middle roaders

This great gulf of perception between animal users and vegans does have middle ground but it looks weak, compromised, convenient and hypocritical. The middle-road meat eater gives a bit by eating free range eggs or drinking organically fed cow’s milk, but essentially they continue being indifferent towards animals. A vegetarian avoids meat but still takes care not to go too far, for fear of becoming too radicalised, or being too different from friends. For them leather shoes are okay, as is wearing silk and wool or eating butter and eggs – “boycott all of this and you’ll go crazy”, they say. So, it’s the middle of the roaders, as distinct from the uninformed, who know enough but who are still unwilling to act and who (from our point of view) are ethically most at risk. We urgently need to make contact with them. But this is where things get tricky for vegan educators, because to the middle roaders the biggest threat to their self esteem comes from vegan argument.
If vegans want to entice middle-ground people to disassociate from animal slavery altogether, they must act as guides rather than inquisitors, educators rather than judges. Vegans need to be informers of details – about what happens to animals down on the farm, about the practicalities of applying vegan principle to daily life. It’s our job to show willing, to allow anyone who is considering change, to take the initiative of changing themselves without being shoved from behind by us.