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An ex-vegan on veganism. By RhysSouthan

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The Argument from Enlightened Future People

Will future people look back on us with scorn for eating meat? Click on the headline to seemy take on this at Ethos Review.

If you want the hunting and farming of animals for food to end, it would help your cause ifit turned out that humans could healthfully thrive on a vegan diet. So let’s say there aresome dietitians who want the hunting and farming of animals for food to end, and they’retelling you that humans can thrive on a vegan diet… do you trust them?

For some reason, vegan dietitian Ginny Messina’s short blog post “Safety of Diet for VeganBabies” — which is about how veganism was nothing but an incidental detail in the recentcase of a vegan parent endangering the life of her infant — inspired me to write multiplerelated posts in response. This will be the last one.

In the comments to Messina’s post, I said that vegans can’t really argue that veganism isthe best for babies, and that it didn’t help vegan dietitian credibility that so many vegandietitians arrived at veganism through ethics rather than health. Messina disagreed,writing:

Rhys, if there is no health argument for veganism, then how can it be problematic whenvegan dietitians are motivated by ethics? I’d be far more likely to question the credibilityof someone who insists they know the one and only healthy way to eat. And if there ismore than one way to eat to support good health, why not promote the option that ismost ethical? I don’t see that as a problematic stance.

What Messina says here makes some sense, but she’s overlooking the concern people mayhave that if your ethics have you wishing for the entire world to go vegan, you potentiallyhave an incentive to present vegan nutrition in the best possible light. Thinking merelythat veganism is the healthiest diet without caring whether the world goes vegan or notseems to come with less risk of an incentive to exaggerate veganism’s positives.

What Messina is getting at, though, is that the people who do end up pushing a vegan dietpurely for its health benefits, and who might not care about the ethical or environmentalaspects of it, often end up being less credible and science-oriented than the ethics-motivated vegan dietitians. The people who promote veganism as the healthiest diet andonly care about human health are often married to a specific form of the vegan diet, andthat gives them a marketable “ideal” diet to sell. Build your career on that marketable diet,and science becomes something to cherry pick when it defends your diet and to ignorewhen it doesn’t.

The ethics-motivated vegan dietitians, in contrast, want the world to go vegan, but theydon’t necessarily have a patentable vision of how this veganism should look. They wantvegans to be healthy so they can stay vegan and they want outsiders to view veganism ingeneral as not detrimental to health, but they’re not stuck arguing that a low-carb/low-fat/all-fruit/macrobiotic or whatever else veganism is clearly the healthiest diet in theworld. Therefore, they can acknowledge studies that look bad for say an all-starch dietwithout destroying their careers.

Not that this eliminates all possible incentive for pro-veg bias. Even if vegan dietitiansaren’t pushing a specific kind of veganism, they do still want humans to stop consumingall animal products. What prevents vegan dietitians from saying, “All animal products arehighly detrimental to health and in general most plants are good for health, so as long asyou don’t eat only vegan junk food, you’ll be healthier if you go vegan — andcoincidentally the animals will be better off too”?

This is essentially what the vegan MD Dr. Michael Greger does, or at least that’s how I andsome other people see it. Greger went vegan for animal rights reasons in 1990, and hebegan his veg activism by hyping the dangers of mad cow disease and possible linkbetween beef consumption and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Now he makes nutrition videosand speeches that review studies showing the harms of all animal products, the benefitsof many plant foods, and the harms of some plants. If you watch enough of his videos, itbecomes clear that eating plants has a ton of advantages while animal products are closeto 100 percent bad — with the possible exception of insects.

Greger isn’t selling a particular form of veganism, even though he does see some problem

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Why Vegan Diets For Infants Are Controversial, PartFour: Could an Animal Rights Ethic Bias VeganNutrition Experts?

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plants that should be avoided, like coconut meat and oil because he opposes saturatedfat. Still, I doubt we’ll ever hear anything good about animal products from him, no matterwhat the science says, and as obsessed as he is with antioxidants and phytonutrients, ifthe research started showing them as useless or harmful, I would expect him to find a waynever to accept that. Harriet Hall at Science-Based Medicine seems to feel the same way,and Joe Schwartz, Director of McGill University’s Office for Science & Society, wrote abemused and not entirely negative post about Greger’s fixation on all the negative thingsabout eating animals.

I haven’t watched anything close to every one of Greger’s videos, so it’s possible thatthere’s more nuance than I’ve seen. Or maybe there is no nuance and Greger is giving afair representation of the science, which happens to be that it’s universally harmful toconsume animal products. I of course have my own biases, but what it looks like to me isthat Dr. Greger is using nutrition as a form of vegan outreach, and that might beinfluencing the sorts of studies he finds and discusses.

However, dietitians Jack Norris and Ginny Messina are themselves evidence that Messinamight be right that we can trust ethics-motivated vegan dietitians. Together they wroteVegan for Life, which I thought provided such a good overview of nutrition science that Irecommended it to a non-vegan roommate who wanted to learn more about nutrition. IfI’d thought they were blinded by their pro-vegan bias, I wouldn’t have done that. Messinaand especially Norris don’t seem to be using their nutrition work as a form of outreach. Asmuch as they would like more people to become vegan, their audience is primarily veganswho want to keep up on the science behind plant-based nutrition, and stay vegan; Norrisand Messina are doing inreach rather than outreach, and the incentive for pro-vegan biasmight be weaker with inreach.

It’s not that Norris is adverse to outreach. He co-founded Vegan Outreach with the goal ofracking up as many vegan conversions as possible. But he got into nutrition becauseduring his activism work he heard from a lot of people who experienced health problemsas vegans and went back to eating animal products. He became a dietitian so he could tryto do something about this. If the goal is to prevent vegans from feeling unhealthy andrunning back to animal products, it doesn’t work to just say, “Veganism is the best diet,you can’t go wrong with it.” You actually have to pay attention to the science and figureout what vegans need to do to stay healthy. That seemingly frees Norris to look morehonestly at the research and see what it says about veganism, good and bad.

Messina was already a dietitian when she became vegetarian and then vegan for ethicalreasons, but she now seems to largely share Norris’ nutritional philosophy, which isbasically that even if veganism isn’t necessarily the healthiest diet conceivable, it’s healthyenough that health concerns shouldn’t override the ethical obligation to be vegan. Theycan’t exactly say, “you should raise your child vegan because that’s in the best interest ofyour child.” Instead they have to say, “you should raise your child vegan because that’s inthe best interest of non-human animals. Fortunately this need not entail any healthsacrifices on your child’s part, and it might even come with some health bonuses, thoughwe can’t be sure.” The point is that the consequences of changing your diet between non-vegan and vegan are supposed to be largely ethical, not nutritional. That’s good news forthose who want animal farming to end, if not the very best news, which would be thatanimal products kill us the second they touch our mouths.

When the goal of nutrition research and writing is to keep people vegan rather than tomake new vegans, it seems like potential for bias is less of a concern. But as I discussed in“Final Thoughts on the American Dietetic Association/Academy of Nutrition and DieteticsVegetarian Position Papers”, the potential for bias in vegetarian and vegan dietitianssometimes does lead to biased results. A classic case of vegan dietitians being too eagerto ignore veganism’s possible risks was when they said vegans didn’t have to worry muchabout calcium because a lower-protein diet was better for retaining calcium. This is froma 1991 Vegetarian Times article called, “Six Steps to a Balanced Diet”:

There is also evidence, says [vegan dietitian Reed] Mangels, that vegetarians may notneed as much calcium as meat eaters because people who eat lower protein dietsexcrete less calcium than people who eat high-protein diets. “The RDAs for calcium weremade for people consuming typical American high-protein diets,” Mangels explains. “Forthose whose protein intake is lower but adequate, or whose protein is from nonanimalsources, calcium intakes below the RDAs are probably adequate.”

The bottom line for vegetarians is if you’re going to eat diary products, you should usethem as a condiment, not an entrée, says [Suzanne] Havala.

This was a common belief amongst vegans at the time. In 1990, Messina wrote to the NewYork Times, “A high-protein intake, especially a high intake of animal protein, is linkedwith loss of calcium from the body. Our love affair with protein may be increasing our riskof osteoporosis.”

The argument that vegans didn’t need to worry about calcium because they didn’t eatanimal protein had real consequences, as Reed Mangels herself later noted in a commenton Jack Norris’s blog:

I’ve been troubled for some time by emails from long-term vegans who are now in their60s and have (to their shock) osteoporosis despite weight bearing exercise and plenty offruits and vegetables (but very low calcium, protein, and vitamin D). The situationreminds me a bit of where vitamin B12 was at one point. Some people were saying thatyou didn’t need much and that stores could last a long time and, basically not to worryabout it. Then, vegans started experiencing B12 deficiencies. More people seem to be

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aware of vitamin B12 this days. Perhaps the same awareness is warranted for calcium,vitamin D, and adequate but not excessive protein.

Some vegans would blame Mangels’ mistake on the state of osteoporosis research at thetime she was telling vegans not to worry about calcium, yet Mangels was already gettingcalled out for being too easy on veganism in the same year she told Vegetarian Times thatanimal protein was the big culprit in osteoporosis. In 1991, also in Vegetarian Times,Brian Ruppenthal (co-author of The New Laurel’s Kitchen) wrote:

Of course, Mangels is not a disinterested reviewer, and her summaries occasionallyreveal her pro-vegan bias. For example, her section on osteoporosis features studiesthat concluded that American vegetarians tend to have better bone structure and lessosteoporosis than nonvegetarians. What she doesn’t point out is that these studieslooked at lacto-ovo-vegetarians, not vegans. Or she’ll omit the negative studies;virtually all studies of the “reproductive performance” of vegans (which includes thehealth of the mother during pregnancy and the infant) up until the Farm study werequite discouraging, for example, but Mangels mentions only the Farm study in hersummary.

This isn’t to say that a vegan diet isn’t healthful; in fact, the Farm study shows that it ispossible for vegans to have healthy pregnancies and healthy toddlers, but that suchresults depend on a level of commitment, common sense and knowledge of nutritionlike that of the Farm community. But most people pay very little attention to their diets.For those who adopt a restricted diet and aren’t attentive to nutrition, this can lead toproblems. Mangels’ easy confidence in veganism as a healthy diet for all peopletherefore left me uneasy.

This doesn’t mean we can never trust Mangels again, but it does seem to be one exampleof a belief in vegan ethics leading to unfounded nutritional conclusions in veganism’sfavor. Fortunately, it does look like vegan dietitians have learned from specific mistakeslike this; if they’re making new mistakes because of bias, I don’t know what they are.

There’s also bias potential when religion and dietetics mix. Seventh-day Adventistsbelieve that God told their prophet Ellen G. White that vegetarianism was the most suitablediet for humankind. Perhaps not coincidentally, Seventh-day Adventist dietitians havebeen leaders in showing that vegetarianism is one of the healthiest diets for mankind.Even Ginny Messina used to mix religion and dietetics, as when she and her husbandwrote that soy was a miracle from God and that Genesis describes all the foods that weneed, which happen to be vegan. Potential for bias is of course different than definitivedocumented bias that does in fact misinterpret research as a way to peddle ideology; initself, it proves nothing. It’s just something to keep in mind.

My ongoing frustration with some vegan dietitians is that they pretend like this potentialfor bias isn’t there, which makes this potential seem more serious than it might really be.Mostly I’m thinking of when vegan dietitians cite the Academy of Nutrition andDietetics/American Dietetic Association vegetarian position papers without ever sayingthat it’s vegans and vegetarians who author these papers.

It makes sense that vegetarians and vegans write these papers, because they’re generallygoing to be the most familiar with the science on vegan and vegetarian diets. My maincomplaint is that vegans often use these papers as a way of saying, “Look, it’s not justpeople who believe in an ethical obligation to be vegan who say that vegan diets are safe— conservative mainstream dietary organizations are saying it too!” It could sound a littleless impressive if they added, “By the way, it’s the ethics and religion motivated vegansand vegetarians at those organizations who are saying this.” I would like to see vegandietitians talk about their involvement in these position papers and explain why weshouldn’t worry about bias there, because they could probably make a plausible case ifthey ever got around to acknowledging this issue.

That it’s convenient for ethical vegan dietitians if veganism is acceptably healthy doesn’tmean vegan dietitians are skewing the science — it could in fact be the case that a well-planned vegan diet just happens to be acceptably healthy.

