Five Reasons Why Meat-Eating Cannot Be Considered a ‘Personal Choice’

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Five Reasons Why Meat-Eating Cannot Be

Considered a Personal Choice

Of all the convoluted rationalizations for eating meat in an age when eating meat is not at allnecessary for our survival or health, many people today are borrowing a popular slogan I like to callthe personal choice self- deception. It goes something like this: My decision to eat meat is a

personal choice. And it is usually followed by a statement sympathetic to their vegan andvegetarian friends, acknowledging that they too are making personal choices that are rightfor them.Sounds great on the surface, but its what lurks beneath the surface that I find deeply disturbing forfive key reasons.

1. Eating is a communal, multi-cultural

activity until the vegan sits down at the tableFirst, lets take a closer look at whatpersonalmeans in the context of the highly social humanactivity of eating. Personal food choices had never been discussed at the dinner table until agrowing number of vegans and vegetarians by their very presence at the table question thelegitimacy of eating animals. A person who tells you that their meat eating is a personal choice isreally telling you stay away. They dont want you to question their highly-coveted moral beliefs

or perhaps they object to exposing their unexamined moral quandary over how one can justify usingand killing animals for food in an age when it is completely unnecessary. In other words, they havemade this issuepersonalprecisely in response to you making it public.


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2. There is no free choice without awarenessThe irony is that while meat eaters defend their choice to eat meat as apersonalone, they willnonetheless go to great lengths to defend it publicly when confronted with a vegan or vegetarian.Like some apologetic white liberals who defend themselves by defiantly exclaiming to a new blackacquaintance, But I have black friends too!, some meat eaters will painstakingly explain how

intimately they understand veganism after all, they have already heard and evaluated the veganfriends reasons for going vegan and they deeply respect those reasons.

Theyve carefully considered being vegan themselves, they will assure you, and have concludedthat its just not for them. But instead of arriving at some novel new understanding of why humansshould eat meat, they simply revert back to the traditional arguments that are all pretty muchcentered around what social psychologist Melanie Joy calls the three Ns of justification: eatingmeat is normal, natural and necessary. (1) But their reasoning reveals the fact that they have sorelyoverlooked the big idea behind veganism which author Jenny Brown points out so eloquently in her

bookThe Lucky Ones: We can become prisoners of our earliest indoctrinations or we can choose tolook critically at our assumptions and align our lives with our values. Choosing to live vegan is how

were able to do that best. (2)

3. The choice has a victim and the victim is

completely ignoredLets take a look at the issue from the animal victims perspective, which has been completelydenied by the meat eaters unexamined assumption that animals have no interest or understandingof the value of their individual lives. Does the animal who is being bred, raised and slaughtered forsomeones food care if the person who is eating meat has given the prospect of becoming vegan any

serious moral consideration? Of course not.

The notion that these conscious meat eaters think they have done their due diligence by examiningthe pros and cons of eating animals means nothing for those that value their lives as we do. The factis the animals we raise for meat have at least as much of an interest in staying alive, avoiding painand suffering and seeking pleasure as these meat eaters pets. As activist Twyla Francois so aptly

puts it: All animals have the same capacity for suffering, but how we see them differs and thatdetermines what well tolerate happening to them. In the western world, we feel it wrong to tortureand eat cats and dogs, but perfectly acceptable to do the same to animals equally as sentient andcapable of suffering. No being who prides himself on rationality can continue to support such

behaviour.

4. Many personal choices we make have dire

consequence for ourselves and othersNow lets take a closer look at the meaning of choice itself. The act of making a choice implies thatthe actor has free will and awareness of the options and their consequences. In the spirit of justice,we live in a society where our actions and choices are governed by what society deems acceptable.We can make a personal choice to maim, rape or kill someone, but these actions will haveconsequences that serve as a deterrent. It is generally accepted in a democratic society that we are

free to do what we want as long as it doesnt harm anyone else or infringe on the same rights andfreedoms of others.

Yet, for the meat eater, the choice of eating animals is completely disconnected from this concept of


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justice since justice does not, in their eyes, apply to other species, only to humans (howconvenient). In other words, there are no visible, negative consequences to eating meat. The victimsremain invisible and silent to those who eat them, and that is perhaps the greatest deception of all.

