Go head and argue that veganism is a personal choice. But if you do, you should also  work to ensure that everyone truly has a free choice. You should demand vegan options everywhere.

We should ALL have the right to choose veganism. When everyone has a true choice, then it might make more sense to start calling veganism a personal choice. But not everyone has the right to choose veganism. I recently wrote:

Many meat-eaters don’t actually have a true choice. These meat-eaters are children in public schools, patients in hospitals, people in prison, people on assistance, and others who rely on care-givers to supply them with meals. They don’t have a choice in the matter, if they want to live they must eat what’s offered. And what’s offered? Why, it’s cheap, surplus meat, rejected by consumers who have a true choice.

As if on cue, animal agribusiness plans to dump surplus animal products on the people who have the fewest choices:

To address the low demand emergency, the Washington DC-based National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) has a kind of Cash for Clunkers plan.

Funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act revenues, its Meat the Need proposal would increase the amount that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients receive in food assistance if they use it for animal products. (source)

These kinds of plans wind up fostering a generation of excessive animal eaters. When the upper and middle class reject excessive animal eating and become flexitarians who eat vegetarian or vegan most of the time – for health and environmental reasons as well as animal welfare – then the excess animal products get dumped on the lower class, who in turn develop habits of excessive animal eating and in turn develop diseases caused by excessive animal eating: cancers, heart disease, diabetes.

If a significant percentage of consumers rejected candy for breakfast in favor of a wholesome breakfast like oatmeal and there suddenly became excess candy on the market, would it make sense to stop serving wholesome food like oatmeal and start serving candy in elementary school cafeterias, hospital cafeterias and homeless shelter kitchens?

So stop eating animals. But don’t stop there. Start helping other people stop eating animals.

But how?

Here are some ideas:

• Food Not Bombs – basically it’s a community based vegan potluck or food fair that’s open to the public and generally feeds homeless and low income people
• Vegan Meetups – invite omnis and vegetarians out to eat at vegan restaurants. Vegan meetups are always assumed to be for vegans, but the reality is that many nonvegans who are curious about veganism attend vegan meetups.
• Vegan Outreach – pass out literature that tells people why and how to go vegan.
• Blog – that’s right, set up a vegan blog and write about food or theory.

Sections: Vegan News, Vegan Theory
Topics: choice, demand, excess, food stamps, free market, government intervention, meat the need, nasda, options, snap, supply, Theory, veg, Vegan, welfare