In her recent post about vegan diets for babies, vegan dietitian Ginny Messina wrote, “Boththe Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Academy of Pediatrics say thatappropriate vegan diets are safe for babies. (And in case you’re wondering, omnivore dietsfor babies need to be appropriate as well.)” I’m used to vegans citing the Academy ofNutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) to establish thatthere’s a mainstream nutritional organization that is okay with veganism, but this is thefirst time I’ve seen the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) used in the same way. Thatinspired me to look into what the AAP has said about vegan diets for babies.

I emailed Debra Burrowes, who is the Manager of the Division of Technical & MedicalServices for the AAP, and asked her if the AAP states that appropriate vegan diets are safe

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5 notes July 10, 2014 3 54 PM

The American Academy of Pediatrics on a Vegan Dietfor Children

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for babies. She responded, “The AAP does not have a specific policy statement on thevegan diet; however AAP’s Pediatric Nutrition Handbook, 7th edition, includes a chapteron the nutritional aspects of vegetarian diets. Some information regarding vegan diets isincluded within the chapter.”

Here are some excerpts from that chapter, called “Nutritional Aspects of Vegetarian Diets”.I left in the source numbers of sources that I’ll refer to:

Vegetarianism is a way of life for many individuals for various reasons. However, therecan be potentially serious implications for the growing pediatric and adolescentpopulation as a result of self-imposed or misguided limitations of the vegetarian diet.Therefore, pediatricians should proactively ask and assess the nutritional status of theirvegetarian patients to ensure optimal health and growth, as well as provide anticipatoryguidance to prevent any potential deficits. …

As with any dietary pattern, the degree of adherence to vegetarian patterns varies, andthus, overall nutrient intake differs from one vegetarian to the next. Most dietarypatterns can be accommodated while fulfilling nutrient needs with appropriate dietaryplanning based on scientific principles of sound nutrition. Most vegetarian parentswelcome such advice. However, when goals are zealously pursued and nutritionprinciples are ignored, the health consequences can be unfortunate, especially forinfants and young children. Overall, it is possible to provide a balanced diet to

vegetarians and vegans13. …

Position papers of the American Dietetic Association and Canadian Paediatric Societystate that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate

and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases14,15. Avegetarian, including a vegan, diet can also meet current recommended dailyrequirements for protein, iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin D, riboflavin, vitamin B12, vitaminA, n-3 omega fatty acids and iodine. In some cases, use of fortified foods orsupplements can be helpful in meeting recommendations for individual nutrients. Wellplanned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of thelife cycle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence. Vegetariandiets in general have lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol and higher levels of

complex carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, Vitamin C and E14 carotenoids and

phytochemicals16.

There have been concerns that vegetarians, and in particular vegans, have lower thanadequate intakes of vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium, zinc and riboflavin. A Polish studysuggested that prepubertal vegetarian children had lower levels of leptin, a polypeptidewhich plays a role in bone growth, maturation and weight regulation, in comparison totheir omnivore counterparts, which may contribute towards reduced bone growth anddevelopment in childhood. A vegan diet may also put children at risk for vitamin Adeficiency and subsequent keratomalacia, anemia, protein and zinc deficiency if a properevaluation of the diet isn’t performed and the family isn’t given appropriate informationof the potential dietary deficiencies relevant to the vegetarian diet. However the overallbelief that individuals following vegan or vegetarian diets suffer from nutritionaldeficiencies may be exaggerated, as reports of specific malnutrition in these populationsare rare.

The study they cite for the line, “Overall, it is possible to provide a balanced diet tovegetarians and vegans” is C Jacobs’ and Johanna Dwyer’s 1988 paper, “Vegetarianchildren: appropriate and inappropriate diets” (Am J Clin Nutr, 1988; 48:811-818).Dwyer and Jacobs are friendlier toward vegetarian than vegan diets in the study,concluding:

An appropriate vegetarian diet can adequately provide for each phase of growth in thechild. The nutritional needs at each stage vary. In general, it is difficult to achieve normalgrowth following a vegan-like diet unless care is taken to ensure that the diet issufficient in calories, protein, vitamin B-12, vitamin D, and Fe. Well-planned lactoovo-and lactovegetarian diets for children, on the other hand, can provide adequatenutrition. Further, they may help establish healthful patterns that will continue throughall the stages of life.

The third paragraph I excerpted from the AAP’s “Nutritional Aspects of Vegetarian Diets”chapter appears to be a paraphrasing of two main sources, one of them being the mostrecent Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly American Dietetic Association)position paper on a vegetarian diet from 2009 (source 14). The authors of that positionpaper are Reed Mangels, who is vegan for ethical reasons, and Winston J. Craig, aSeventh-day Adventist vegetarian who believes that God told the Seventh-day Adventistprophet Ellen G. White that a vegetarian diet was the only appropriate diet for humankind.I bring this up because vegans often cite the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics positionpaper on a vegetarian diet as proof that a mainstream organization agrees with them, andI’ve never seen them mention that it’s vegans and vegetarians who write these positionpapers. I’ve even seen vegan dietitians cite one of these position papers to establishmainstream cred for veganism without admitting that they were one of the authors on thatspecific paper, or of a similar one from a previous year.

The other main source for that third paragraph I quoted from “Nutritional Aspects ofVegetarian Diets” is “Vegetarian diets in children and adolescents” by Minoli Amit of theCanadian Paediatric Society (source 15). The introduction of Amit’s paper states:

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The concept that a well-balanced vegetarian diet can provide for the needs of a growingchild and adolescent is supported by Canada’s Food Guide, the American DieteticAssociation and Dietitians of Canada, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. There issufficient evidence from well-developed studies to conclude that children andadolescents grow and thrive well on vegetarian diets that are well designed andsupplemented appropriately.

However, certain components of these diets and some required nutrients may be inshort supply and need specific attention. This is particularly true in the case of strictlyvegan diets and other very restrictive diets in which significant medical consequencescould result from inattention to nutrient needs. The present statement highlights someof these areas and recommends appropriate interventions.

By referencing this paper, the American Academy of Pediatrics is using the CanadianPaediatric Society as support for the claim that a well-balanced vegetarian diet can be safe– and in return, the Canadian Paediatric Society references the American Academy ofPediatrics as support for the claim that a well-balanced vegetarian diet can be safe.

The Canadian Paediatric Society paper goes on to list some concerns they have with avegan diet, which includes that younger vegan children are at risk of not getting enoughcalories if they eat too many foods that have low energy density and a lot of fiber. It saysthat parents of vegan children need to pay special attention to DHA, B12, calcium, andVitamin D.

The paper concludes:

Well-planned vegetarian and vegan diets with appropriate attention to specific nutrientcomponents can provide a healthy alternative lifestyle at all stages of fetal, infant, childand adolescent growth (7,8,22). Appropriate education of the family and follow-up overtime are essential. There are many useful tools and excellent guides to assist familiesand professionals.

The cited papers there — 7, 8 and 12 — are: the 2003 vegetarian position paper by theAmerican Dietetic Association, which Ginny Messina, Reed Mangles, and vegandietitian Vesanto Melina co-authored; the 6th edition of the AAP’s Pediatric NutritionHandbook; and a paper called “Considerations in planning vegetarian diets: Children,” byGinny Messina and Reed Mangles (J Am Diet Assoc. 2001;101:661–9).

For the most part, the rest of “Nutritional Aspects of Vegetarian Diets” looks at the variouspluses and minuses of vegetarian and vegan diets as far as obtaining particular nutrients.The AAP doesn’t seem to be worried about vegan children getting enough calories,protein, fat, fiber, vitamin A, riboflavin or folic acid. They are more concerned about veganchildren getting enough B12, vitamin D, calcium, iodine, zinc, iron and DHA, but theydon’t think it’s impossible for vegans to get these things. They also mention carnitine andtaurine commonly being low in vegetarians and vegans, but they aren’t bothered aboutthis because they don’t know of any adverse effects this could have.

My impression from reading this chapter is that the AAP certainly wouldn’t suggest avegan diet to anyone who doesn’t see ethical or religious reasons to be vegan, but thatthey also don’t believe that it’s unworkable. “Overall, it is possible to provide a balanceddiet to vegetarians and vegans” seems to sum up their attitude.

However, just like not everyone at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics seems veryaccepting of a vegan diet, not everyone at the AAP appears to think that a vegan diet is adecent option for children. On page 303 of the AAP’s Caring for Your Baby and YoungChild: Birth to Age Five by American Academy Of Pediatrics (Fifth edition, 2009, edited bySteven P. Shelov and Tanya Remer Altmann), it says:

For some children, however, supplementation may be important. Your child may needsome vitamin and/or mineral supplementation if your family’s dietary practices limit thefood groups available to her. For example, if your household is strictly vegetarian, withno eggs or dairy products (which is not a diet recommended for children), she may needsupplements of vitamin B12 and D as well as riboflavin and calcium.

A post on Jack Norris RD’s blog in 2011 noted that the AAP was thinking of promoting redmeat as the best first solid food to introduce to infants, quoting AAP Committee onNutrition member Frank Greer as saying, “Red meat is the nutrient-rich food thatbiologically may be best as the first complementary feeding for infants.” The link Norrisused is broken now, but I found a story about Greer making a similar claim in 2009, called“Rice Cereal Can Wait, Let Them Eat Meat First”.

According to the AAP paper titled “Use of Soy Protein-Based Formulas in Infant Feeding”by Jatinder Bhatia and Frank Greer, there is one definite instance in which they feel avegan infancy may not be workable: when a prematurely born infant doesn’t have accessto breast milk. They wrote,

On the other hand, soy protein-based formulas are not recommended for preterminfants. Serum phosphorus concentrations are lower, and alkaline phosphataseconcentrations are higher in preterm infants fed soy protein-based formula than theyare in preterm infants fed cow milk-based formula. As anticipated from theseobservations, the degree of osteopenia is increased in infants with low birth weightreceiving soy protein-based formulas. Even with supplemental calcium and vitamin D,radiographic evidence of significant osteopenia was present in 32% of 125 preterminfants fed soy protein-based formula. The cow milk protein-based formulas designedfor preterm infants are clearly superior to soy protein-based formula for preterminfants.

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As Messina pointed out to me in a comment on her blog, soy protein based formula isn’tvegan either, because it contains vitamin D3 that is derived from animals. But she impliedthat this was a better option for vegans than cow-milk based formula, which is even lessvegan.

Overall, though, “it’s not ideal, but we’ll work with it” seems to be the AAP’s unofficialimplied motto in regards to vegan diets. That’s the sense I get from an article called“Vegetarian Diets for Children” on the AAP website Healthychildren.org:

If your child is following a vegetarian diet, you need to guard against nutritionaldeficiencies. There are various degrees of vegetarianism, and the strictness of the dietwill determine whether your youngster is vulnerable to nutritional shortcomings. …

Children can be well nourished on all three types of vegetarian diet, but nutritionalbalance is very difficult to achieve if dairy products and eggs are completely eliminated.Vegetarians sometimes consume insufficient amounts of calcium and vitamin D if theyremove milk products from their diet.

Also, because of the lack of meat products, vegetarians sometimes have an inadequateiron intake. They may also consume insufficient amounts of vitamin B-12, zinc, andother minerals. If their caloric intake is also extremely low, this could cause a delay innormal growth and weight gain.

Vegetarians may also lack adequate protein sources. As a result, you need to ensure thatyour child receives a good balance of essential amino acids. As a general guideline, hisprotein intake should come from more than one source, combining cereal products(wheat, rice) with legumes (dry beans, soybeans, peas), for example; when eatentogether, they provide a higher quality mixture of amino acids than if either is consumedalone.

Other planning may be necessary. To ensure adequate levels of vitamin B-12, you mightserve your child commercially prepared foods fortified with this vitamin. While calcium ispresent in some vegetables, your child may still need a calcium supplement if he doesnot consume milk and other dairy products. Alternative sources of vitamin D might alsobe advisable if there is no milk in the diet. Your pediatrician may recommend ironsupplements, too, although your child can improve his absorption of the iron invegetables by drinking citrus juice at mealtime.

A Zen macrobiotic diet usually presents many more problems than a vegetarian diet.With a macrobiotic program, important foods (animal products, vegetables, and fruit) areseverely restricted in stages. This diet is generally not recommended for children.Youngsters who adhere to it may experience serious nutritional deficiencies that canimpair growth and lead to anemia and other severe complications.