5. Atrocities are never personalIn reality, the choice to eat meat negates the very meaning of choice because the animal that

had to be killed to procure the meat had no choice in the matter at all. And the notion ofcharacterizing such a choice as apersonalone is even more problematic since the choice requiredthe taking of anothers life, not a personal sacrifice. Nothing could be more public than the taking ofa sentient life who cares about his own life, particularly when that act is neither necessary northerefore morally defensible.

When 60 billion land animals and another approximate 60 billion marine animals are killed everyyear across the planet for a single species personal food choices based on palate pleasure alone,eating meat ceases to be a matter of personal choice; (4) it becomes a social justice movement to

protect the rights of animals. To deny animals the right to live their lives according to their own

interests is wrong and to attempt to defend our choice to eat them as a personal one is delusional.

A Postscript: After reviewing a lot commentary on this post, I decided to publish a follow up piece,addressing many of the points raised in these comments.See Seven Reasons Why We Have NOTEvolved to Eat Meat. This may become a series where I continue to address the most commonreasons people use today for continuing to eat meat.

(1) Melanie Joy, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism, (SanFrancisco: Conari Press, 2010) 9698, 105122

(2) Jenny Brown, The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (London: ThePenguin Group, 2012) 204

(3) Twyla Francois is the Director of investigations, Mercy For Animals Canada

(4) This article does not intend to cover the human health and environmental impacts associatedwith meat eating, though these impacts are clearly enormous as well.

Related Articles:

1. When Food Choices Negate Free Choice

2. Meat Feeds More than Our Bodies. Meat Feeds Our Egos.3. Six Reasons Why the Natural Order Argument Does Not Justify Meat Eating4. Understanding Neocarnism: How Vegan Advocates Can Appreciate and Respond to Happy

Meat, Locavorism 5. The Matrix, the Red Pill, the Truth about Animals: We ve All Been Handed the Red Pill.

Who Will Swallow It?
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http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/

Six Reasons Why the Natural Order

Argument Does Not Justify Meat EatingBy Robert Grillo |August 25, 2012 | Categories: Food and Culture

A couple of weeks ago I began to explore the most common rationalizations I have found for eatinganimal products in articles that challenge these widely-held beliefs, ingrained in us since childhoodand still largely unexamined in our adult lives.

I respect the fact that some will claim that they have done a lot of soul searching to arrive at theirbeliefs. No doubt that they have. The problem is that theyve settled for what I call half-truths or

partial-truths or in some cases distortions that reveal a big blind spot an inability orunwillingness to step outside of their own speciesist bias and see how their food choices impactothers, rather than just themselves. And they often just stop searching and settle upon these beliefs,storing them away in some neat and tidy part of their consciousness, never to be revisited again.

In earlier articles I confronted two of these common beliefs:

1. The notion that eating meat is a personal choice. And in it, I laid out five reasons why I find thateating meat is actually the opposite of personal and is a negation of choice.

2. The notion that humans have somehow evolved to eat meat. And in it, I laid out seven reasonswhy I actually find the opposite to be true, that humans have evolved and in fact mustevolve awayfrom eating animals, if evolution indeed has any meaning at all.

In this post Im tackling a third widely held belief: the notion that human consumption ofanimals is adhering to a vaguely defined natural order or cycle of life simply because

predators exist in nature. The existence of these predators and the violence inherent in procuringtheir food is part of that natural order to which humans belong, it is often said. And our adherenceto this perception of the natural order somehow trumps any moral concern or obligation we have forothers.

The following are two comments I recently received that express this view:

I see the same animals that we are trying to protect eating each other as meat. No one calls thembarbarians. I think it is actually very natural to eat meat, but I just think we need to let animals

have a good life and not let them suffer at the end.Unfortunately, hawks eat chickens. Chickens will eat small frogs. Lions, foxes, fishes cats,weasels, hyenas all eat meat. Predators exist in mother nature. We can not change that no matterhow many of us choose to evolve away from eating meat.

And heres why I find the argument that our consumption of animals is justified by an adherence tothe natural order of things is deeply flawed on at least six levels.

