The trend in the US has been to hide the word ‘vegan’ from consumers and bury it in their website somewhere. Not so in the UK. Brands seem super happy about showing which products in their selection are vegan. No list of ‘secretly/accidentally vegan’ products over there, they happily let you know right in the packaging.
People there are generally more aware of veganism too. No need to explain what it is like I constantly do in the US. ‘Can vegans eat eggs?’ What part of ‘no animal products’ don’t you understand?
I went on a hike at a national park in Scotland a few months ago, and they had a small cafe there with limited options for everyone. Even they had solid vegan options though. Blows my mind that this cafe was more welcoming than the majority of restaurants in a major liberal city.
If you had lived in the UK, you'd understand that it's not about temporary vegan menus in restaurants but about the whole country, even in a chain in the middle of nowhere, having vegan alternatives and packaging for years and years.
PSA: Meat ag is a danger to us all just on rational grounds: antibiotic resistance (bacteria evolution), pandemics (viral evolution), air-water-soil pollution, and climate change. For most Westerners, we have all kinds of food choices that are perfectly nutritious without inflicting all of the risks of unnecessary demand for meat. It will hopefully be eventually viewed in the distant future with such disdain and repugnance as cannibalism or consuming pets or exotic animals.
Hm, I fundamentally disagree and I sincerely hope there will ever be a time when meat consumption is viewed as equivalent to cannibalism. That sounds like a society I wouldn’t want to be a part of.
I’m surprised you’d come to such a drastic conclusion. I have nothing but respect for your right to eat the diet you choose, but it’s a shame that isn’t something you’re willing to extend to others.
When lifestyle choices put others at risk of pandemics and untreatable diseases, it becomes my problem. This makes you yet another normalized deviant projecting your unsustainable lifestyle choices on others and trying to shame others who dare to criticize abominable practices. Furthermore, predominant repugnant views of many people currently include enabling the genocide of Palestinians and Lebanese, death penalty, fossil fuel usage, and animal slaughter... these are no good.
And why don't you or anyone eat their pets? Besides distance, utility, and/or cuteness, there's no fundamental difference between wildlife, livestock, and pets when it comes to inflicting suffering.
What are the differences between them? Are there differences at all?
Similarly, everyone is free to own a home, but ensuring everyone has the means to actually do so is just not something politicians will even talk about, and is often labelled as "communist" or some other kind of thought-terminating label. Everyone is free, some people are just freer than others.
For diet it is quite reasonable: a duty for certain products to be available for purchase (it does make clear that this right does not exist. A few vendors go out of business and your right to eat vegan goes with them)
For owning a home, this would be a duty for everyone else to build you a home, satisfying your requirements. One thing everyone agrees on is that other people do NOT have the right to force you to work. But that is the only way governments would be able to guarantee a right like this.
And, of course, one of the rights people demanded is the right to not participate in any right or duty that goes against your beliefs ... it is, of course, totally impossible to have this right and either of the other ones in society, or your rights would become very brittle indeed.
But right now I don't think it's the case yet in the UK.
That's not how it works. The state isn't forcing doctors and nurse to cure you, it's collecting taxes from everyone to pay willing doctors and nurses to cure the population. Similarly, they could hire construction workers or buy homes and provide them for the general population.
You are number X+1 that needs treatment? Sucks. There's a waitlist. Which in a few cases is pretty bad. You have had a stroke and the doctor wants an MRI, to check for bleeding. The MRI machines are being synergized (meaning a bunch of smaller hospitals only have access by moving patients to a bigger hospital). They can't book a surgeon without confirmation of bleeding (well not without entering the waitlist at the end, without priority, and with a stroke in progress you might as well just book an undertaker). In the best case now you're being moved (you pay for this), potentially with a ripped artery. Best of luck.