Given all this, does Ginny Messina’s claim that the AAP says “that appropriate vegan dietsare safe for babies” hold up?

I think it holds up well enough, with the exception of premature infants who don’t haveaccess to breast milk. The AAP may surround much of their talk of vegan diets for babieswith negative words like “difficult,” but that’s not the same as saying “unsafe.”

Even when Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age Five says, “For example, ifyour household is strictly vegetarian, with no eggs or dairy products (which is not a dietrecommended for children)…” it’s not clearly stating that vegan diets are unsafe forchildren. They seem to be suggesting that a vegan diet is riskier for babies, maybe, ormore challenging, or just not the first recommendation they would make. But that’s notexactly the same as saying “unsafe.”

I doubt that very many people at the AAP are crazy about vegan diets, but I don’t seeanyone from the AAP overtly calling them dangerous.

One of the reasons veganism becomes more controversial once children are born into it isthat it’s a philosophy that potentially has nutritional consequences without necessarilyhaving nutritional intent. In other words, the point of veganism is to foster an ethicalrelationship between human and nonhuman animals, yet practicing this ethicalrelationship means humans might have more trouble getting certain nutrients that aremore prevalent in animal foods. (Or, if they’re lucky, they might instead end uphealthier.) Whether it grievously harms animals to raise them to be our food tells usnothing about whether it’s healthful for us to eat animals or not. So if parents are raisingtheir child as a vegan to reduce animal suffering, it impacts their kid’s diet without thekid’s wellbeing serving as the primary motivator.

In contrast, when health-conscious parents, say, starve their children of carbs, they are atleast inspired by nutritional concerns, however misguided. Raising a child on an unusual

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Why Vegan Diets For Infants Are Controversial, PartThree: People Are Suspicious of Non-NutritionallyMotivated Dietary Restrictions For Kids

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diet for health reasons is controversial too, but only because most people will assume thediet is based on questionable science. The objection is not that parents are tinkering withthe child’s diet out of concern for the child’s health, but that because the parents havethese weird, likely uninformed nutritional ideas, they’re accidentally harming their childrenmore than helping them. Vegan parents — unless they are motivated purely by the beliefthat veganism is the healthiest diet for their children — are in the more awkward positionof intentionally restricting the diet of their children for non-nutritional reasons. In thatsense, ethical veganism for babies is kind of like putting your baby on a hunger strike inprotest of working conditions overseas.

But there are all sorts of behaviors that have nutritional consequences without nutritionalintent. When financial issues limit dietary options, nutrition is compromised out ofnecessity. Eating pizza instead of vegetables because you like pizza better has nutritionalconsequences, even if those consequences are an afterthought or not thought about at all.

One difference between this and animal rights veganism is that to the extent pizza vs.veggies is a conscious, considered choice, it’s generally a selfish cost-benefit decision:“Would I rather have a meal that might make me feel better in the long run, or do I want ameal that gives me pleasure right now?” In ethically motivated veganism, the deliberationover (non-vegan) pizza and vegetables isn’t to do with financial necessity and it’s notexactly a choice between two different selfish options; it’s more like choosing betweenselfishness and altruism. Most people are fine with adults choosing altruism over theirown wellbeing, but are less okay with parents choosing altruism over their child’swellbeing. (That there is an actual conflict between a child’s wellbeing and their beingvegan is of course up for debate, but for those who believe there’s something healthy orjust delicious about animal products, there is at least a perceived conflict.)

Some people wouldn’t use “altruism” the way I just did, because they don’t think altruismeven exists, since everything we do ends up being selfish — the reason we choose to helpanimals instead of eating pizza is because it feels good to do so, we avoid guilt, we get tofeel proud of our ethical beliefs, etc. I don’t have strong feelings about this claim eitherway, but it gets at something that makes veganism seem like an especially raw deal forinfants. The parents of vegan children win because they get to feel good aboutperpetuating their ethics through their children, theoretical future farm animals winbecause they get to escape being born to become food, but what does the vegan child getout of this? Maybe later the kid will be proud to be vegan from birth, or then again, maybenot. That makes infant veganism a bit like religiously motivated infant circumcision as faras the child’s wellbeing is concerned: not so great before personal identity and ethicalbeliefs are formed, but something the child may get into later if their personal identity andbeliefs converge with wanting to be circumcised/be vegan.

Another comparison might be to religiously motivated dietary restrictions like kashrut orhalal, but most people aren’t going to see it as a major health worry if a child can eatcows, chickens, lambs, and fishes, but not pigs. (Interestingly, though, non-religiousvegans have a little more flexibility than kashrut-observing Jews in one regard: they canarguably eat oysters and mussels.) The more foods that a religious or ethical systemdemands you sacrifice for your higher cause, the more concerned outsiders will be for thechildren whose diets are constrained because of it.

This is why there is so much pressure on vegans to convince the world that there’s is nosignificant nutritional difference between veganism and omnivorism, or that veganism is anutritional plus. (Kind of like the arguments that infant circumcision isn’t that harmful,and may even be beneficial.) That way, veganism for infants allows the parents to live theirethics and for potential future farm animals to not be born, while imposing no health coston the child. But outsiders are going to have trouble siding with vegans on this whenpeople often link dietary restriction and nutritional deprivation, when babies sometimesneed non-vegan medications, when infants have a reputation of being worse atweathering nutritional deficiency than adults are, and when people are suspicious ofdietary restrictions that come about from non-nutritionally-related ethical beliefs.

Because of all this, it’s easy for non-vegans to lump ethics-based veganism for babiesinto the category of health-impacting non-nutritional beliefs that include ChristianScientist parents who withhold medical treatment from their babies for religious reasons— no matter what the science actually says about vegan diets for babies.

Part four will look at the issue of vegan dietitian credibility in light of the ethical motive forwanting veganism to be nutritionally sound.

In her recent blog post “Safety of Vegan Diets for Babies,” vegan RD Ginny Messinacriticizes journalists who are quick to label vegan diets dangerous when a baby whohappens to be vegan dies or gets sick. I wrote about that post and the latest controversysurrounding irresponsible vegan parenting yesterday. But Messina’s entry made me think

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about a couple of other things, one of them being, “Why is veganism so easy to blamewhen a vegan child gets sick or dies?”

Messina wrote:

Why is it that journalists can’t [figure out that veganism itself isn’t to blame when avegan child dies or gets sick]? …

I see two issues here for vegan activists. First there is no shortage of bad nutritioninformation floating around the internet. It creates the potential for people to make poorchoices for themselves and their children.

Second, veganism is still pretty unusual in our society. Our diets are regarded with somesuspicion and they give rise to lots of questions. This means it’s always more news-worthy when a vegan child gets sick than when a child in a meat-eating family developsdeficiencies.

I think Messina overlooked a third issue, which is that veganism is a form of dietaryrestriction, and many people automatically link dietary restrictions to a decrease innutritional variety and thus an increase in a deficiency risk. Babies and children arethought of as particularly vulnerable to nutritional deficiency because they are notoriouslypicky and yet need plenty of nutrients to grow, which — if you believe that restrictionmeans an added risk of deficiency — implies that significant dietary restriction is chancierfor them. Plus, being babies and children, they have limited control over their diets, soeven if they don’t feel like they’re getting what they need from whatever their parents areallowing them to eat, they can’t necessarily try a non-vegan approach the way non-thriving vegan adults can.

People who tend to link dietary restriction with nutrient deficiency risk will already worryabout babies and children having their dietary options tethered because of veganism, sowhen they hear about a vegan baby who died from a nutrient deficiency, they’llunsurprisingly assume that the dietary restriction of veganism is to blame.

It’s not only vegans who have to deal with this. The Salon article that Messina criticized asa typical instance of journalists unfairly bashing veganism also linked to a storyexpressing concern over actress Gwyneth Paltrow “starving her children of carbs” becausePaltrow doesn’t feed her children pasta, bread or rice. People are generally suspicious ofrestricting the diets of babies and children in unusual ways, and that’s a significant PRproblem for any version of veganism that frames itself as a dietary restriction.

Of course restriction and deficiency aren’t inextricably linked. If you banish candy andalcohol from your diet, the main consequence is likely to be an increase in nutritionaldiversity by freeing up space for healthier, nutrient dense foods. But you can’t make adirect analogy from anti-sugar-and-booze-ism to restricting all animal foods, sinceanimal products can be relatively dense in some macronutrients, vitamins and mineralsthat are less prevalent in whole plant foods.

When a vegan baby’s death is due in part to a deficiency of a nutrient that is prevalent inanimal foods and less so in whole plant foods, vegans tend to steer the debate toward thefact that a particular baby’s death didn’t have to happen within a vegan framework. ThoseFrench vegan parents Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou were inexcusable fools who didn’tbelieve in supplements, mistrusted doctors, and breastfed their child for too long, andthat rather than veganism is why their baby died. Whatever the nutritional problem inquestion, it is usually possible to address it in a vegan way. Or, if it’s not — like in thecase of a desperately needed non-vegan medication or formula — all reasonable veganswill realize that they should make an exception there.

The problem is that ethics-inspired veganism as a restriction on animal consumption is anegative rather than a positive philosophy. I don’t mean it’s pessimistic, I just mean it tellsyou what not to do rather than what to do. Vegans can’t purchase and consume animalproducts because that contributes to animal suffering and exploitation. That’s the mainrule. Most (not all!) vegan health experts encourage vegans to supplement importantnutrients like B12, but doing so is not a necessary aspect of vegan ethics. When vegansrestrict animal products from the diets of their babies and children and fail to supplementthose diets to make up for whatever is missing because of that, they are obeying all veganmusts while ignoring helpful (but optional) suggestions from vegan nutritionists. Theyhave not in fact violated veganism. They have, rather, practiced veganism in a way thatunfortunately may harm or kill their children. This never has to happen because there arevegan B12 pills and most vegans would make an exception for non-vegan medicalinterventions in an emergency, and these parents may be foolish, but that doesn’t meantheir parenting choices somehow fall outside the realm of veganism. Being reasonable isnot a requirement of veganism.

Messina told me in the comments of her last post that Sarah Anne Markham — the veganmother who recently refused non-vegan medication for her near-death baby — should nothave refused non-vegan medical treatment for her baby.

“I wouldn’t expect someone to risk their child’s health for veganism (or their own healthfor that matter),” she said. “So yes, if there was truly no other alternative, then aresponsible parent would choose a medication that isn’t vegan. A case in point is soyinfant formula. It’s not vegan because it contains animal-derived vitamin D. But for veganparents who can’t breast feed and who don’t have access to a milk bank (which is veryexpensive), then this formula is the only option.”

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Well the only reasonable option, but not the only option! Anyway, it’s only the bizarrevegans who take the “no animal products ever” rule that seriously. Of course it’s okay togive your child medicine that has been tested on animals and contains animal products ifyour child really needs it, and we can simply discount the ridiculous vegan extremists whodon’t.

As I said in my last post, I’m not convinced that this is an obvious and necessary stancefor vegans to take. Vegans often chide other vegans for being unseemly exception-hunting opportunists or not real vegans if they find and exploit exceptions to the noanimal products ever rule. For an example, see this thread on Messina’s Facebookpage that started with a link to Diana Fleischman’s post defending oysters as an ethicalfood source for vegans. Based on what we know about oysters, there’s no reason to thinkthey’re any more sentient than plants, but while some vegans are okay with theconsumption of these non-sentient animals, most of the vegan commenters seem to hatethat any vegans would embrace this seemingly benign exception to the prohibition oneating animals. So I find it difficult to believe that all vegans can agree that non-veganmedication is sometimes okay.

The big problem for veganism in these cases of child neglect is that it’s not entirelyconvincing to say that if the parents of a child are vegan, and they raise their child vegan,and the child dies of deficiencies of nutrients that readily exist in animal foods and less soin whole plant foods, that this has absolutely nothing to do with veganism.

It’s true that death in infancy is not anything close to an inevitable outcome of raising kidas vegans, since supplements exist, the nutrition research is out there, and parents arefree to make exceptions for non-vegan medical interventions, and no vegan has to feedtheir child only soy milk and apple juice. But veganism often does play some role in thesecases, no matter how much the sciency vegans may wish for all vegans to be reasonable,pro-supplement, and open to non-vegan exceptions in emergencies. That’s why theconnection between veganism and the cases of severe nutrient deficiencies in veganchildren will continue to be an all-too-easy one for outsiders to make.