1. Using the natural order argument can

justify anything we doI have heard important figures in most religions and many secular areas of study make the claim
http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/author/Robert/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-psychology/five-reasons-why-meat-eating-cannot-be-considered-a-personal-choice/http://freefromharm.org/animal-rights/seven-reasons-why-we-have-not-evolved-to-eat-meat/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/author/Robert/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/six-reasons-why-the-natural-order-argument-does-not-justify-meat-eating/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-psychology/five-reasons-why-meat-eating-cannot-be-considered-a-personal-choice/http://freefromharm.org/animal-rights/seven-reasons-why-we-have-not-evolved-to-eat-meat/


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that eating meat honors the natural order. But whose natural order? Which natural order exactly?And is it as simple as reducing it down to a world of prey and predator? Of course not. The naturalorder of the planet is so vast, so complex and still very much a mystery to us. It may simply be

beyond human understanding. But even if we do develop a complete understanding of the so-callednatural order, one could easily argue that allforms of killing, destruction and violence that occur inthe natural world serve as models for us and justify our complicity and participation in them as

well.For example, the fact that volcanoes and hurricanes exist could cause one to creatively rationalizethe use of man-made nuclear warfare. Or the fact that some species have been known to eat theiryoung could also justify why we might consider doing the same. Of course no one in their rightmind attempts to legitimatize these things based on some natural order. And therefore attempting touse the same rationalization to legitimatize meat-eating becomes equally absurd.

2. Humans are fundamentally different from

lions, tigers or bearsIt is illogical to compare humans with other animals who have little or no moral concern or capacityfor moral reasoning (as far as we know) or with carnivores who kill and eat other animals forsurvival. And even if we could compare ourselves to these other species, that comparison in itselfdoes not justify our choice to eat other animals. We are in no way obligated to live according to anyherd mentality. Quite the contrary. Being human means we can think for ourselves, express our freewill, and make executivedecisions based on a complex set of moral, emotional and rationalcircumstances. There are no chains that tie us to human supremacy over an increasingly woundedand bleeding living world, writes Jim Mason, author of the book,An Unnatural Order.

3. Hunters Cannot Pass for Natural PredatorsThe fact that predators kill and eat prey animals in nature does not actually mean that humans livingin a post-industrial, increasingly-urbanized environment with little or no direct contact with livingfarmed animals, should consider themselves natural predators. Buying a piece of meat or cheese orcarton of eggs off of the store shelf does not make one a natural predator. Nor is it logical to assumethat we could somehow reconnect with ourpredatory nature if we were to abandon modern life andreturn to a diet and lifestyle of our paleolithic ancestors. Nor does the argument that we just need toraise and kill our own food locally have anything to do with returning to some natural state of

predation.

The fact that our ancestors were masters at developing tools of violence and destruction againstother beings should in no way be a part of the human legacy that we celebrate. Humans who huntare not akin to animal. Hunting is the height of human cowardice, the act of terrorizing vulnerable

beings to satisfy our thirst for power and ego.

4. Moral Reasoning Is the Core of What

Makes Us HumanHuman beings are moral beings at their core, and morality guides all of our actions whether we

are conscious of it or not. (1) The fact that we are even reading, writing and discussing this issue forcenturies prove this point. Need more proof?
http://books.google.com/books/about/An_Unnatural_Order.html?id=7nTUkoLzSk0Chttp://books.google.com/books/about/An_Unnatural_Order.html?id=7nTUkoLzSk0Chttp://books.google.com/books/about/An_Unnatural_Order.html?id=7nTUkoLzSk0C


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Take a look at the photo here to the left. Before you read any further, take note of what yourimmediate reaction is. For many it will be disgust or pity or empathy. I hope that zebra didntsuffer too much!, one might say, or some variation on this. Our reaction is very revealing. The factthat we express some form of concern or remorse or discomfort of any kind demonstrates the powerof our moral selves in evaluating our life experiences. And when it comes to the animals weregularly consume, most people dont even want to face the reality of the slaughterhouse because itis just too painful for them. Many neurobiological studies of human and nonhuman animalsdemonstrate and reinforce the power of morality in the behavior of human and certain nonhumananimals alike. (2)

Now on the very opposite end of this continuum is the obligate carnivore who appears tobiologically require blood and flesh. When he sees prey, he kills it without thinking about it andwithout any remorse for the suffering he has caused. Can we blame him for this behavior? Probablynot. He kills without a conscience, so to speak, and out of a necessity to stay alive. Is this a modelfor human behavior? Of course not. But in the rare cases that we find humans who act out in suchcold-blooded and violent ways, we call thempsychopaths. However, when we replace humans withnonhuman animals as the victims, we no longer call this the act of a psychopath. Instead we attemptto morally justify it by playing the natural order card.

5. We Do Not Crave the Flesh of Other

AnimalsNow think about how you react when you see the above photo of the lion tearing away at the fleshof the beautiful zebra. How about when you see a dead animal on the side of the road? How aboutyour reaction to a cow grazing on a pasture? In any of these cases, do you start working up anappetite? Im going to guess you dont. Most of us living in modern society simply dont have anatural killing instinct today (though perhaps some would argue that our hunter-gatherer ancestorsdid many thousands of years ago).


