Vegan Practically

I’m at the International Social Ontology Society Conference in Stockholm this week. The conference provides lunch and breaks. And I’m happy to say that the lunches are all vegan and vegetarian. No meat-based options on the menu.

This has become a trend at some conferences I’ve either attended or heard about lately. It’s especially prevalent at academic meetings in ethics or with lots of social and political philosophers who work on issues in social justice. This is not to say all of these people are vegetarian or vegan. But it is to say that they are at least somewhat sensitive to the arguments that support these approaches, not as mere whims or preferences but as actual ethical issues. Sometimes it’s motivated additionally by seeking a more inclusive menu. If the food is good enough, more meat eaters are more likely to be satisfied with vegetarian options than vice versa (in that vegans and vegetarians are not going to eat the meat options.

But this way doesn’t make everyone happy. I overheard someone say in line for what I thought was a delicious lunch, “I wish they’d let us know ahead of time.” A default vegetarian menu with vegan options was “acceptable” but not optimal. They wanted to prepare in advance “to be hungry all the time.”

Though this conference has vegetarian options with eggs and dairy, I’ve heard some people go so far as to go to all-vegan. I requested that for a reception in my honour last year and, to the great delight of all in attendance, the result was amazing. Nonetheless, I have heard expressed the objection to default vegan catering that vegetarians want cheese, and leaving it out is unfair.

In general, meat-eating or at least the use of animal products is so ideologically entrenched in most corners of contemporary society that people expect meat-based options to be the default. Vegetarian and vegan food is sometimes made available by special request. Rather than reflect upon the centrality of animal products and the sense of entitlement to them, most conference organizers and caterers just go by (their assumptions about) majority preference.

But when it’s a more socially and politically conscious group to begin with, it’s tougher to acquiesce to the status quo. Personally, I like it a lot when organizers do this. Does it bother me if it makes some people uncomfortable? Not really. Though I agree we can’t be perfect, I love an opportunity to challenge people a bit. And if the food is ample, delicious, and filling, then that can dispel a myth or two. The only people who have ever been expected to subsist on lettuce alone are vegans at a catered event where the default planning is for those who consume animal products.

There are other approaches that can nudge people to reflect. I heard of an event recently where people could select from the full range of options—vegan, vegetarian, and meat. The options that included animal products were given as “vegetarian (probably contains congealed bovine mammary secretions)” and for the non-vegan and non-vegetarian option: “(cancer and heart-disease promoting) flesh of an exploited, tortured dead animal.”

Despite that these descriptions are true, and so this offers a more aggressive way of challenging people, this would not be my approach. As I heard Buffy Sainte-Marie say in a wonderful interview the other day about her approach to challenging people through her music to consider colonialism and the colonizing impact on Indigenous peoples, “you don’t have to deliver the news in an enema.” Back in the early days of her career her mostly white audiences had never considered these things before. She saw no value in shaming them for what they had no occasion to know. It resonated with me when she said that.

There is nothing shaming in simply defaulting to plant-based options. And yet it still brings with it a considered moral valence that could nudge a receptive audience to reflect on what they may not have reflected on before. It’s not just a matter of catering to people’s preferences. In some general sense, there are lots of vegans (not all) who would “prefer” to eat meat if there was a non-exploitative, cruelty-free way to get it (and perhaps there is not). Especially at conferences where social justice and ethics are of concern, it makes sense not to offer meat-based catering options.

It’s a welcome trend that I hope to see continue, not because I want to have a decent meal myself (though I do), but because I want more people to experience good vegan catering and come away satisfied and thinking it’s not impossible.

So bravo to the organizers of the International Social Ontology Society Conference in Stockholm!