There's also more temporary accidents, such as refusing to hire foreign doctors, even where that means parts of the country have to do with insufficient capacity in certain departments or even (in the mountains for now) zero capacity. In theory anything with a waitlist over 2 months is considered insufficient capacity, but if you take that definition, close to 40% of all departments have insufficient capacity. And it's getting worse (Ukraine war, tarriffs, EU lending, Iran war, ... all resulted in extra savings and less capacity)
The same is happening in schools. The law clearly states you have the right to kindergarten < 2km from your home, primary school <10km and secondary <20km). For "special needs" education this has become a total joke, even in parts of the capital this is no longer available. But even in normal schooling none of those are still reality. Or other issues, like the fact that the government guarantees temperatures in schools above 18 degrees, and below 32 degrees (heat index, not pure temperature. Essentially it's 32 degrees at 100% humidity, goes up with 1 degree for every 10% humidity drops). Kids have that right in education. Aside from the free school for EU expats' children in Brussels there isn't a single primary school with air-conditioning. Not even the one the royal family uses for their children. The temperature hit 40 degrees, apparently over 45 degrees in some classrooms. They did discipline some teachers for teaching in the grass outside of the classroom after parent complaints, of course.
That's also a way to look at rights, I guess. Namely that they are "weak guidelines" and you don't have any way to enforce them against the government and everything just completely erodes over time.
I guess it's true what they say: you can pay market price or you can have shortages. Pick your poison.
My maternal grandfather was a teacher which was a really prestigious job at that time, the only reason that they had their own cows was because of the belief. Reflecting upon it now, I believe it to be a good faith belief, they took care of the animals as well in terms of personal care from what I've heard of stories growing up, my mother still remembers some of the cows/buffalos and their names and other things so that's nice to hear as well :)
It's by definition not vegan to consume animal products. I'm happy that the term is considered so virtuous that people want to self-identify as such (I've even heard meat-eaters say they're vegan "except from time to time"), but I don't think it's intolerant/bigoted to simply look at the definition.
JaidenAnimation has done a great video[0] summarizing something like this of her vegan journey and exactly this type of nuance as well, I highly recommend checking it out
Let me give you a personal example as well, I am Hindu and Milk is very very preferred where I live. Due to my taste preference, I dislike Milk but I am really expected to have something milk based so I like Yogurt.
Even just this small act of preference of yogurt rather than Milk which could seem pretty small has genuinely left my relatives asking many many questions and I am sometimes forced to drink milk when I go to people when I would prefer otherwise because of social pressure.
I can probably take vegan yogurt if I particularly want so but we take milk fresh from the milkman who owns the cow in their house. where I live, the way people treat animals in their house is a very ethical point of view, its basically like how pets are except they help in livelihood/income
So I have some sympathies to people who you are talking about. There is enough social pressure from the people around you.
More broadly speaking, Veganism might perhaps land better as a spectrum rather than a binary switch. It has a lot of things going for it which could help its future but at the same time, it gets a large amount of flack from a loud minority and bad clips
It sounds like people over there in America don’t do things because they enjoy doing them or because they’re convinced that those are the right things to do, but rather they do them to impress others or improve their social standing.
It doesn’t sound right to me, I mean a culture can’t be so totally obsessed with the self.
One of our (the US) early political mottoes is "Don't Tread On Me" and it has a flag.
And, yes, we can be and to varying degrees, are. Which is why we can't get along with ourselves very well, much less everyone else.
We're tetchy.
(I guess „persona” would be a better word for it than „the self”.)
Stating that a whole country has problems with virtue is rather stigmatising and something you'd complain about if it were about any country in what some have taken to call the "global South".
No, that's implicit. If I'm tired of rock music, that mostly comes into play when I'm exposed to it in some way.
> Stating that a whole country has problems with virtue is rather stigmatising
Speaking of, someone expressing their virtue -- and caring for the well being of sentient beings simply is, it's a capacity, and it annoys the people who lack it, because it raises the question why they lack it -- isn't automatically them "signalling" anything. That's just an attempt to stigmatise it.
recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922972
If we don't have empathy with victims of that, who cares what we are "tired of"? We can torture animals, but don't stigmatise us, and don't talk about how you try to avoid feeding the systems that lead to animals being tortured. You can talk about how much you like your other new hobbies, but not this one. You cannot even wear a pin. Because we're so tired and you're so oppressive, with your virtue and your signals. Have empathy with my fear of empathy, basically.
