I went to the capital region veg expo yesterday and I wanted to stew on my experience for a little while before I wrote up my review. I went last year and had mixed feelings but an overall good experience from the expo. This year I left the expo feeling disappointed and discouraged. Part of the difference in my interpretation of the veg expo probably has to do with my own personal growth, and part of it is in changes in the expo itself. Lets just say it seems we are growing apart.
First of all lets just say that I’m not the only that I see a problem with the labelling of an expo as “vegetarian” rather than vegan. Almost all of the booth participants (AR related at least) and from what I could gather most of the presenters were themselves vegan. If that’s the case why not just call this thing what it is. This is a recurring theme in the animal rights movement were there is fear to use the term vegan because you might scare people off. Well as far as I’m concerned if you don’t ever use the term vegan than its just going to continue to be scary. The only way you will normalize a term is to start using it. In a sense we are our own worst enemies when it comes to this. In the grand scheme though, this wasn’t really the most upsetting thing.
This years expo and to a lesser degree last years had a heavy slant away from animal rights and towards “health food veg*ns”. Every single presentation except for one (which was really about environmental issues) were about health issues and how veg*nism is good for your health. The expo program talks about animal advocacy but, you wouldn’t know it by looking at the presenters.
People come to vegetarianism for a number of different reasons ranging from religion, to health, environmental, to ethics. Veganism on the other hand always seems to involve ethics. How can I make this broad sweeping statement? Veganism is about the abolition of using animals for our own uses. It is the complete abolition of animal products and and animal testing in your day to day life to the greatest extent possible. If you are “vegan” for health reasons, you probably aren’t going to have a problem wearing leather shoes or using a leather belt… and in my opinion you are strict vegetarian not vegan.
Okay Mr High N’Mighty but why do you care?
I care for two reasons, firstly if you succeed in convincing someone that veganism is a good idea for their health it was a missed opportunity. Someone who stops eating meat, eggs, and cheese because they don’t want to die a premature death is missing the point. Your efforts are better spent on helping to educate people about the cruelty to which, most people continue to bury their head. Health food vegans are also more likely to “cheat” when its not going to affect their health “that much”. A health food vegan isn’t likely to care if there is some gelatin (ground bones and cartilage) in their food, or carmine (ground up bugs for coloring), and they definetly aren’t going to think twice about weather a rabbit was tortured so they could feel more beautiful when they put on their make-up in the morning.
Secondly, calling yourself vegan and then eating animal products (cheating) or wearing animal products sends out confusing messages to the masses about vegans. How can we get upset with people who prepare food and use soy cheese with casein in it when they have seen other “vegans” eat the same cheese. Call yourself what you are or better yet stop the nonsense and go vegan.
It was also a little mind boggling to see some completely non-veg*n vendors there. I’m not even talking about your middle of the road kind of, sort of, if you looked at them sideways could be seen as maybe veg related… I’m looking at you on this one hannaford. I’m talking about booths that had flat out nothing what-so-ever to do with animal rights or even “health food vegans”. We had an architect, curtis lumber and a psychic reading boot at the expo. Seriously WTF.
There was good news at the expo though, I met a number of people (some old some new) who look like they really want to try and make a difference. There seem to be a lot of people in the capital region who really want to help in the animal rights movement they just don’t know who to contact or wht to do. That to me is a really positive sign, its at least a start. A number of these booths shared a lot of my concerns and I hope that we will start to see a real change in the capital region.
I agree with you that in order for “vegan” not to be scary, people need to hear it more, not less.
I think, though, that any way we get people to recognize that they need to change their eating habits (ie. go from meat-eater to vegetarian) is good, whether it be for health, environmental or ethical reasons.
Then when people are vegetarian, I think they’d be more inclined to listen to arguments about the suffering of chickens for eggs and of cows (and calves) for milk.
But I do agree with you that most people aren’t going to go from meat-eater to vegan for health reasons.
Regarding cheating, though, I support the philosophy of Vegan Outreach — that we need to make veg*anism look as simple as possible. So if I’m at a restaurant, I’m not going to ask the server if the soup is made with chicken stock or if the rolls are made with eggs or milk.
Here’s what they say about it:
For this reason, we believe that the consequences of our actions should guide our choices. Oftentimes, there’s more to consider than whether or not an item is completely animal-free. For example, it can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to shun every minor or hidden animal-derived ingredient. More importantly, avoiding an ever-increasing list of these ingredients can make us appear obsessive and lead others to believe that compassionate living is impossible. This defeats our purpose: ending cruelty to animals!
http://www.veganoutreach.org/guide/beingvegan.html
I am going to have to completely disagree with you there Tracy. Don’t get me wong…I love the outreach that Vegan Outreach does, but I find major fault in their entire “make veganism look simple” approach. This actually came up last year at the Animal Rights Conference in LA and I got into a heated discussion with some people who felt similar to you about that. Yes I think that we should be making veganism look accessible and easy….but “cheating” is not the way to do so. To me veganism in itself is EASY…..I never think how hard it is and I never let others think its hard either. I always get asked that question and my answer is always a resounding “NO”. You can very easily learn ingredients to avoid and honestly the easiest thing to do is just learn how to cook and how to ask effective questions when you go out to eat. I do not like Vegan Outreach’s stance on that point simply because it portrays veganism as something that you are’nt really serious about….”eh, what’s a little cheese here or a little chicken broth there”. Well to those who are NOT vegan….it means a lot because it is a way for them to poke holes into our lifestyle by pointing out that its impossible to do because we “cheat” sometimes.
Someone at that conference brought up eating at their mother’s house where she had cooked dinner and there was some cream and butter in the food. Instead of politely saying “oh, no thanks mom I don’t eat cream or butter” this person ate it to please their mother! Whats to stop her from pushing that limit more and more each time and start putting dead flesh into the food? There are no limits in this scenario…..”you ate some cream, why won’t you eat some beef?”. It is completely hypocritical and invalidates the entire point of veganism.
I think the better way to promote vegamism is by making it look easy…..bring your own food that you know is vegan with you. Its a really great way to show that we don’t starve and that our food is really delicious. My mom had no problem when I gently told her that I appreciated that she wants to feed me, but that I just couldn’t put those items into my body. So you know what….now I cook all the time and she really appreciates the break at holidays and she really loves my cooking/baking.
And it is NOT expensive to be vegan….I am so tired of hearing that. I manage to avoid all those “troublesome” ingredients by cooking mostly from scratch. Its way cheaper. And its also not time consuming to avoid that “ever-increasing list of ingredients” I ijust basically keep buying the same products that I know are safe….sure I recheckthe labels every once in awhile, but why would I want to make myself eat beef fat if I think its morally wrong. Sounds kinda counter-productive if you ask me.
xoxo
Sarah