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6. The man-made world of artificially bred

farmed animals and the artificial

environments where they are raised and

killed is not part of natureat allWe dont individually kill what we eat today. Instead we have a highly mechanized andindustrialized meat industry that artificially inseminates animals to breed them into existence, raisesthem in alien-like confinement until they reach market weight, and then kills them systematically inlarge-scale killing institutions that use man made technologies such as electrocution, gassing,suffocation, guns and knives to take the life of millions of sentient beings every hour.

One species that kills 60 billion land animals that would not otherwise exist and another 60 billionmarine animals every year is in no way part of the natural order or the cycle of life. Quite thecontrary. It could be argued that the continued development of such an agricultural system

combined with a booming world population spells ecological disaster and ensures the verydestruction of any natural order as we know it. And the notion of returning to a small farm, locavoresystem of animal farming is economically and socially nonsensical.

The fact is that we eat meat because we can pick it off a grocery store shelf. The neatly packagedflesh and bone is an abstraction, divorced from the individual animal it once was. We eat meat outof convenience, habit, tradition and to satisfy our trivial pleasures. Our demand for animal productssupports a $154.8 billion meat industry that profits from the abject and needless suffering of some10 billion animals annually in the US alone. (3)

So what is our role in nature if not predator orprey?

On the opposite end of the spectrum from man are predators and carnivores who require flesh tosurvive. We not only dont require flesh, we are repulsed by the sights and sounds of a predatortearing its prey to shreds as it cries out in agony. What then does that say about us? I believe itreveals our moral core which has often been blocked by denial but which must ultimately prevail ifwe are to fully understand our role in what we call the natural order.

Our role is and must be one of steward, not of dominator. We must be guided by a moral compassthat transcends the world of predator and prey. Our intelligence is well beyond the mentality of

hunt or be hunted. Lets evolve as a species beyond this simplistic view of the natural world.Lets begin a process of healing whereby we learn how to give back and coexist with thosemagnificent beings who we wrongly objectify to serve our own ends. They are not means to ourends. They are indeed ends in themselves, as are we.

(1) Social psychologist Melanie Joy has written extensively on the specific subject of how beliefsand values drive our modern, meat eating cultures. Visit carnism.com for more details.

(2) University of Chicago rat study. Rats Not Only Show Compassion But Arguably More ThanSome Humans in Unprecedented New UofC Study

(3) The American Meat Institute industry fact sheet for 2010.
http://carnism.com/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-intelligence/rats-not-only-show-compassion-but-arguably-more-than-some-humans-in-unprecedented-new-uofc-study/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-intelligence/rats-not-only-show-compassion-but-arguably-more-than-some-humans-in-unprecedented-new-uofc-study/http://freefromharm.org/food-products/meet-your-meat-industry-the-ami-fact-sheet-for-2010/http://carnism.com/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-intelligence/rats-not-only-show-compassion-but-arguably-more-than-some-humans-in-unprecedented-new-uofc-study/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-intelligence/rats-not-only-show-compassion-but-arguably-more-than-some-humans-in-unprecedented-new-uofc-study/http://freefromharm.org/food-products/meet-your-meat-industry-the-ami-fact-sheet-for-2010/


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Related Articles:

1. Five Reasons Why Meat-Eating Cannot Be Considered a Personal Choice 2. The Meaty Truth: Deconstructing The Myths of Eating Animals3. Facebook s CEO Zuckerberg Becomes His Own Butcher: Moral Courage or Trap?4. Placing the Chicken Before the Egg

5. The Meat of the Issue: Normal, Natural and Necessary?
http://freefromharm.org/food-and-psychology/five-reasons-why-meat-eating-cannot-be-considered-a-personal-choice/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/the-meaty-truth-deconstructing-the-myths-of-eating-animals/http://freefromharm.org/sustainable-agriculture/facebooks-ceo-zuckerberg-becomes-his-own-butcher-moral-courage-or-trap/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-intelligence/placing-the-chicken-before-the-egg/http://freefromharm.org/health-nutrition/why-people-eat-meat/http://freefromharm.org/health-nutrition/why-people-eat-meat/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-psychology/five-reasons-why-meat-eating-cannot-be-considered-a-personal-choice/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/the-meaty-truth-deconstructing-the-myths-of-eating-animals/http://freefromharm.org/sustainable-agriculture/facebooks-ceo-zuckerberg-becomes-his-own-butcher-moral-courage-or-trap/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-intelligence/placing-the-chicken-before-the-egg/http://freefromharm.org/health-nutrition/why-people-eat-meat/