In the most recent highly publicized case of vegan child neglect, a vegan woman wasarrested because her 12-day-old baby was dehydrated, and she refused the doctor’sadvice to give her baby the proper treatment. According to a Salon article with themisleading and irresponsible headline, ”Is veganism child abuse?”, Sarah Anne Markhamwasn’t interested in the medication the doctor prescribed for her kid because it containedanimal products.

As far as I know, there’s no reported instance of totally mainstream vegan parents whobelieve in science and supplements who lose a child to overt nutritional deficiency. In allthe cases I’ve heard of vegan babies being killed or endangered, there’s always someweird thing about the parent or parents that led to their restricting care for their childmore drastically than basic vegan rules demand. This time it was that Markham is aSeventh-day Adventist and wanted to raise her child in some sort of naturalistic way, andshe didn’t seem to care very much about science or the advice of medical professionals.

Vegans tend to get snippy and defensive when stories like this come out, and they focuson the point I just made, that the families are always peculiar in some additional way andput too much faith in the worst, most debunked vegan myths, like that vegans don’t needto worry about B12 because it’s in tempeh, or our guts or the air or whatever.

While it’s true that the neglectful vegan parents all seem to exist in the delusional or justuninformed extreme of veganism, I’m skeptical of the claims some vegan apologists makethat cases like this have zero to do with veganism, and that we can file them all undergeneral bad parenting and completely ignore the fact that the parents and child happenedto avoid all animal products. In her recent post on the Markham case, “Safety of VeganDiets for Children,” vegan RD Ginny Messina wrote:

Vegan diets aren’t dangerous. However, people with irrational ideas about nutrition are.The stories of vegan parents who starved their babies because of mistaken beliefs aboutinfant feeding are clear proof of that. It is horrible and it’s heartbreaking. But it hasnothing to do with veganism.

I agree with some of what Messina says in her post, but I can’t see how this has nothing todo with veganism. Certainly it doesn’t have everything to do with veganism, but “nothing”can’t be right either. It’s not like Markham is a mother who happened to be vegan anddropped her child, and now everyone is saying it’s because she has slippery vegan hands.One of Markham’s major sins was that she refused to give her child non-veganmedication. But from a vegan perspective, that’s exactly what she should have done, isn’tit? Don’t purchase or consume something with animal products, especially if it was alsotested on animals… right?

Well, I guess that depends. If your baby is about to die, it might be time to make an

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exception. In the comments of her post, I asked Messina whether she thought it wouldhave been okay with the animals and with veganism if Markham had given her child themedicine that certainly appeared to violate vegan ethics. Messina responded:

I wouldn’t expect someone to risk their child’s health for veganism (or their own healthfor that matter). So yes, if there was truly no other alternative, then a responsible parentwould choose a medication that isn’t vegan. A case in point is soy infant formula. It’s notvegan because it contains animal-derived vitamin D. But for vegan parents who can’tbreast feed and who don’t have access to a milk bank (which is very expensive), thenthis formula is the only option.

That seems reasonable of course, but is this something all vegans must agree with?Messina “wouldn’t expect someone to risk their child’s health for veganism,” but maybeshe’s just not as committed as some vegans are. Could it be that Markham took veganismtoo literally and too seriously, when all the mainstream reasonable vegans would haveknown to back off and forget their ideals a little bit until their child was safe enough to goback to avoiding the products of animal exploitation? Or was there actually something un-vegan about Markham’s potentially sacrificing her child for the sake of the animals?

Until it becomes an established and generally agreed upon thing in veganism that non-vegan medication and formula and whatever else are allowed in an emergency — and thatin fact, using them to save yourself or your child is actually required by vegan ethics, andthat there’s no glory at all in sacrificing your child for animal lives — I’m going to have ahard time believing that all of these vegan child neglect cases have nothing to do withveganism.

A few years ago, I interviewed Erim Bilgin. After subsisting on a low-fat raw vegan diet forthree years, Erim turned his back on 30 Bananas a Day and objective morality for meat,nihilism and anti-civ primitivist thinking. Though he still ate plenty of fruit, he disdainfullysaw veganism an inevitable extension of society’s drive to impose order and crushpassion, to erect more limits and further civilize humanity and nature.

Erim got in touch with me to update us on his perspective – where he still agrees with hisangry, fresh-out-of-veganism self, how he’s changed, and whether veganism is still theinevitable path of human society.

Vegans and meat eaters alike usually think it’s weird when ex-vegans don’timmediately stop thinking and talking about veganism once they start eating meatagain. It’s been over two years since you quit veganism. Why are you still interestedin this?

Yeah, it is weird. My brain just keeps telling me, “Dude, it’s just food. You’re treating itlike a high school crush. I mean move on, jeez.” And part of me does want to move on, tono longer spend energy on these bizarre topics like whether or not morals existindependently of individuals, the social value and feelings of a cow or the level ofsentience of a plant — and spend that energy more productively. I mean sure, you gothrough that initial phase of, “What the fuck was I thinking, oh god,” and you startattacking veganism because it’s just your new outlook attacking on your now “outdated”old identity. That’s natural. To keep at it for years afterwards, though, you needsomething more. The last two years presented me with a lot of real life challenges, and Ifeel like going through those made me more practicality oriented, and I was like, “Whatdoes debating on all this stuff even accomplish? We can figure out EVERYTHING aboutveganism and still it’s not like when the time comes for the world to turn a major eye onthis deal and try to figure out an ultimate answer, it’s not like they’ll turn to us and say,‘Oh hey look, these guys have been debating this stuff for years and they know all aboutit, let’s consult them!’” No. Ultimately it’ll be left to the preference of individuals and theinfluence of the media above anything else, so it felt kinda pointless.

Enter fanaticism. After our interview, I did of course get a lot of emails and such from both

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vegans and meat eaters about a lot of things. What I wasn’t expecting was to see thevegan emails keep coming, even after two years. I still get contacted at least once a week.I even figured out a kind of accurate system of how it tends to work: a semi-intellectualcommentary once a week, something at least mentally stimulating once a month, deaththreat every two months and if I’m a really good boy, every three months or so I’ll get myfavorite kind: the ones with the weird spelling and the voodoo language talking about theuniverse and peace and our chakras where even the email smells like marijuana. At first Iwas trying to reply to the more intellectual ones, but it got tiresome. I was also at firstgetting some emails from anarcho-primitivists, but quickly realized most of those guyswere total weirdos and idiots who just seemed mostly interested in buying a whole lot ofguns and shooting at stuff in the woods. All in all it was pretty bizarre. What it did thoughwas it kept some of these issues on my radar.

So every once in a while I’d still think about objectivity, ethics, social systems, ideologies,violence etc. And of course I myself have come a long way from the angry, foolishadolescent I was back then. Now I’m just angry and foolish. So some of my views changed.And I’ve found that veganism is sort of a very effective “beacon” for philosophizing; youcan start with vegan topics and think on them to get deeper insights into various aspectsof existence. It’s certainly very fertile ground for discussion to blossom.

Do you still believe nihilism is the best argument for meat eating?

This is complex, and it was a blind spot in my original argument. I still believe, objectively,that nihilism is the way the universe operates. There is no such thing as inherent meaning;it’s our primate brains that brand things good and bad. So when you’re going for ultimatetruth; yeah, you can always argue that there’s nothing “wrong”, or rather, “false”, abouteating meat. From an objective standpoint, all you can say is — it’s possible to eat meat,so it’s possible. We can do it. It’s doable.

But that’s about all you can get from an objective viewpoint like nihilism. You can’t reallyuse it in human discussions. Because what I didn’t realize back then was that we humanshave an “alternate reality” that we live in. We’re not fully rational, objective creatures.We’re mostly emotional animals. That’s not a good or a bad thing, that’s just what is. Ourbrains are hard-wired to experience reality that way. So telling someone that eating meatis okay because nothing ultimately matters in the universe is not considered an effectivestrategy. It’s true, but it does nothing. Because it’s almost like you’re not telling the truthin “the human language”. You’re arguing on facts, not human values. And society isn’treally built on facts. It’s built on human values. Nihilism is the truth, but it’s not our truth.It’s the truth of galaxies, solar systems, elements and energies. But it doesn’t apply to asystem of neurons and hormones.

The discussion needs to happen within the human parameters. Which is exactly whereeverything gets murky. But we have to go there. Otherwise it’s just ivory towerphilosophizing.

What are some ways in which your views on veganism, ethics or whatever else havechanged over these two and a half years?

This question covers a lot of ground. Let’s get started.

For veganism; I’m no longer angry at vegans, I no longer feel used or anything. I’m over it.No bad blood between me and veganism anymore. I don’t partake in it, but I have noproblems with it. I also no longer consider myself “anti-vegan”. I think it’s better to defineyourself by what you love, not what you hate. What you’re for and not what you’re against.I’m a meat eater, not a vegan. And I’m not even “against” veganism anymore. I just dohappen to eat some meat. Simple.

Now, probably the biggest change I went through was in regard to primitivism. In myoriginal argument, I sided with the primitivists. Not with their methods (bombing andsabotaging shit and murdering people), but with their idea that human nature is toocomplex for us to claim we can understand it completely, so we shouldn’t try to changeour nature, and instead allow our nature to tell us how to live. I personally preached moreof a “passive primitivism,” so instead of forcing the whole world to “follow their nature”with us, I said let’s just do it ourselves and let everyone else do their thing.

I later realized something: My rationale for siding with primitivism was thatexperimentation let us down, so we should quit trying all together. That was wrong. Ithink the main thing that got me there was the feeling of failure with veganism, and meshowing that veganism’s value system is in accordance with the core values of the modernhuman society. What I said was, the core values of veganism don’t actually go against thecore values of modern society, even though it seems like a fringe movement from theoutside; and since veganism — a product of human ideology trying to replace humannature — let us down, it’s a good example of why our whole social evolution will let usdown. This view was too simplistic. I guess in my anger towards veganism and myself forbeing dumb enough to believe in it, and my excitement about finding new stuff out, Ididn’t consider the whole picture.

What helped to broaden your view?

Some time after our first interview, I was climbing a mountain, and had an accident. Iended up with some serious injuries. At this point, I was living an extremely high octanelifestyle, and exercising heavily and regularly was a major part of how I kept myself happyand functional. When I got the injuries, it was like a kiss of death to me and my dreams. Igot really depressed.

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It seems that unfortunate events in life always lead to one of two things: defeat or growth.After a brief period of useless self-pity, I decided to tackle my situation. The first thing Irealized was that my body most likely wouldn’t heal from all the injuries by itself. Theregoes the illusion of trusting your nature to always do the optimal thing; out the window. Iquickly learned that my biology could very well betray me when the situation became direenough. I remembered what I had learned before: the human body, like anything else inthe universe, is no more than a bunch of molecules put together in a specific fashion. Ifone part fails, you can, in theory, replace it with external stuff. There’s no shame in usingtechnology to help you achieve what you will.

While I was going to physical therapy, I met some new people. Amputees. Injured. Sick.Old athletes who had to leave their careers because their bodies betrayed them one way oranother. As I met these people, saw how amazing some of them were, and saw the tricksmother nature had played on them, how their bodies broke down and betrayed their will, Istarted to feel like one of them. My nature had betrayed me. My dreams were too much fornature to accept. Nature had rejected us. But how? I previously held the view that we wereour animal bodies; and whatever happens to our body or mind was just what we deserved!So why was I feeling like something was wrong now? If all was well with the universe (oneprimate made a mistake climbing a mountain and physics happened), why did it all feel sowrong?

I came to a new realization: We are not our bodies. We’re not our minds either.

We are the will.

The idea, the raw desire that makes the mind think; the inner thirst that makes the bodyrun. We are the courage that stands up to fear, the discipline that can rise above bodilyurges, the hopes that keep the whole system motivated. The only thing within us that’sunchangeably “us” is that little will that drives us. Anything else is replaceable. You candisregard ideologies that don’t serve you. You can drop entire identities in a day. You canchange your name, change your body, change your mind patterns. The body isn’t you;“the animal” isn’t you.

