Vegan Practically

I warn you now: I may not be able effectively to edit out of this message an underlying whine-y tone (will try!). I’m recovering from the sting of SSHRC Insight Grant rejection of an application for funding to support my work on imperfect veganism. I dedicated three months to it last summer and felt really good about the proposal and the budget (a large percentage of which was to support students and involve them in the research project). It’s always discouraging, even after all these years, when the rejections come. And this one came in two rounds because it took them at least a month to send out the feedback.

Just when I was getting over it, the assessments came in. One reviewer in particular tended towards formulating objections that, in my view, would have been more suitable for a final product than for a proposal that maps out a project over a four-year period. Though the reviewer sort of acknowledges this, in the end their lengthy discussion of possible pitfalls to the idea of “imperfect veganism” (which I recognize as a difficult position to develop and defend) overshadowed any consideration of its merits. Philosophers like to fixate on the negative. As with anything of this sort, rejection is common and we have to get used to it.

We have a joke (not super funny because it rings too true) in philosophy about “Reviewer 2.” I think of Reviewer 2 as the person who goes in with a gate-keeping rather than a facilitating mentality. The reviewer had to know that their comments would kill my chances of funding. Judges don’t get over comments like “I did wonder if her lack of familiarity with this literature led her to making some mistakes.” Rather than simply suggesting that a particular author would be worth including (comments that I would welcome), this reviewer had to express surprise that I hadn’t included someone. This framing suggests to a judging panel that the research is half-baked and the researcher lacks the appropriate knowledge-base (which, in my view, overlooks the obvious point that a four-year project is sure to include some additional reading). When a review panel is seeking to find reasons to throw applications onto the reject pile, these sorts of comments pretty much guarantee a rejection. Hence my characterization of Reviewer 2, the gatekeeper. It’s possible they are even a philosopher I admire and respect, but I am not impressed with their approach to feedback.

It’s demoralizing and I confess that it has challenged my motivation in recent weeks–my blogging schedule has been off and my effort for what I have actually written has felt half-hearted. I expect that to pass, and I keep reminding myself that the last time I felt so dismissed by a reviewer the project in question was published in Ethics, one of the top journals in my field.

Typically I try to return to feedback with fresh eyes, trying to see it as an opportunity to improve my work. So in the spirit of keeping an open mind I want to consider two points from the review.

The first might seem relatively minor, but since it is the first example Reviewer 2 gives of one of my mistakes, I want to mention it. I said in my proposal that vegetarians appear to draw the moral line at killing. The reviewer suggests I consider this point too uncritically because the dairy and egg industries involve a lot of killing and suffering. Yes they do. And that is why vegetarians’ assumption that dairy and eggs are harmless is false. But they do consider that distinction to have some merit, or else they wouldn’t eat eggs and dairy either. There is really no morally defensible version of vegetarianism, since every argument someone might make (with respect to animal suffering and death) about the harms of industrial meat production apply equally (at least) to industrial dairy and egg production. Everyone who finds arguments for veganism compelling must also think that vegetarians don’t draw moral lines in the right place.

The second concern I want to consider is the overall skepticism about the suggestion that imperfect veganism is a defensible position. Moderate moral positions are notoriously difficult to defend, so I understand thinking that it may not come easily. The question I most want to consider, however, is whether it okay to ‘cheat’ as a vegan, given the arguments about animal suffering that support veganism in the first place? As the gatekeeping reviewer points out, we don’t think it’s okay to have “cheat days” when it comes to respect for humans. True enough in the broadest of strokes.

Here I have four things to say:

First, surely, even if you’re skeptical about how far we might get with a more imperfect approach, this is an approach worth exploring? If everyone ate less than half of the animal products than they eat now, that would have an impact on demand and there would be less suffering. Is less better than none? Of course not. But it’s better than what we now face.

Second, what do we mean by “okay” in this context? My analysis–such as I sketch it out in the proposal–doesn’t suggest that it is actually morally permissible to produce and consume non-human animals. It suggests that the pervasiveness of meat-eating and its ideological hold on us contributes to a type of moral ignorance about its wrongness. Being ignorant of its wrongness isn’t the same as it being permissible. Here I have introduced Cheshire Calhoun’s distinction between ignorance in a normal moral context and ignorance in an abnormal moral context, the latter of which can sometimes figure as an excuse. I have not said it definitively does function in this way in this case, but it is a line that has some philosophical potential that would differentiate the non-human animal case from the respect for humans case. Do I think that non-human animals deserve less consideration? No I do not.

Third, even those who aspire towards perfection in their veganism don’t get there. As Lori Gruen and Robert C. Jones have said, veganism is aspirational. As Alexis Shotwell has explained, the impossibility of moral purity isn’t confined to the use, abuse, exploitation, and consuming of non-human animals. It is pervasive in our ethical lives. How do we navigate that? Here I highlight that limiting our moral world view to keeping our own hands clean — or as clean as possible under conditions of inevitable impurity — is not the right approach. Which brings me to my fourth point.

Fourth, outlining a lesser position that might be more accessible is a strategic stepping stone to more significant change. The reviewer is somewhat dismissive of my background in collective action theory. But my background in collective action theory (and social justice theory more generally) has contributed to my understanding of what is needed to address large scale global problems: namely, a critical mass of people working together for change. How collective obligations play out at the individual level, especially when we recognize that it’s not all about moral purity and “clean hands” but also about real world impact, is complicated territory.

The structural issues at play in our food systems, the urgency of the need for change, and the ideological hold of meat-eating on many societies in the world today invite discussion of a more moderate position. Even if it’s only as less-than-perfect means of transitioning to something better, and even if it’s difficult to give more than a strategic defence of it, I remain convinced that it’s important to consider and unpack.