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http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/decoding-carnism-the-case-of-the-self-professed-compassionate-butcher/

Decoding Carnism: The Case of the Self-Professed Compassionate Butcher

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a story published by civileats.com about Farmstead Meatsmithand the owner / butcher Brandon Sheard. Its a prime example of a trend I see developing that

portrays the humane, sustainable independent butcher as a hero of the modern anti-establishmentfood movement. Certainly Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms would champion Sheards mission. Itwould even appear that perhaps Salatin was his inspiration, so close is the comparison.

While the civileats.com story and its hero are presented to us as somehow more conscious, more

sustainable, the underlying premise driving the moral of the story is steeped in a tradition soentrenched that even the anti-industrial food activists and their followers seem blinded by the light.

Social psychologist and author Melanie Joy would call this story of the new age butcher a
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variation on the theme of the belief system she calls carnism. Carnism essentially justifies meat-eating, and the suffering and killing of animals necessary to make meat-eating possible, in threeimportant ways that remain largely unquestioned even today:Meat-eating

is necessary, normal andnatural.1

When Brandon Sheard brings his knife across the throat of a sheep, his movements are swift andprecise. The sheep, lying calmly on her side in the pasture on which she has lived her whole life,gently closes her eyes. Brandon rests his hand on her throat and offers a prayer of gratitude to

affirm the sacrifice of her life, writes the anonymous Civil Eats author. 2

While some may be distracted by the perverse glorification of sacrificial slaughter almost biblicallydescribed here, I would like to focus for a moment on the psychological motivations behind the actand how they seek to justify the contradiction between caring and compassion for animals on theone hand and the act of slaughter and consumption of the same animal on the other.

In Joys recently published essay, Understanding Neocarnism: How Vegan Advocates CanAppreciate and Respond to Happy Meat, Locavorism, and Paleo Dieting, Joy refers to suchcases as Sheards as compassionate carnism. She writes:

Compassionate carnism addresses animal welfare concerns. It holds that, while animal welfare is aconcern, veganism is extreme and therefore impractical, and thus its more practical to eathumane (happy) meat than to eat no meat. So the solution to the moral dilemma of caring aboutanimals and also eating them is moderationnot straying too far outside the carnistic normandeating meat, eggs, and dairy from animals who have supposedly been treated well. Moreover,compassionate carnism exists largely in philosophy; given that over 99 percent of the meatconsumed in the U.S. comes from CAFOs, it is likely more difficult (and thus more extreme) formost people to avoid unhappy meat with any real consistency than it is to simply stop eatingmeat. Compassionate carnism essentially suggests that a willingness to eat humane meat when

readily available condones the consumption of inhumane meat in all other situations.3

1 Melanie Joy, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism (Conari Press, January 2010)2 Unknown author,Farmstead Meatsmith: Mobile Butchery in Washington State, http://www.facebook.com/notes/civil-eats/farmstead-meatsmith-mobile-butchery-in-washington-state/10150277693794653 (Civileats, August 3, 2011)

3 Melanie Joy, Understanding Neocarnism: How Vegan Advocates Can Appreciate and Respond to Happy Meat,Locavorism, and Paleo Dieting, http://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/understanding-neocarnism/ (One GreenPlanet, July, 2011)

Related Articles:

1. Understanding Neocarnism: How Vegan Advocates Can Appreciate and Respond to HappyMeat, Locavorism

2. Everything in Moderation, Right? Even Violence to Animals?3. How Do You Respond to Veganism is Extreme ?4. Saving the Sparrow Yet Eating the Chicken: Carnism in Every Day Life5. The Meaty Truth: Deconstructing The Myths of Eating Animals
http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/understanding-neocarnism-how-vegan-advocates-can-appreciate-and-respond-to-happy-meat-locavorism-and-paleo-dieting/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/understanding-neocarnism-how-vegan-advocates-can-appreciate-and-respond-to-happy-meat-locavorism-and-paleo-dieting/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/understanding-neocarnism-how-vegan-advocates-can-appreciate-and-respond-to-happy-meat-locavorism-and-paleo-dieting/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/everything-in-moderation-right-even-violence-to-animals/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/everything-in-moderation-right-even-violence-to-animals/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/saving-the-sparrow-yet-eating-the-chicken-carnism-in-every-day-life/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/the-meaty-truth-deconstructing-the-myths-of-eating-animals/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/understanding-neocarnism-how-vegan-advocates-can-appreciate-and-respond-to-happy-meat-locavorism-and-paleo-dieting/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/understanding-neocarnism-how-vegan-advocates-can-appreciate-and-respond-to-happy-meat-locavorism-and-paleo-dieting/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/everything-in-moderation-right-even-violence-to-animals/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/saving-the-sparrow-yet-eating-the-chicken-carnism-in-every-day-life/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/the-meaty-truth-deconstructing-the-myths-of-eating-animals/


