition instead of welfare reform, however your vegan journey began by finding it a little difficult to give up “fried shrimp” and it was an environmental/health thing until you read “Diet for a New America”, if you multiply that by 10s of thousands or 100s of thousands or a few million or so, it becomes a significant enough number to respect it’s value.

Your final paragraph relevant to dairy and egg consuming vegetarians who are aware of the suffering of non humans yet continue their selfish consumption is accurate and I agree with your sentiments, if I’m engaged in conversation with someone of that persuation I’ll spend a little time talking to or pointing them in the direction of some food item I think they can replace their dairy and eggs or icecream with, but until they are ready to change it’s not productive use of my time trying to convince them otherwise.

We can all do our part to help non humans, but asking those that spend time on welfare reform to take that time, energy, passion, and finances, and use those tools to promote abolition to vegetarians is counterproductive, if someone is vegetarian for selfish reasons I don’t care, I just care that they are reducing there dietary intake of non humans, also promoting welfare reform in the legislative or agribusiness field can be done at the same time as working on abolitionist reform, one approach does not have to, or is not necessary for progress to be made, welfarism is not stifling abolition, actually it gives it a platform to work from, we vegans need every vegetarian, every I only eat meat twice a week, I only eat fish, I only buy thrift store leather person that can help us bring up the numbers to a critical mass that will vote with their dollars to cripple McDeath, KFCruelty, and CAFOs, etc.

Yes, it’s true that every little bit helps and a large number of vegetarians who’ve reduced their consumption of animal products adds up to a significant reduction in harm to animals. Still, there are a lot of vegetarians who eat a ton of dairy products and eggs, and those vegetarians are really not changing anything for animals much if any at all. And my experience is that their continued heavy usage of animal products usually stems from two things: 1) the misconception that by substituting consumption of dairy and eggs for consumption of animal flesh, they’re significantly reducing the suffering and premature death of livestock and 2) believing that giving up dairy and eggs is a lot harder than it really is. “I just CAN’T give up cheese; I like it too much!” is a common sort of thing people say.

Not that giving up a food they really like is easy for people who are “addicted” to it, but it’s a lot less difficult than it’s often made out to be, and making it out to be so “awful” to do without something like cheese results in a lot of vegetarians never even really trying to go vegan.

In my case, when I first tried to go vegetarian in ’86, fried shrimp were hard for me to give up because I had grown up eating and really loving them. But at the time there just wasn’t much motivation to give up animal flesh entirely because I really didn’t know anything about the animal rights angle at the time; it was all about health and the environment for me. It took me about 3 years to stay vegetarian for good.

But once I read Diet for a New America around 12 years ago and realized how horribly livestock were treated and that dairy cows and “layers” suffered horribly, too, giving up dairy and eggs was remarkably easy for me, because I realized that animals’ right not to be tortured and murdered was far, far more important than my desire to have delicious-tasting things like pizzas with dairy cheese. I think lots of vegetarians are kind of like I was; they’ve just never been exposed to much information about how dairy and egg-producing animals are treated.

There are also many vegetarians who know perfectly well that eating dairy and eggs causes animals to suffer and die prematurely (although in many cases maybe they underestimate or minimize the extent, especially if they’re eating “free range”), and they keep on eating dairy and eggs anyway because they feel that it’s “too hard” to give them up. That’s an incredibly selfish attitude for someone to take, believing that they are entitled to keep engaging in behaviors that cause significant numbers of animals to suffer and die merely because it would be in their opinion “hard” and “inconvenient” to give up foods they find delicious. My feeling about people with this perspective (and I’ve known plenty) is: Boo hoo! Get over it and think about someone besides yourself! Stop being so speciesist and putting your desires ahead of animals’ rights! Now, of course they’re not going to like it if it’s pointed out to them that this is what they’re up to. I’m not sure what a sensitive way to bring this up with people is. But one way or another, this has to be pointed out.