So I stopped following “my nature”. I focused solely on my will. Everything else waschangeable. For my amputee friends, sometimes this meant replacing their natural uselesslegs with inorganic prosthetics that sometimes allowed them to sprint faster than“healthy” humans. This was fine for them, because ultimately it was serving them. You cansee how this kind of thing shaped my philosophy into something else.

The “human condition” was no longer something final for me. No longer stable. It was freeto change as we wanted as much as we could. Nature was a joke. I started identifyingmore and more with transhumanists. I went back to my medical textbooks to try and curemyself. It took about half a year, but with the right concentrated disciplines, I managed toheal myself until I was finally even better than how I was before the accident. Today I’mfine, but I owe that to the findings of the hundreds of thousands of brilliant scientists thatworked to gather the information I used to better myself. I don’t owe it to nature.

So the biggest thing was I dropped the primitivism. Intelligence is one of humanity’sgreatest gifts, and all throughout our evolution this is what we’ve been doing — takingcontrol. Instead of letting the universe handle things chaotically, the human force hasbeen trying to control nature, reshape it into its will, rearrange things more to its liking.And this isn’t even going against nature since humanity itself is a force of nature. We arejust another manifestation of the universe, so even if we end up destroying everything, anaturalist can’t really argue with things because that’s just like when a sun goessupernova and fucks shit up around it. It’s just the ebb and flow of nature. Humanity’sjust another cool and interesting form of the same deal.

What does this mean for your take on veganism and meat eating?

Well, another mindset I’ve dropped since our last talk was the “just kill em all, who cares”mindset. I was very pro-hunting, and I still am, but now for very different reasons. I think Iused to be pro-hunting mostly just to spite vegans and show them that one can, in fact,enjoy murdering their precious little animals and pay no price for it. I could taste thedelicious vegan tears every time I saw an animal get killed, so turning that activity into ahobby was perfect for an anti-vegan like me.

Once the anger washed away though, I could see more clearly. Yeah I know, vegans arelame and so are their arguments most of the time, but screw veganism, we really arehurting these animals, and they DO feel pain. There’s really no glory in enjoying hurtingthem. So now I still support hunting, but only because most of the time it provides theleast painful death for the animals. I’m still going to kill them and eat their meat, but Iwant them to suffer as little as possible.

Which is also why I’d support this whole 3D-printed meat deal, if it was perfected. If I canget a steak that is absolutely the same as the real thing nutrition and taste-wise, and Ididn’t have to cause any pain to get it, of course I’d prefer that.

So in terms of outlooks, those are what has changed. I still want to eat meat, I still valueindividual freedoms over anything else, but I want as little pain caused as possible gettingthere.

Still eating a lot of fruit?

I do, but not nearly as much as I used to. Through much experimentation I’ve finallyfigured out how my body works best: I increase my carbohydrate intake as I increase my

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level of physical exertion. The more intense my workouts, the higher the percentage offuel coming from fruit.

Otherwise it’s animal foods and vegetables. Works like a charm, and you don’t needsupplements. My physical performance is higher than it’s ever been, and I have zerohealth problems. I also enjoy the fruits I eat way more this way, when I’m not stuffing myface with them 24/7. I’ve also benefited greatly from intermittent fasting. If anyone outthere’s thinking about giving that a try, I say go for it, see how you do with it.

You were vegan for health, not ethical reasons. Have you started thinking moreabout the ethics of animal killing and exploitation since quitting veganism?

Interestingly, that’s exactly what’s happened. I think I care about animals more genuinelynow than I ever did as a vegan. I don’t know why exactly that is. A vegan would say it’sbecause I’m trying to deal with the subconscious guilt I must be feeling for eating all thatsinful meat of eternal pain and universal suffering. Some people would say it’s because Ican think and feel more healthfully now because a meat-based diet is better for your brainneurotransmitters and so on. I personally think it’s because I matured a bit and let go ofthe anger I felt towards veganism for “betraying” me. So now, my attitude towards animalsis no longer an extension of my relationship with veganism, but just a genuine, directrealization of being a part of this planet.

When you’re hurting an animal, you’re not hurting veganism, you’re not spiting vegans, asmuch as you’re just hurting an animal who did nothing to you. So that’s fucked, from ahuman perspective. From my more “objective” perspective in our last interview, I put itmore like, “Be it plant or animal, everything’s ultimately alive, so you’re always killing. Andfrom an even more objective perspective, nothing really IS alive, so fuck it, nothingmatters.” But as I said I believe now, that objective view, while that is the truth, it isn’t howwe humans operate. So compassion IS a real thing for us; it is an actual feeling and it’s notthat you MUST feel it towards everything — compassion has degrees, I suppose — but Ifeel like my personal “outer” desire in life is to reduce overall suffering for people andcreatures I interact with. That must be balanced with the “inner” wants like various egogratifications and bodily needs. These are all subjective values and considerations thateach individual has to decide for themselves. Most people have it decided for them bysociety, but yeah, that’s how it works.

Most people try to find some balance in their lives between caring for themselvesand caring about others, and veganism is one way that some people choose tobalance their selfishness and altruism. Some vegans think that it’s an objectivelycorrect and necessary way, because of “logical consistency,” anti-speciesism,“intent” or whatever else. It sounds like you’ve got your own balance, with huntingbeing the ideal way to get meat. Do you see your approach as being on an ethicalcontinuum with veganism, or is it something totally different?

Over the years, you’ve done an amazing job on your site of deconstructing those variousreasons vegans presented for claiming veganism is necessary and showing how they allfall short one way or another. This is because reality IS there, and it’s not good or bad orright or wrong, but it just IS. So when people try to say one thing is “logically” and“objectively” correct or necessary and it’s not already happening, there’s got to be areason. Anything that really is “objectively correct” must already be occurring in theuniverse. Because from an objective standpoint; “correct” can only mean “true, real”. Whenyou say “correct” from an ethical standpoint, you’re no longer arguing objectively, sothere’s no point in arguing at all since any interaction between two different minds isnever going to be like your subjective perception of the universe.

I’ve got my own personal balance, yes, but I don’t see it as anything that must apply toanyone else. Because it’s not an objective thing. I still don’t believe in objective ethics.Ethics is not like some sort of universal system that we each tap into. I alwayscommunicate this best with a computer analogy: It’s not like ethics are a serversomewhere away and each individual is a different computer with a connection to that“outside” ethical system. It’s more like each individual’s own ethical system is in theirmind only — part of their own “hard drive” and not something external. You can get ideasfrom the external, sure, but once you get them they are, again, in your head.

Because think about this: What if I snapped my magic finger and every individual in theuniverse, including me, died this instant? Would there be any “right” or “wrong” then?Would it be “wrong” or “beautiful” for a tree to shake and bend in the wind? Would anerupting volcano be a natural “disaster” anymore? Would it be “horrible” anymore when abear, ultimately a system of chemicals, kills a fish — another system of chemicals — andeats it?

Things would be stripped of all meaning, labels, definitions, collections. That’s becausethose don’t exist externally from the individual mind. Whatever exists does exist, but thatobjective information is not perfectly available to us. So there can never be “objectiveethics”. We can still have social rules and mutual respect and all that, but let’s not foolourselves into thinking any of it reflects objective facts of how the universe operates.

Therefore I don’t believe there can ever be an “ethical continuum”. My approach is myapproach, and veganism is its own approach. The ONLY problem with veganism here isthat IT doesn’t realize this, and tries to enforce its approach on all of us. It’s not right orwrong or deluded in itself. It’s just trying to dictate external things that’s the problem.

But I do think that we as humans would do well to find some new methods to obtain our

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meat. Like I mentioned, some of the “fake meat” ideas aren’t half bad, but we’ll see howall that turns out. In the meantime we can also work on making it easier for farm animalsto both live and die, by not treating them as products without feelings as they live, andkilling them extremely swiftly and painlessly when the time comes. We have the means todo both of these things, so why not do it.

Overall I think I take a more humanist approach in practice. I still think it’s foolish to beworking to make life better for animals when we still have humans suffering in the world,and ultimately I place human freedom above the happiness of animals. But if there aremethods that can make life easier for animals without taking much away from humanity, Ihave no qualms about meeting veganism somewhere there in the middle.

Once I removed my stupid primitivism mindset out of the picture, things became a loteasier in my mind. We can use technology cleverly to make more parties happy and reducesuffering. So why not? Because we want to live up to some arbitrary ideal of “nature”?Thing about nature is that it’s consistently changing. So there’s no “human default” wecan revert back to anyway. The only human default is perpetual change and increasingfreedom. It’s been like that all throughout our history. Increasingly, we’ve become morefree from our environment, free from kings and queens, free from our own biologicallimitations, from our mental barriers. It’s cold? Invent fire. Can’t reach the fruit? Usesticks. Can’t see in the dark? Invent the light bulb. Death? Put your brain in a fucking robotand live forever, I don’t know! All I know for sure is that nothing is going to be apermanent “problem” as long as we stick to our human curiosity and ingenuity.

Is the world becoming more vegan?

Yes, without a doubt. My original views on this still stand; veganism is “modern” and “in”,and meat eating is soooo 8000 BC. Veganism appears to be for compassionate, intelligentpeople who care about animals, care about suffering and care about the environmentmore than their own carnal desires. In the mainstream view, the concept of “veganism”evokes images of upper-class white people with perfect teeth and perfect lives biting intothat fresh green apple that makes that crunching sound which translates into English as“My life is perfect”. Viewed from that perspective, meat eating is bizarre; we kill animalsand there’s blood and guts everywhere then we skin them, burn them and eat theircharred corpse, and the corpse “clogs our arteries” for revenge. That versus the greenapple. You can easily tell which one’s going to appear more feasible to a mainstreamsociety of people who don’t know what the heck’s going on behind the curtains. I actuallythink that with all these considerations and meat’s public image nowadays, that all well-read, thoughtful people consider some form of vegetarianism at least once in theirlifetimes. I’ve seen this more often than not.

As an example, I think it was last year when a friend convinced me to watch the ScottPilgrim movie and it had a character in it that had “vegan powers,” which basically madehim cooler for being vegan. I couldn’t help but think that was a pretty good example ofhow veganism works socially nowadays.

Heck, in the three years since we did that first interview, even Turkey started to see itsfirst few vegan organizations and restaurants and whatnot. Someday, these issues WILL betalked about in senates. Someday, we might be prosecuting people for “murdering andeating the corpse of mooey the cow”. It will sound horrible to the socially-conditionedears of our children. And, dare I say it, perhaps it should. But only if we find betteralternatives, and solutions to the possible problems such changes may bring.

Our social values nowadays support veganism so well that even the most dedicated meat-eaters, when you ask them about it, will still say things like, “yeah I know it’s not good forme, BUT I JUST CAN’T STOP EATING IT”, so even those who defend it only defend it as anaddiction and not as a choice. Health or personal freedom are rarely mentioned asreasons. Let alone questioning the very idea of having to defend meat eating as a habit.

One thing I’ve noticed lately though is that the “paleo” movement seems to be growing. Sothat may be a major opponent to veganism in the near future, but it’s hard to say. If I wereto guess though, I’d say the world’s probably going to end up eating 3D printed meat orsome kind of product of science instead of real meat in the end. This, if perfected, wouldmake everyone happy, I think. Except hunters. Meat eaters get something that’s identicalto real meat, vegans get… "people not eating meat", and, uh, major corporations get tocontrol our food supply even more strongly, I guess. But yeah, everyone who’s into theseissues knows the current system’s not sustainable long-term so something's going tohave to give. It's just difficult to predict how exactly things will play out.

A lot of the world seems to be becoming less religious. Could that help veganismbecome more popular?

That’s a very interesting question. I do agree that religion is becoming less popular asscience and rationality are on the rise. Personally, I’m very happy about this. But ultimatelyI think it can help veganism’s cause.

A lot of meat eaters will be quick to use the argument “because god says it’s okay” todefend meat eating. I’m not going to waste any time explaining why that’s an invalidstatement. I think it does help the majority uneducated of meat eaters be okay with theirmeat eating if they ever do tend to question it, so ultimately it creates the same resultwith understanding the complex logical facts behind meat eating and “eating meat with aninformed attitude” so to speak, like you and I do. Though I’d actually rather see someonethink logically, even if they think without all the facts and end up thinking meat eating is

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logically incorrect, I’d still prefer hanging out with a vegan who doesn’t eat meat becausehe has half a brain and can think critically about things than with a meat eater whodoesn’t give a fuck either way because he just follows what god tells him to do.

