Vegan Practically

Recently I was out for dinner with a group of people when the person beside me said they’d “rather not think about” where their food comes from. The idea here is, if I don’t think about it I don’t have to change anything. But if I DO think about it, I might at least feel like I have to change something (very likely).

This approach is quite typical. I mean if people really thought through what the food on their plate went through on its way to being the food on their plate, that right there might take away a good portion of their ability to enjoy it.

It’s hard to know what to say to this approach when it’s expressed in polite company by someone you like but aren’t super close to. My response, “at least you’re being honest.” I don’t go looking for a fight. I don’t push people, especially at dinner. And I don’t engage in conversational lost causes. To me, someone saying they don’t like to think about what they eat is pretty much a conversation-stopper in the sense that they are making it clear that, in this moment, they don’t wish to know more.

My strategy these days is to have conversations with the people who wish to have them. This is not limited to preaching to (or commiserating with) the converted — sometimes people are genuinely curious and seeking to learn more. Sometimes people are aware that their ethical principles could take them further, but don’t feel ready to go there. I myself started as pescatarian who leaned more heavily to the vegetarian side of the house. Indeed, I actually considered myself a vegetarian who very occasionally ate seafood. Having done more research of late into seafood, I don’t think I would ease myself in that way again. But there is no question it is easier to navigate the world as a pescatarian than as a vegan. Others are already vegetarian, and a significant subset of those folks recognize that their ethical reasons for vegetarianism equally support veganism. They’re inching their way towards it, and they’re not wrong in thinking that it’s tougher to navigate the world as a vegan, and not just with respect to food options.

While I understand that a person may not feel ready to make the next move, I am not a fan of the “I’d rather not think about it” defence of supporting an abhorrent food production industry. It is frustrating that people would rather not think about it. And it’s obvious that this approach is widespread. It’s so prevalent that not thinking about it is the default approach to animal cruelty in industrial animal agriculture. There is really no way of churning out animal products at factory speeds and volumes without producing suffering.

Take one example: poultry. Even “free-running” chickens live in enormous sheds, jammed in so tight that they have very little space to move. The lighting on most of the time. The birds have very little if any access to the outside – in one enormous shed there may be a tiny door in one corner that leads to a small outside space. That is “to code” [by US, Canadian, European, and Australian guidelines].

The levels of ammonia in these facilities are so high that birds frequently fall ill with respiratory conditions. The poultry destined to be eaten are fattened up quickly and bred to have disproportionately large breasts that make them so top heavy by the time they are ready for slaughter that they can’t walk. Their lives are (probably mercifully) short, making them ready for slaughter by the time they are about six weeks old.

At that point they are stuffed into crates or cages and transported to a slaughter facility where they are hitched up, live, by the feet and attached to a conveyor belt upside down to be dragged through electrified water to stun them. Since they are writhing and trying to get away, some of them get past that stage without being sufficiently stunned.

Still strung up upside down by the feet, they continue on the conveyor belt to the next stage where their necks are cut by a machine. Some of them, writhing enough to get out of the way of the blade, even make it past this stage alive and conscious. The next step after that is to be dunked into boiling hot water for de-feathering.  That’s the life and death of a broiler hen. These are the most consumed farm animal, with about 640 million being consumed each year in Canada, and over nine billion in the US.

It’s unpleasant to think about, to be sure. But putting it out of mind doesn’t alleviate any of the suffering. And continuing to support these industries by purchasing and eating the animals they raise and slaughter for human enjoyment perpetuates that suffering.