I'm not even vegetarian but I'm more tired of that than them, because it's both evil and stupid, and projects that on vegans.
> something you'd complain about if it were about any country in what some have taken to call the "global South".
Many things play into this. One is the hesitation to punch down versus a superpower that spent many, many millions to signal, to broadcast, their virtue into the whole world for decades.
Oh you went with the "rather" instead of the "quite" that's interesting. Anyway if vegans want to say "I am vegan" you'd profit from taking just a second to ask yourself why you get reflexively pissy about it.
> Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism
The short definition you're talking about is abridged for time saving, it miss the essence ["for the benefit of..."] and the necessary feasibility adaptations ["as far as is possible and practicable"].
The adaptations in that quote are about the animals who will be harmed without your intending to do so during your own attempts to survive, like the insects killed during harvest. The essence and the last sentence of the definition are also in line with what I am saying. Eating dairy by choice while identifying as vegan is not due to one coming to the limits of 'as far as possible', under any definition of 'possible' or 'practicable'.
A word may have different meaning depending on the usage: who, when, context... Formal language isn't the norm for better or for worse. I mostly agree with your two messages but also wanted to add a touch of pluralism: veganism origin and ideal has something to do with ethics by (more or less) avoiding unnecessary harm by avoiding animal exploitation but the goal and means to achieve it may differ.
The interpretation of "possible and practicable" you gave is aligned with my understanding but I can understand other people may include: - [as the article subject] the only food you can eat contains flesh, because you're detained in prison/stay at the hospital - The social pressure is too strong for you to possibly cope with it - Avoiding to use any toiletry that contains carmine, collagen or glycerin may be a hassle when one is away in holiday or work
Also, some people consider excluding bivalves from the list keep intact the goal of harm avoidance.
The cursor is subjective. I can grasp how someone may define themselves vegan and for whatever reason consume some animal products. However debating of the definition itself does not serve the shared cause of animal condition consideration. Instead it is far more effective to focus on shifting the laws (see the article) and bringing the questions/solutions to the public debate, which would solve most of the social pressure. Let's team up for 90% of the animal cause together and when it will be acquired we'll discuss the last 10%.
To end this message, I wish you a pleasant day and share with you a conference I had the chance to assit 2 days ago, I think it's very pertinent - but also in french, I hope the auto-translation are good. It's called "Do vegans harm the animal cause?" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLCRdLa99DE
It's kind of like the Christian who ignores the conversation in the gospel of John:
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
I get that in a literal sense you wouldn't be vegan anymore, but if you're maintaining the same ethical framework that led you to veganism, it's not unreasonable to want to express that.
No animal evolved solely to produce food for humans and to be property, and I think that's a major blindspot that people have, which allows them to believe into this idea.
Buying an animal, restraining it in your property, subjecting it to whatever's needed for it to produce (look this up if you need to), consuming said products, and in the end of its useful life selling the animal (and let's not imagine that it's sold to animal sanctuaries): none of this is in line with being vegan. All of it harms the animal in some way and normalises the dismissal of animal life, independent of whatever the person wants to believe.
Someone who believes veganism is the right way, but is not personally vegan, can say just that: it's a perfectly tenable philosophical position to have. Self-identifying as vegan while not being vegan is where it becomes absurd.
Definitions can change, especially when it comes to personal beliefs of what is right and wrong. Christianity, for example, has split countless versions as people redefine what it means to them. Yet they all still call themselves Christians.
The definition of veganism includes more than just not eating animal products, but that aspect of it leaves no place to ambiguity.
What's the appeal of including vegetarians and carnists into veganism? It's not like vegans wield political power or are privileged in some way, where does this strange type of inclusivity at the detriment of reality come from?