Category: Animal Suffering
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Travelling while vegan: Costa Rica gets a B
I am travelling home today from Costa Rica, where I participated in a long-awaited wildlife photography tour. As I like to do when I travel, I want to comment on what it is like to travel as a vegan in this part of the world. My comments won’t be representative of the whole country because…
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On the matter of protein and dessert
It’s a well-known fact that if you tell someone you’re vegan there is a very good chance that they will ask you what you do for protein. People picture a plate. It is divided into three parts; meat or fish, potatoes or rice, and veggies. When you say you’re vegan they imagine an empty third.…
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The future is (alt) meat
We have a breakfast and lunch place near us in Toronto called Evviva. They have two menus. One is “regular” and the other is a full plant-based menu, the most extensive I’ve ever seen for breakfast and brunch. You can get scrambled or sunny-side up eggs with your plant-based bacon and sausage. You can get…
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You don’t have to eat dead birds on Thanksgiving (or ever)
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US. It’s an occasion where millions of people give no thought whatsoever to their tradition of eating a dead, stuffed bird. 46 million turkeys die to become the focal point of festive tables across the country. That volume of production means factory farming, which accounts for 99.8% of all turkey…
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Can Jane Goodall inspire you to go vegan?
The world lost Jane Goodall last week, but her legacy of advocacy for non-human animals will have a lasting impact. Many people have lamented her death, posting tributes and professing to share her values. In 2017, Jane Goodall wrote: “There are three main reasons why we should eat less – or preferably no – meat.…
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Is it rude to eat animal products in the presence of vegans?
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…
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Do vegans have obligations to non-vegans?
A couple of weeks ago I raised three topics for future discussion. Last week I discussed omni restaurants that include vegan options. Today I’m skipping past the second question and instead going on to the third (I’ll go back to the second next time). In the original post I put it as “how tolerant should…
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Thoughts to foreshadow future topics
Getting back to the blog after an hiatus, you’d think I’d have no end of topics lined up. Instead, I just have a swirl of thoughts that I need to wrestle into some sort of order before I can give them their due. So today let me get started on taming the swirl by identifying…
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Has beef really been “unfairly” vilified? Spoiler: no.
A while back a few people sent me an article from the New York Times about meat “making a comeback.” To believe that you need to believe it went anywhere. The narrative reminds me so much of when people start wringing their hands about “unqualified workforces” because suddenly there is a small percentage of people…
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Study shows meat-eaters make up bad excuses to keep eating meat
A group of Danish researchers has done a study to show what most vegans (and lots of non-vegans) already know: people make up excuses to keep eating meat even when they know that it would be good for the climate. According to the lead researcher: “All of the participants – predominantly meat eaters – agree…
