Category: Animal Suffering
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Why vegans avoid honey
I’m on a photography tour of France right now with a group of people who aren’t vegan. And though everyone is nice about it (at least to my face!), it’s been a bit of a challenge. When I’m trying to get along with people, especially new people, I’m not inclined to go toe-to-toe about reasons…
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Whom do you care for?
Bruges is a lovely town in Belgium, known for its beauty. Think well-preserved medieval buildings and quaint canals. It is also home to one of Europe’s oldest surviving hospital buildings, Sint-Janshospital, which is now a museum. The main hall where they used to care for patients has the grandeur of a church. It operated as…
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The ableism of arguments from intelligence
A friend to whom I recently recommended Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms around Us thanked me this week. He loved the book, and rightly so. It’s stellar, as I reported when I read it some time ago. And I was happy to have it brought back to mind.…
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Is imperfect veganism a defence of moral imperfection?
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…
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What is a vegan to do when a favourite plant-based business expands to include animal products?
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve heard of two example — one local here in London, Ontario and one elsewhere, in LA — where a formerly fully plant-based business has decided to “change its business model” to include animal products. This decision always generates backlash among vegans, who see it as a betrayal and,…
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Engage or chill?
Considering I’m a philosopher who has essentially been trained to argue, you might think my answer to “when to engage?” is “whenever the opportunity arises.” But that is not my approach at all. I have limited time and energy. I do not engage when it is hopeless. And there is a certain baiting approach, where…
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What do you do with the “may contain…” allergen warning?
Anyone who has ever spent time reading ingredient labels to see if a product is vegan is aware of the frequently-seen “may contain” warning. This warning is usually associated with known allergens, and most often will list tree nuts, soy, wheat, dairy, or eggs. I confess that I have usually considered this warning to be…
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Bees: it’s not just about honey
Lots of people wonder why vegans don’t eat honey. The short answer is that it is produced through the labour of bees, which makes it an animal product and therefore not vegan. You may find some vegans who don’t worry about honey, possibly because they don’t consider insects to be animals or possibly because they…
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Killer Cute Shoes
Towards the end of his brilliant essay, “Consider the Lobster,” David Foster Wallace asks a series of questions, among them: Which brings me to the issue of leather shoes. [note that the shoes pictured above are cruelty-free, not leather] If people are open to thinking about these issues at all, they are willing to consider…
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Compassion as a reason to be vegan
I’ve said it before: one of my favourite things about starting this blog is that people send me things of interest that I might have missed. Last week someone sent me a link to Leo Babauta’s post, “Why I am Vegan (and how to make it easy),” from his Zen Habits site (thanks Daphne!). I…
Vegan Practically 