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http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/

How Do You Respond to Veganism is Extreme?By Free From Harm Staff Writers |April 19, 2012 | Categories: Veganism

How many times have you heard the dismissive phrase veganism is extreme? Even if youre not avegan and the subject comes up in conversation, youre bound to hear this knee jerk reaction fromsomeone. Veganism is dismissed as extreme in our culture only because veganism challenges thedominant classes disconnection between what they say they believe about respect for animals andtheir actions which support the unnecessary exploitation and violence to animals.

What is extreme is not veganism but its polar opposite, carnism, which remains largely invisibleand unexamined;

What is extreme is the fact that a species of 7 billion kills 120 billion land and aquaticanimals every year for a food source that is not necessary for survival or health.

What is extreme is the delusional belief that we are the only species that matters and themanner in which we live as if the others have no interests.

What is extreme is the notion that we are somehow above rather than an integral part ofthe natural world.

What is extreme is that we act on the principle of might makes right in our exploitation ofother species to serve our own ends.

What is extreme is the level of violence and oppression that fuels the current meat eatingculture.

What is extreme is the endless moral acrobatics and irrational defenses that the meat eatingculture uses to justify its barbaric use of animals.

What is extreme is the denial that plagues a society that ignores the reality behind their food,a reality of suffering and death that they already find abhorrent.

What is extreme is the charge that veganism is irrational and purely emotional when all ofthe extremes mentioned above are completely irrational and lack any empirical basis.

Related Articles:

1. Photo Gallery: Precious Animals, A Project of Dutch Photographer and Filmmaker Jan vanIJken

2. From Dairy Farmer to Vegan Advocate: Pamela Ziemann s Remarkable Transformation3. Exclusive Interview: Filmmaker Shira Lane of Got the Facts on Milk?4. Major Farm Animal Cloning Project Cancelled Due to Disease and Deaths5. Take Action Against Live Burial of Animals in South Korea
http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/author/admin/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/http://freefromharm.org/photo-galleries/photo-gallery-precious-animals-a-project-of-dutch-photographer-and-filmmaker-jan-van-ijken/http://freefromharm.org/photo-galleries/photo-gallery-precious-animals-a-project-of-dutch-photographer-and-filmmaker-jan-van-ijken/http://freefromharm.org/photo-galleries/photo-gallery-precious-animals-a-project-of-dutch-photographer-and-filmmaker-jan-van-ijken/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/from-dairy-farmer-to-vegan-advocate-pamela-ziemanns-remarkable-transformation/http://freefromharm.org/health-nutrition/exclusive-interview-filmmaker-shira-lane-of-got-the-facts-on-milk/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/major-farm-animal-cloning-project-cancelled-due-to-disease-and-deaths/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/take-action-against-live-burial-of-animals-in-south-korea/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/author/admin/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/how-do-you-respond-to-veganism-is-extreme/http://freefromharm.org/veganism/http://freefromharm.org/photo-galleries/photo-gallery-precious-animals-a-project-of-dutch-photographer-and-filmmaker-jan-van-ijken/http://freefromharm.org/photo-galleries/photo-gallery-precious-animals-a-project-of-dutch-photographer-and-filmmaker-jan-van-ijken/http://freefromharm.org/food-and-culture/from-dairy-farmer-to-vegan-advocate-pamela-ziemanns-remarkable-transformation/http://freefromharm.org/health-nutrition/exclusive-interview-filmmaker-shira-lane-of-got-the-facts-on-milk/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/major-farm-animal-cloning-project-cancelled-due-to-disease-and-deaths/http://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/take-action-against-live-burial-of-animals-in-south-korea/

Five Reasons Why Meat-Eating Cannot Be Considered a ‘Personal Choice’

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