A tough job for vegans

913: 

Veganism isn’t just about food, it’s an idea, only part of which concerns food. Getting people to adopt a vegan diet isn’t an end in itself, it simply allows us to look at vegan principle without being knocked back by our own food practices.

This principle, logically, gives rise to the diet. It gives rise to a boycott which is based on a shift in the way humans interact with the animal kingdom. If we only give people advice about vegan diet, it isn’t necessarily going to change them as people. Diet advice on its own won’t give people something that is inspiring or completely rational enough to convince them to get rid of certain ingrained habits.

Almost all of us have been omnivorous at one time in our life. We’ve been brought up with specific ideas about food, regarding the safety of it and the ethical acceptability of it. We’ve been brought up to think it wrong (disgusting in fact) to eat cats and dogs. Most of us wouldn’t eat horse. And we probably wouldn’t eat whale meat. Many people today would refuse to eat pate de foie gras. But all the rest of it (that is available animal food) is still fashionable to eat. We are habituated to eat flesh and by-products from a whole range of animals, and many of these foods are eaten so often throughout our lives that we become addicted to them, and then it’s the constant supply of them that becomes more important than anything else.

For those of us who are keen to see the end of animal farming (and therefore the drying up of supplies of all animal foods), we must never underestimate how much of what we say pushes sensitive buttons. We need to understand the logic of an omnivore mind and why they believe in these, their favourite foods. We have to understand what it is about these foods, the taste and texture of them, the feel of them as they slip past taste buds and move through the throat and into the stomach - this is how food is supposed to feel. It’s a daily fix. It’s the thing which fuels our life. It makes a person feel physically satisfied. The food they like best is essential, and their very life depends on the supply of it.

Vegans are up against all of this. It is the greatest and most entrenched reality of life. Until we fully appreciate the extent of the omnivore’s reluctance (to tamper with their meat-based diet) we might never be able to swing enough of them over, to change Society’s violence-based attitudes.