All that said, I don’t think the abolishment of religion will be the final nail in meat eating’scoffin. There are plenty of us non-religious meat eaters. A lot of us still use other shittyarguments to defend our meat-eating, and in time veganism will defuse those argumentsas well, until ultimately the discussion will be stripped down to just the basic facts.

The world becoming less religious WILL help veganism, but if we had to use religion tokeep veganism at bay, I’d rather let veganism take over. Thankfully we don’t have to.

In the last interview, you said you were neither a speciesist nor an anti-speciesist.What are your thoughts on speciesism now?

I don’t believe in species. Now, let’s get some stuff out of the way: I do understand theconcept of species. I know it’s a useful system of categorization that we need in order tounderstand the world around us. I’ve read my stuff, count on it.

So what do I mean?

Let’s say I’m a geneticist. And I’ve got a machine here, we’ll call it Erim’s Machine. NowErim’s Machine has the capacity to change a creature’s genetic makeup into any sequenceI want. So I can take, say, a monkey, and edit its genes until I get a human. I can edit thegenes of a human zygote and make it grow into a banana instead.

So draw a continuum. One one end, place a chimpanzee. On the other end, place ahuman. Some readers will pick up on what I’m getting at here just by this mental image.Let’s say I use my nifty little machine and start editing the chimpanzee and bring himcloser and closer to human, inch by inch.

The question is, at what point would the “chimp” end and the “human” begin?

Now luckily, when I first came up with this crazy idea and I was discussing this with afriend, he recognized it and guided me towards further reading. Apparently other peopleare aware of this “issue” we have with the concept of “species”. It’s a bit of an arbitraryconcept.

One point that comes up in some debates about racism is that race is a socialconstruct, and not one that can clearly be defined. Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about thathere. Yet racism still exists, based on socially constructed concepts of race. Since youdon’t believe in species, you might consider species a social construct as well, butthat doesn’t necessarily tell us what to do about this social construct. It would stillbe possible to be speciesist or anti-speciesist in reaction to the concept of species,even if it’s an artifice. What are the implications for meat eating and veganism if wedo away with species as a valid concept?

Yes, I do view species as a social construct. And, like I said, it is a useful one for sure. I’mnot saying we should STOP using this concept, I’m just saying that we need to be awarethat it’s not hard reality. But if we hypothetically did away with it? Then the entire ideas of“veganism” and “meat eating” would also be gone. Because, what even IS “meat eating”when you can’t define what meat is? Is meat the dead body of an animal? What is ananimal? Why is the dead body of a plant, then? Cellulose meat? If we go strictly by factsand not human categorizations, then everything we see around us, the entire universe, isjust a bunch of molecules. Some of those are gathered up in a fashion that create what wecall “animals”, some of it as “plants”. But those are both species, reliant on more humanconstructs. Remove the philosophically arbitrary separations between animals and plants,and you no longer have a “vegan” ideal to live up to.

It seems that a lot of people only manage to stay meat eaters because they don’tthink about the death, gore and suffering involved in meat production. Do you talk toother meat eaters about meat eating? If so, does your perspective on it ever disturbthem? Are there any vegan arguments that you would throw at them?

I do think that most meat eaters, especially in first world countries, would stop eatingmeat if they were more in touch with how they get it. I find it almost infuriating when mymeat eater friends say hunting is cruel and don’t see supermarket meat as an actual deadbody of an animal but just another “product” that they buy – neatly packaged, cleaned ofall the blood and the nastiness, up to your hygienic standards. Even the meat itself theyeat is the “nice” stuff. People rarely eat organ meats anymore. It’s all just white, clean,bloodless chicken breasts and tuna. Nice, clean muscle fibers and vibrant colors. Comparethat to bone marrow, heart, brains etc. Even I’m squeamish about eating some of thatstuff, and I’m not a very squeamish guy. Compare ripping open supermarket plastic toripping open the dying body of an animal. I bet most people couldn’t do it.

Is this a sign that humans weren’t designed to eat meat? I don’t think so. I think it’smostly just a sign that we’re living too protected lives nowadays. Even a house cat will behesitant when you present it with a live mouse. I remember when I had a cat who had livedhis entire life feeding on packaged cat food, and when he saw prey of any kind, he maybetoyed with it a bit but he rarely killed it, let alone eat it. And a cat is supposed to be likethe epitome of predatory viciousness.

In any case, what we were “designed to be” doesn’t matter one iota. We weren’t “designed”for a lot of things. But the thing about humanity is that we’ve pretty much broken freefrom nature to an extent where we can now decide how we live and how we eat, and we’re

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progressively becoming more free as we gain understanding and control of the universearound us. What nature dictates has no bearing on us, at least on the subject of food.

But yeah, meat IS murder. If you’re a meat eater and you’re not okay with that, then yougotta either be okay with being a hypocrite, redefine your sense of “murder”, or stopeating meat. I think most people fall into that second category; they simply don’t careabout animals, or they’re aware of how they get their meat but choose to create a selectivemental blind spot there to be okay with it. I can’t really blame them. We have so much shitwe deal with every day, people don’t want the added stress of having to think about theethics of what they eat. That’s why I pointed out that you tend to see this stuff more infirst world countries. People starving in Africa don’t care about the global moralimplications of what they feed their kids to make their ribcage less visible on their torso;but us bored well-off folks sitting under our anti-bacterially filtered ion-enhanced a/cunits with an electrical blanket to keep us from getting too cold behind a computer screenwaiting for a new facebook notification to pop up to entertain us, we tend to wonderwhether meat is murder or not. That’s not something wrong about us specifically though.Put the starving man in Africa in our position and in a few years he’ll be doing the same,and put us in his position and the morals of meat eating will quickly become lessimportant as we hear our stomachs grumble. I know many vegans who say they’d ratherstarve than eat meat; I could respect that view if only I just once actually saw them makethat choice.

What does it mean for a meat eater to be okay with meat being murder? Does thisrequire devaluing human life too?

I don’t kid myself. One thing I did retain from veganism has been the realization that themeat we eat is, undeniably, the dead body of an animal. We killed the animal to consumethat meat. For me personally, I feel better to acknowledge that and make an informeddecision, rather than just see the supermarket product of meat, that distanced product,that idea of meat. But once I allow myself to accept the realization, I’m not bothered bythe rest of it. Yes, the meat I eat is the result of an animal’s death. The animal had aconsciousness, and I killed it. I consider that murder. It’s merely accepting a fact ratherthan trying to avoid it.

The value thing is subjective. If you could ask an animal, I think all of them would say thatfrom their subjective view, their lives are at least as important as any human on theplanet, if not more. What they think doesn’t matter though, what matters is what each ofus thinks. Personally, I roll with the good old individuality here. Just because I decide I carelittle enough about one animal to kill it, doesn’t mean I have to feel that way about therest of the species, or about other species. It’s just like how it is with humans. There aresome humans I love dearly, and other humans I wish would just die. That doesn’t makeme a hypocrite, it just means that I deal with creatures individually. I don’t have a right tokill the human I don’t care for, because he’s still part of my society, and I have empathytowards him. Right now, cows aren’t part of our society, and vegans want them to be.That’s the whole issue here. Meat eaters want to keep considering animals “the others”,and vegans do not.

Practically it makes no difference. But that’s why devaluing animal life doesn’t necessarilyrequire devaluing human life. Because we choose not to. It’s not a logical inconsistency,when you realize that you CAN choose to act on an individual or group basis. It’s notillogical, just possibly unethical. And that’s what the vegan argument should stick to. Mypoint is that something rational and objective like logic cannot be a point in an argumentlike this that’s really all about emotions and morals. There’s no “right” or “wrong” in logic,only “true” and “false”. You can’t start with society’s drive for human preservation andthen “logically take the next step” and extend it towards how bad animal suffering is.

You’re in favor of reducing suffering, but allow your personal desires for freedom toultimately trump the interests of other animals when there’s a conflict between thetwo. Some utilitarians might say that selfishness of this sort is arbitrary, sincethere’s no reason to think of your own life and suffering as more important than thelives and suffering of other animals. Why care more about yourself than animals?Simply because you’re you and you can?

Exactly. The same reason we don’t directly apply the objective facts of the universe to ourdaily lives, we also don’t just submit our own life to simply be subject to the checks andbalances of existence. What we understand and what we do can APPEAR to be twodifferent things, but not if you see the whole picture. The key is to realize the differencebetween objective and subjective understanding. We talk objectively when discussingsocial issues, because society is comprised of many individuals, so we cannot depend onsubjectivity. Subjectivity is only a valid way of thinking for issues only concerning oneindividual. Objectively, I can understand that ethics exist only in each individual’s mind,that categorizations are human constructs, that there’s no such thing as justice or rights.At the same time, I can acknowledge that I am me, that I consider myself belonging to agroup of other individuals categorizing ourselves as “humans”, that we form a society,that the society operates within certain established rules. So why do I care about myself orhumanis in general more than other animals? Because I am me, so of course I will have abias. Animals are not part of human society. My subjective consciousness is what rules myactions. Recognizing that I am me, I can do the things I can do.

So in human terms, of course we care about animals. But they will have to come second.We want to help them, we want to reduce their suffering – but not at the expense ofhumans. Those of us who disagree and see humans and animals having the same value

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are vegans!

If you had the possibility of being born into a vegan world or a non-vegan one, anddidn’t know what sort of lifeform you would be, would you vote for a vegan or for anon-vegan human society?

A vegan society of course! No need to overthink that one. With all the different species inthe world, what are the chances of me ever being born human? Very little. Any speciesother than humans is going to prefer a vegan world. And the benefit for choosing a non-vegan world for the off chance of being born a human is slim compared to the danger ofbeing born anything other than human in a vegan world. I wouldn’t risk that gamble. Andsure, you’d look at that and say, “Well there you go then, you’ve just said the benefit youget from meat eating is very small compared to cost animals pay for you to get that littlebenefit. If you realize this and still choose meat eating, you’re just, to put it simply,selfish.”

But these kinds of “what if?” questions rarely represent how the real world actually works.Actually, we DON’T have a sense of being anything other than a human, we don’t havethat objective approach to making such choices. You were born a human, so that’s all youare, all you were, and all you’ll ever be. All that matters once you’re born is yoursubjective perception of things. I think this whole “what if you were something else” ideais just a remnant of the old idea of “spirit” or “soul”. It implies that the “you” that youidentify as yourself is something separate from the body it’s in. When actually it’s amanifestation of the body that IT IS. I happen to be a subjective perception that has asense of myself because of a particular arrangement of molecules formed a brain and nowthe tissues they formed create a sense of self within them.

It’s not like “I” happened to inhabit a human body. Rather it’s the other way around; thehuman body gave birth to the sense of “I”. Without this body, “I” wouldn’t be assigned tothe role of something else. I wouldn’t be a cow. I simply wouldn’t be. It would be adifferent “I”. Existence does not function via eeny meeny miny moe.

A few answers back, you said, “Meat eaters want to keep considering animals ‘theothers’, and vegans do not.” Why should we – in contrast to vegans – want to keepnon-humans out of our in group?

I’m not sure that we’d want to keep them out. Like I said, if we had the option, I thinkwe’d all prefer not hurting animals, to be one with them, to be “earthlings” – one bighappy family, a perfect reflection of an entire generation brought up on advertisements.But there are complications in the real world. For instance, animals cannot understand therights of others, nor can they understand their own. How will that work?

If a dog comes into my house and he’s trespassing and I shoot him, what will society’sstance be on that? I’m sorry, but things just aren’t so simple, as much as I wish they were.These are the kinds of questions that inevitably come up, because as much as wephilosophize and we think that everything must be determinable with clear-cut solutionsif only we had enough debate, or education, or whatever you want to say, the fact remainsthat we’re trying to fit something chatoic and uncaring like nature into rigid structuressuch as laws and these kinda big public opinions. Throughout history, humans justintuitively knew “beasts” were to be controlled, fought against, or used. Much of ourmodern lifestyle is built on values and ideologies that, while nice, sometimes don’t fit withnature. This doesn’t mean that we should throw them away. It means that we’resometimes going to have to fight nature to uphold these values. I’m all for that, but it willrequire effort.

