Vegan Practically

Awhile back I foreshadowed some future topics for the blog, all of which took up the intersection of ethics and etiquette in a way I find interesting. I find it interesting because mostly I think it’s a matter of ethics and environmentalism; but since so many people don’t consider the ethical or environmental impact of eating animal products to be important, the discussion often unfolds as a matter of etiquette. I blogged about the attitude restaurants who serve vegan options should take when they offer those options and about vegans’ obligations to non-vegans. I am now on the third of the three: Is it rude for non-vegans to eat animal products in the presence of vegans?

My answer: It is rude, yes, in the same way telling racist jokes to non-racists or sexist jokes to non-sexists is rude (and ethically wrong). Racist jokes, most people recognize, are wrong on their own terms. People shouldn’t tell them and dinner companions (or anyone for that matter) should not have to be subjected to them. Having to laugh along for the sake of keeping the peace is an endorsement of the joke’s message. Not laughing but staying silent is less so but still leaves the moral affront unaddressed.

People who are vegan for ethical reasons — harm to animals and the environment — recognize that humans use of animals for food is wrong on its own terms. When we sit down to a meal with people who are eating animal products and say nothing for the sake of keeping the peace, we are condoning participation in mass atrocity and environmental degradation.

An aside: I do this a lot. Like, rarely a week goes by where I do not sit with people eating animal products and say nothing. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think it’s rude and morally wrong. It just means that I don’t feel it’s my place to call out rudeness or moral wrongdoing every time it happens.

I know my view on this seems self-righteous and judgmental to many people. I don’t think it is ever necessary to include animal products on the menu. If you have a perfectly good vegan cake, then you don’t also need a non-vegan cake. If you have potato chips that don’t have animal product ingredients, you don’t also need to provide chips that do. If you have vegan butter, do you also need to provide dairy butter? Do people really notice the difference? Do you even need to label things “vegan” if everything you are serving is vegan and no one would be able to tell? I personally don’t think it needs always to be brought to people’s attention unless perhaps at the end, after everyone has had a delightful and enjoyable meal.

The argument for the other side — that it is not rude for non-vegans to eat animal products in the presence of vegans — is that people are entitled to make their own decisions about what they want to eat. A follow-up to this point is that it’s not up to vegans to impose their values on everyone else.

My response to this type of argument is that, first, people are indeed entitled to make their own decisions about what they eat but that doesn’t mean that some choices in some company aren’t rude. But isn’t that imposing vegan values on everyone? The simple fact of it being rude does not mean that vegans are “imposing their values” on other people. Few people endorse animal cruelty and only the most woefully (or willfully) ignorant are unaware of the horrors of factory farming. If a person actually objects to cruelty to animals, and if they acknowledge the data that show factory farming to be cruel, then supporting those industries is inconsistent with their values. It’s not only vegans who believe animal cruelty to be morally problematic.

All that said, most omnivores who insist on eating animal products around people who think that’s ethically concerning haven’t thought it through enough to realize that it’s rude. That’s in large part because not eating animal products is perceived as a preference on the same order as not liking to eat mushrooms or brussels sprouts. If I simply didn’t like brussels sprouts, it wouldn’t be rude of you to eat them as long as you didn’t force me to do the same. Indeed, thinking of it this way means that most people think it’s sufficient for vegans to have something they can eat (range of choice is not seen as important). As noted in the post about what vegans owe to non-vegans, vegans’ gratitude in such scenarios is expected.

Some events of late have turned the “dietary preference” thing around and made plant-based the default. People who have to have animal products need to check a box that indicates their special need. A friend who hosted a catered event with this approach recently said that there were a handful of omnivores who felt affronted that they had to tick a box to make their special request. Why shouldn’t the vegans have to do this and not the meat-eaters? (I have written about meat-eaters’ fragility in other posts).

If I think this, then why do I dine with non-vegans in omnivore scenarios at all? Not everyone draws the line in the same place, but a lot of the people I like and love are omnivores and eating together with others is one of life’s great pleasures. Would I rather eat only and always with people who don’t insist on eating animal products around me? Yes. But I would rather maintain these relationships than lose them. And the widespread ideology of human dominion over non-human animals means that the vast majority of people are unreflective in this area of their life and think it’s normal. They wish factory farming wasn’t cruel, but they can’t conceive of another way to eat.

Rather than put the moral pressure on the omnivores to make respectful choices in the presence of vegans, the trend seems to be to expect vegans to cater to the lack of imagination of omnivores. When I asked a vegan friend why there was prime rib being served at a party in her honour, she responded that “the meat-eaters have to eat too!” I don’t really understand that response. It suggests that they can’t possibly eat and enjoy a meal (not even just one meal) unless it includes dead animals. That just can’t be true. It seemed to me like a missed opportunity to show that delicious food doesn’t need to involve dead animals or animal secretions.

If I actually articulated this view out loud at events or dinner parties I would be considered a guest who ought not be invited. It would also be strategically bad for veganism in general if all of us all the time ranted about the morally troubling (and rude!) choices of omnivores whenever we were exposed to those choices.

So I don’t do that.

Rudeness is all around us in many different forms every single day. Many people take a pass on calling out specific instances of rudeness in all kinds of social settings. It would be hard to survive the world if we didn’t do this.

But I offer it today as something to think about if you’re an omnivore who sometimes eats with people who are plant-based for ethical and environmental reasons. It’s also worth thinking about if you’re plant-based and eat with omnivores. You aren’t the only one who has to “show consideration.” You deserve some consideration too. The concerns at the root of ethical and environmentally conscious food choices are not trivial reasons that hold no moral weight. They are well-considered conclusions reached after taking into account empirical data and measuring it against widely shared moral values about cruelty to animals and harm to the environment. Treating the resulting choices as if they are simple dietary preferences trivializes their significance and demonstrates a level of disrespect and dismissal that is rude.