When we ask questions like “how can we still keep eating meat in the face of rising socialawareness towards the ethical invalidity of meat eating”, it’s obvious that we on some levelacknowledge that meat eating may not be a perfect practice. Again I think the bestsolution would be the perfection of lab-made meat. As long as it’s healthy, cheap, andperhaps even healthier and cheaper than conventional meat, really the only valid objectionanyone could have would be regarding personal freedoms. Someone could say, “animalsaren’t part of human society and I want my right to be able to hunt animal meat”, andright now, until we find better answers, I could respect that opinion.

Animals simply do not fit in well into human society, for the same reasons they didn’t fitin the past millions of years. But with technology and culture comes change. And it is inthis change that we can hopefully create a new kind of social structure where we can bothnot harm animals, and not suffer for it ourselves. But it’s going to take ingenuity, effort,and cultural shift. It won’t happen overnight, and perhaps humanity will just end updeciding it’s not worth all the effort.

Some vegans or quasi vegans are okay with eating non-sentient animals like oysters.This follows the same ethical logic of veganism, but offers more options. Are youmore sympathetic with this sort of veganism than the zero animal product sort?

I’m sympathetic to both equally. They both start off with good intentions. To not hurtsentient beings. That’s admirable, even when it’s a bit uninformed. I’d certainly prefereating some non-sentient animals if I were a vegan.

The only thing that truly matters in the entire veganism debate is the concept of“sentience”. The only real problem with meat eating is the sense of pain we inflict on theconsciousness of the animals we kill. Without sentience, anything that ever happens in theuniverse is just good ol’ molecules changing arrangement. Sentience is what makes theact of killing an animal a questionable thing rather than just a mechanical act. Cutting a

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tree is a mechanical act. Peeling an orange is a mechanical act. Cutting horse’s head off ismore.

This however brings up another question: If sentience is what makes an act “morallyquestionable”, then what if we could remove sentience before it has a chance to registerthe removal?

Since all we have is our perception of existence, if the only bad part of killing a cow is thepain we inflict on the cow’s perception, then what if we could do it so fast, so instantlythat it never even has a chance to register? Then the consciousness is removed instantly,and from the cow’s subjective standpoint, which is the only one that matters to the cow, itwould be like it never existed. There is no lingering suffering. There are no afterthoughts.It just was, and now it isn’t, and it won’t be around to feel bad about it. We have thetechnology to be able to do this. To kill animals instantly, to shock the brain into notregistering the perception. That’s what I currently advocate doing, until we canmanufacture meat in labs that’s on par with the real thing. And when you look at history,you’ll find that a lot of tribes did try doing this to the extent that they could. I think veryfew people would actually PREFER to inflict pain unnecessarily. Ironically, that’s exactlywhat a lot of the animals we’re obsessed with trying to protect have no problem with.

As uncool as it sounds, face it, the stinky humans that everyone loves to talk shit aboutnowadays are the only ones who actually have moral codes. We only seem moredestructive and cruel than other animals because we have more power. So any moralchoice we make is magnified in its effects. When we decide to destroy, we can really fuckshit up. But when we decide to build, we can also turn pain and starvation into ease andabundance. People always say animals would never do things like holocausts and torture,but let’s not forget that humans are nothing more than just another species of animal. Iflions were in power, would THEY even consider having these arguments about whetherthey should eat weaker species? The problem is that folks look at the damage anddestruction some humans cause and then label the entirety of humanity evil, when in factMOST people are actually quite nice and don’t want to hurt anyone or anything needlessly.

I’m on team human. Go humans!

In some ways veganism is forward looking, in that a lot of vegans are in favor oftechnologies that could replace animal husbandry by creating meat from non-sentient material. But animal rights philosophy still is in essence a restriction,something to rein in human freedom. Could you see animal rights philosophy beinga problem for technological and human progress in some ways? Could it end upclashing with transhumanism and futurism and this sort of thing down the line? Andcould it be worth worrying about animal rights philosophy now for that reason?

Absolutely. For instance, animal testing. People have no idea how useful it is to be able totest drugs and such things on animals. It is useful, and it is painful. Again, I don’t want tobe running away from the truth. It’s a painful truth, and this is one of the burdens ofhumanity: To know what we need to do, and to know what we must do. I don’t wantanimals to be hurt, but if someone I loved had a terminal illness and I had to kill a millioncute pink bunnies to get to the cure, I would do it with my bare hands without batting aneye. One thing I aimed to focus on in this interview is that things are not always as clear-cut as we’d like them to be. And this is just another one of those points where we’ll allhave differing value judgements. I personally think that we need to take care of humansbefore we turn to animals, but it doesn’t mean that we’re doomed to choose between oneor the other. I think the ultimate would be a situation where maybe we could simulate lifeand run our tests there.

The issue is one of sentience and structure. And in existence, there is always a way. Theuniverse is such that any structure can be created, you just need to find a way. Animaltesting will not always be the only way to test substances. Perhaps some day we’ll be ableto simulate structures and creatures at the molecular level, and just run all sorts of testsin those computer generated environments just as effectively, without hurting a singlesentient thing. In theory, it seems possible, so who knows.

The point is that the world simply isn’t at that place yet. As our technology, informationand education increase, so will prosperity, peace, and understanding. I believe that we willleave animals alone as soon as we get the chance. Because honestly, I don’t thinkhumanity is doing it just to be cruel. We test drugs on animals because we need theresults. We eat them because we need their meat. But it doesn’t mean we’re not open toalternatives. Give humans a pain-free way to get the same meat, and the majority willwant to switch to that and end the needless suffering.

See, this is what I mean when I say that the majority of the world is already in the veganmindset. The majority of us DO have empathy towards animals. And I know this is hard forvegans to see, but if you’re a vegan reading this, think back to when you weren’t vegan.Were you walking around and kicking dogs in the face for no reason all day? Were youmean to animals all the time just because you ate meat? Of course not, and neither are themajority of the meat eaters you see out there. We care, we do love animals. Every meateater I know, when they have seen cows, either pet them, joke around with them, or atleast say, “hey cow!”. Most people, if they saw a cow in pain, would feel for it and try tohelp. But right now, we are able to live with the fact that we both empathize with animalsand also end their lives and eat them. It’s not something we love, it’s not something wedon’t think we can improve, but it is what it is. And I think we ARE looking for a change.But the world isn’t changed by taking things away from people. It’s changed by giving

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people better alternatives.

Things like lab-made meat, algae products, simulated scientific experiments – these arethose alternatives. But we need to arrive at those points in development to be able toenjoy their benefits. The problem with a lot of forward-thinking people, including mostvegans, is that they get disturbed – and understandably so – at the gap between what theyknow is possible, and what they live in right now. We don’t have worldwide respect foranimal life yet, because we’re just not at that stage of human development yet. We don’thave 100 percent green technology everywhere, because it simply hasn’t become the bestchoice yet, in a general sense. But they will come. Respect for animal life WILL grow, butyou can’t expect that awareness to jump out of nowhere. We need to accomplish somemilestones so change can become commonplace. Once we can have lab-made or 3D-printed meat that’s exactly the same as the real thing, but only cheaper, how many morepeople will never want to kill animals to eat meat again? That would have a better veganconversion rate than all the overblown factory farming videos combined!

So the future you dream of IS coming. It will be good. But it will not come out of nowhere.It will not come out of people’s love and understanding. It will not come out of smokingjoints and dreadlocks in your hair. It will come out of hard science and efficient, usefultechnology. So if you truly care about animals, if you truly want to help them no matterwhat, then help create better alternatives for people. That 3D printed meat is going tosave a million times more animals than any stupid PETA ad. The people who are vegans by“not consuming animal products” don’t change anything. It’s good that they don’tcontradict their ethics with their lifestyle, I can respect that, but they don’t changeanything significant in the world by doing it. If you just want to be a vegan for yourself,then, to be honest, I think you’re just doing it to feel morally at ease. If you’re doing itbecause you honestly, truly care about saving the lives of animals, then you need to bemore active.

And as a meat eater, I think the world of tomorrow needs you to be active. But in the rightway. Don’t try to take people’s choices from them. That’s not going to work, and even if itdoes, I will fight you if you do that, because you’d be opposing freedom. Instead, givepeople MORE choices, BETTER choices. The world WANTS that. The world is READY forthat. Let’s all work on developing alternatives that are just as good, if not BETTER than thecurrent choices.

What haven’t I brought up that I should have?

I think these kinds of discussions usually forget to bring up two things: Some civil andintelligent dialogue and unification between vegans and meat eaters, and, some practicalideas on what we can do with our newly discussed issues.

First, the unification thing. Because, come on, let’s get the cutesy stuff out of the way. Iknow everyone wants to fight and chew on each other’s intellectual gristle.

But if someone’s reading sites like yours, be they vegan, vegetarian, meatatarian, orwhatever they put in their faces, they probably care. I know vegans want to point fingersat the meat eaters and say they’re ignorant – and most of them are! – and the meat eaterswant to call vegans dirt worshipping hippies – and some of them are! – the fact is thatprobably those who read discussions on these issues rather than just spamming simple-minded propaganda on facebook, and instead arguing about ethics, social issues, rights,the very definition of species and the like, are part of the solution. If you’re one of thevegans or meat eaters who are currently reading this and thinking about such issues, thenwhat the hell, RELAX! The people you’re arguing with are probably very similar to you! Theguy who pissed you off on some internet forum because you disagreed with him on howpets should be defined legally is probably someone you’d really enjoy hanging out with inreal life! Seriously, I’ve had stuff like this happen to me, that’s why I know!

If we’re gonna get anywhere with this whole thing, without half-witted politicians andspecial interest groups who don’t know what the hell they’re on about making thedecisions for us, we gotta put our damn heads together and figure something out. Wegotta get some friendly dialogue instead of all these “vegan haven” and “meat haven”websites and meetups and all this shit where we just ban the opposing view and stay inour closed little comfort zone. Stay in an intellectually closed loop and you’ll neverchallenge your ideas. That’s not a smart, confident thing to do.

So the person you’re arguing with, unless their screen name is“Sunshine_Peacegoddess139” or “xXx_BaldEagleWarHero_xXx,” they’re probably a decenthuman being, like you. Be open to the possibility that they may not be a stereotypicalredneck barbecue dude shooting shotguns into the air or a crystal chakra lady with veinson her neck. Perhaps they’re just normal people. Be nice to them, try to understand them,and even befriend them. You may find much to learn. I myself am certainly open tomeeting all kinds of new people, hearing new ideas, first hand experiences, and mostimportantly, ideas about what we can do.

Which brings me to the second point: We talk about all this, but what can we do? All thediscussion in the world won’t do us any good if we just use it to sit back and eat our dietof choice in peace for ourselves. We gotta discuss, agree, and take action on these issues.

I think one thing each of us can do is first of all really get to know our personal sense ofvalues intimately. Do you care for hunting or do you think we’re ready to move past that?Where do you think animals should stand in society? What do you think about the conceptof species? Do you have any problems with killing and eating an animal? Don’t let

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propaganda decide these things for you, decide for yourself. Ask yourself these questions.

Then, we can see if there are others who think like us. For instance, I support the idea ofchoosing 3D printed meat that’s virtually the same as the real thing over animal meat. So Ican find various ways I can support 3D printing. Just something simple as letting myfriends know about these brilliant new technologies is something. I can donate to science,study, offer opinions, bring people together to work on these issues.

I don’t like what factory farms are doing, so I can decide not to buy any of their products. Ican spread awareness.

On the other hand, I don’t like it when laws and governments get involved in upholdingpeople’s ideals, so I wouldn’t be taking any actions to get legislation or anythingregarding any of these issues. I’d much rather just inform and let everyone make theirown decisions.

So we should do more real-world, human-to-human, heart to heart TALKING. Let’s talkabout these things, understand what everyone wants, let’s not consider our own idealssuperior to those of others. For a while, let us all consider ourselves an ignorant pupil, andthe people we’re talking to wise teachers – because they are. If someone’s arguing withyou and trying to get you to understand their point of view – be they right or wrong – thesimple fact that they’re trying to make you understand, rather than just ignoring you andyour conflicting views and just going their own way anyways, shows that they’re probablya person worth talking to.

Humanity will be facing difficult questions as technology changes more and more how weexist, and what it means to exist as we do. The answers won’t always be clear cut – theyrarely are. The worthwhile answers are usually difficult to come up with, but hey, I guessthat’s why we’re all here, huh?

There have been rumors for a while that animal liberator Rod Coronado was no longerabstaining from animal products, which he recently confirmed — thereby inspiring someheated and insightful discussion on vegan blogs and message boards. These first threelinks are to posts that are at least partially about that controversy:

“Is There No Room for Rod Coronado in the Animal Rights Movement? The Problem WithVeganism as the Moral Baseline" by Ian Erik Smith.

“Should a Meat-Eater Advocate For a Vegan Society?" by Jon Hochschartner. (You have toscroll down a little bit to find it.)

“Veganism in the Occupied Territories: Anti-Colonialism and Animal Liberation" by DylanPowell.

Lindsay Gasik’s ”When Durian Isn’t Vegan, and What Every Animal Loving Durian FreakShould Know" looks at all the animal killing involved in harvesting durian. If eating fruit ismurder, should vegans develop a new ethic that prohibits animal exploitation but allowsanimal murder? Or should they simply be more demanding with additional restrictions andimproved technology until they figure out how to end the competition for resourcesbetween humans and other animals? Or something else? (via Pythagorean Crank).

Jon Hochschartner’s ”What Can Animal Activists Learn from the Free Produce Movement?"casts doubt on the vegan abolitionist belief that abstaining from animal products is a vitalor perhaps even worthwhile step in the abolition of animal exploitation by looking at thehistorical "free produce movement" that tried to attack human slavery through a boycottof slavery produced materials. (via Pythagorean Crank).

This is a little different, but the newly vegetarian pig farmer Bob Comis has been writingsome interesting stuff at The Dodo about his transition from pig farmer to vegetablefarmer. “My Heart-Wrenching Transition From Pig Slaughter To Growing Vegetables" is agood place to start.

Late last year, there were a couple of popular articles looking at the surprisingly intricateways that plants interact with their environments, Michael Pollan’s “The Intelligent Plant”and Kat McGowan’s “The Secret Language of Plants.” More recent (and brief) was BeckyFerreira’s “Plants Are Capable of Making Complex Decisions.” None of these articles claimthat plants certainly feel pain or have conscious “interests,” but they all suggest there isstill far more to plants than we realize.

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20 notes April 1, 2014 12 59 PM

Questioning The Efficacy and Desirability of Veganismas Boycott and “Moral Baseline” (Links)

2 Comments

4 notes March 10, 2014 3 45 PM

What Would Plant Sentience Mean for Vegan Ethics?

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Some people interested in food ethics (or at least the food ethics debate) think that ifscience declared plants to have a form of sentience, this would complicate things forvegans without much inconveniencing omnivores. “What about plants?” is a question thatmeat eaters often throw at vegans in this spirit, as if the fact that plants are alive meansit’s silly to consider the interests of the animals we eat. Vegans break down the categoriesseparating humans from other animals in a way that makes meat eaters uncomfortable, soin revenge meat eaters break down the categories separating non-human animals fromplants to try to make vegans feel the same kind of discomfort. It’s a shot at beatingvegans at their own game.

Essentially, “what about plants?” attempts to discredit sentience as a guide to our ethicaldecisions by implying that if we respect all sentient creatures, everything we do isunethical. The problem is that the “what about plants?” argument typically equivocatesbetween “sentient” and “alive/responsive” and offers no real proof that plants are sentient.

The animal farmer Joel Salatin was a case in point during last year’s Intelligence Squareddebate about the ethics of eating animals:

And, you know, I find it fascinating that all of the attributes given to animals plants havetoo. The DNA structure of grasses, for example, when you introduce a species, itnativizes its DNA structure to become more climatically nativized to a certain place.That’s memory. That’s genetic memory and adaptation to a certain place. If that isn’tresponding to things, I don’t know what is. And I just absolutely don’t appreciate thisfalse dichotomy that when I take the life of a carrot, the carrot doesn’t scream.

This is about as weak as the “what about plants?” argument gets because it utterly fails toanticipate the vegan response that plants don’t feel pain and don’t have consciousinterests. With no reference to sentience, Salatin is taking for granted that geneticsophistication is significant in itself, but makes no allowances for degrees of geneticsophistication and so is essentially saying, “Anything that’s alive is all the same.”

Meat eaters who use this argument are typically attacking vegans on two contradictoryfronts. On the one hand they say that humans and animals are different, and thesedifferences explain why meat eating is okay. Then with “what about plants?” they do theopposite, linking all of creation together — “All-One!” as Dr. Bronner would say.Unfortunately, by dismissing the distinction between killing plants and killing non-humananimals for food by linking them together through aliveness, they also erase thedistinction between killing plants and killing humans.

If you think that “what about plants?” means there is no difference between exploitinganimals and plants for food, then you’d have to say the same about exploiting humans forfood, because you’re denying that there are different levels of aliveness, or at leastdenying that these different levels could justify different treatments or considerations. Toturn around and admit that there’s a difference between killing plants and killing humansin light of this is to grant that there could also be a difference between killing plants andkilling non-human animals. The whole argument just renders itself moot.

But let’s pretend for a moment that “What about plants?” is really onto something. Whatwould it mean for food ethics if it turned out that plants do in fact have a form ofsentience that was comparable to the sentience of some animals?

This probably wouldn’t be a huge issue for meat eaters, who don’t tend to care muchabout sentience per se when they’re deciding what to eat. The sentience of non-humananimals didn’t stop them, so why would the sentience of plants give them pause?Conscientious omnivores might want assurance that any sentient plants they eat weretreated well, given a natural diet of sunlight, fresh water and organic manure, and werekilled quickly and painlessly, but there would be no qualms about the killing of plants initself. For vegans it would have potential to be more of a problem because plants wouldsuddenly fit the bill of what they consider to be unethical to eat. Never eating again wouldbe one possible solution, but probably not one most vegans would want to embrace.

Another option would be for vegans to confess to having a more emotional form of ethicsthan they sometimes let on, admitting that it’s not violating interests that’s the problem,but violating interests in a more blatant and viscerally disturbing way. Even if plants were

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sentient, it still wouldn’t look horrific to pull them out of the ground; in comparison,shooting a bolt through a cow’s brain looks pretty gruesome. Vegans could say that’s thekey — not that one violates interests and one doesn’t (plant sentience makes thatdichotomy impossible), but that one violates interests in a manner that is moreemotionally upsetting to vegans. Even if animals were unfeeling automatons (whichobviously isn’t the case) there could still be a quasi ethical argument for veganism, whichwould be that the aesthetics of animal exploitation and slaughter disturbed a lot ofpeople, or that animal slaughter is a dangerous and desensitizing job for humans becauseof the visual similarity between killing humans and non-human animals.

But this would be a major compromise for any vegans who like to think they argue mostlyfrom logic, so I don’t think many vegans would settle for it.

The stock vegan response to the possibility of plant sentience is to appeal to sufferingreduction: “Well, vegans kill fewer plants than omnivores anyway because the animals youeat were fed plants.” But that’s only true when we eat farmed animals. Someone who eatsonly animals that they hunt is seemingly responsible for fewer plant deaths than vegans,especially if they hunt herbivores. So if plants were sentient and had lives worth living, ahunting-based carnivorous diet would perhaps be the most ethical until we ran out ofnon-human herbivores to kill. At that point, humans with vegan ethics would again be inthe position of having to think of their very lives as inherently unethical, coming as theydo at the expense of sentient plants. In-vitro meat would no longer be enough. In a worldwith sentient plants, vegans would need to develop in-vitro vegetables: lab-culturedplant-like foods, made from non-sentient material.

But this assumes no gradations of sentience and interests. Even if plants were sentient,would this automatically require that vegans try to grant them the same ethicalconsideration that they want to grant pigs or whales? That depends on the vegan: someacknowledge degrees of sentience and some don’t. In the former group is vegan RD JackNorris, who sometimes encourages non-vegans to eat insects:

A move from people eating mammals and birds to crickets is something I can getbehind. … I follow this hierarchy of valuing animal lives differently in my everydayactions. For example, if I were to see an injured dog, raccoon, or bird on the side of theroad, I would stop and try to get the animal to a veterinarian. I will not do this for injuredinsects. In fact, if I thought insects’ lives were as valuable as mammals, I wouldn’t driveat all because it’s inevitable that I will kill insects with my car just about any time I drive(at least during warmer months). If I knew that I would kill a mouse or a chicken everytime I drove my car, I wouldn’t do it. …

From a scientific perspective, I think there is evidence that insects do not have enoughbrain tissue to assume that they have a self-identity and can be aware of suffering. Imight be wrong about this and if so, I definitely need to reconsider my driving habits…[W]hen it comes between a mammal and an insect, I’d side with the creatures that wehave a large amount of proof for being conscious.

A veganism that allows this more permissive attitude about eating insects and brainlesssea animals would basically be immune from the additional challenges that sentient plantswould pose for the philosophy, so this would probably become a more popular stance inthe wake of a plant sentience bombshell. If you accept degrees of sentience, it becomesplausible to see a difference between exploiting brainless sentient plants and sentientpigs. Where you draw the line becomes somewhat more arbitrary, perhaps, and youcouldn’t exclude all animal products from veganism any more, but you could still make acase for protecting farm animals without extending the same consideration to farm plants.The more difficult issue for these vegans, I think, would still be all the wild animals that avegan world would routinely harm and kill.

The sentience of plants would however pose a special difficulty for the deontologicalbreed of vegan ethics in that it would become all the more ludicrous to appeal to “intent”and to play up the ethical differences between the accidental or indirect killing of sentientbeings versus the intentional and purposeful killing of sentient beings. By eating sentientplants, vegans would be intentionally killing sentient beings for food, so the idea of theirgranting rights based on sentience would be in shambles. “Hey, we have to eatsomething!” would be the argument of last resort, which immediately fails because no, wetechnically do not. There is no obligation for humanity to survive, and so if we go on whileknowing that we must violate the interests of non-human sentient beings to do so (bothplants and animals in this hypothetical), we can’t plausibly claim to be respecting therights of non-humans.

That’s why I think another significant change would be a greater shift away fromdeontological arguments for animal rights toward the utilitarian and utilitarian-esquesuffering reduction perspective. (Or maybe eco feminism, or other alternatives likeobfuscating continental-style philosophizing.) What distinguishes vegans from omnivoresin this scenario is a goal of hurting others less, so it could make ethical sense to eatplants, insects and bivalves — even assuming all are sentient — if this causes less harmthan eating farmed animals.

Where this would get really complicated is with utilitarian perspectives that are veryconcerned with suffering on the aggregate. Here we find utilitarians who think that insectsuffering might be one of the world’s most pressing concerns, because there are so manyof them and they reproduce and die so quickly, which means that their experiencing eventiny amounts of harm on an individual level adds up to vast amounts of suffering.

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Utilitarian philosopher Brian Tomasik discussed this in my interview with him. If plantswere as sentient as insects, and if we decided to aggregate plant suffering too, it would nolonger be so clear that plants and insects were the right things to eat. (Perhaps it would bebetter to try to make plants go extinct and to eat larger beings like whales, for instance.)

Plus with all this extra suffering to contemplate, life could be seen as an inexcusablenightmare, an unfathomable sea of suffering that can’t dry up soon enough. This couldmake vegans feel more of a need to align with radical negative utilitarianism, perhapslobbying for the end of all life. Or it could inspire vegans to stick with a vague utilitarian-esque approach of wanting to reduce suffering, but without aggregating that suffering, soas to avoid thinking too much of all the suffering there is in the world. That would be fine,but it still wouldn’t allow vegans to convincingly propose many solid rules about what wasokay to eat.

So basically, vegans should really hope that we never figure out that plants are sentient.This doesn’t mean that impressive new discoveries of plant intelligence are anything formeat eaters to celebrate. If plants are far more brilliant and sophisticated than they seem,might not the same be true for non-human animals?

"Farm Confessional: I Raise Livestock and I Think It

Might Be Wrong" at Modern Farmer

Earlier this year, I came across the writings of Bob Comis, a farmer in New York who hasincreasingly questioned the ethics of sending the animals he raises for food to slaughter. Ithought his perspective was interesting, so I interviewed him. Modern Farmer had me putthe interview together in a questionless interview format. The link is in the headline.

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6 notes February 6, 2014 11 50 AM

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