by Annalise Rodgers
“A modified practice of veganism includes forgiveness, understanding, and compassion for themselves. It also allows for space to be able to make mistakes while still claiming veganism as a prevalent identity even if they are not ‘perfect’ vegans."
-- Naomi M. Kolb-Untinen
I’m vegan. Well, I’m mostly vegan. Chea-gan (cheating vegan). *shiver* Definitely not that. I don’t really view eating a croissant every once in a while as cheating. And I pretty much hate the socially constructed binary that is created around veganism; that you have to either be 100% vegan or you should never claim the label. I ate pizza today because it was free (and damn is free pizza good). And my partner made grilled cheese and tomato soup, definitely not gonna turn that down. Maybe I should label myself as a vegetarian with vegan tendencies. That takes way too long to say. What about environmental vegan? That at least includes some sort of utilitarian aspect to it; now I’m vegan but if I order at a restaurant and they accidentally include eggs in my Pad Thai I’ll still eat it rather than watch it go to waste. The label I’ve been using most recently is habitual vegan. I habitually cook and consume vegan food.
I am lucky in all of this to be able to even have the option of being habitually vegan. I have no food allergies, I can walk to a grocery store and have some amount of time and resources to do so. I grew up mostly eating vegetarian so I have already built many of the habits I need to prepare vegan meals and was never grew up with the idea that meat has to be the main course. I know how to cook, at least at a basic level. And I’m lowkey afraid of meat after watching documentaries on the U.S. agricultural system and reading Michael Pollan.
But I can’t just say I’m vegan. There is a binary surrounding being vegan; a weird militant feeling about it. I have had more than a few people respond with “oh wow I could never do that” or “being chill about being vegan makes me want to actually try it.” To me, these sentiments seem to stem from the binary of being either ‘100% will not eat anything cooked in the same pan as a chicken’ vs habitually being mostly vegan. I’m not passing judgment either way, but I do want to point out why I am habitually vegan and want other people to at least feel empowered to try.
I saw chalk on my college campus the other day that read “meat is murder, stop eating animal products tomorrow” and I have a few things to point out. For one, I am not vegan because I am empathetic toward animals. I’m not saying I’m cold-hearted and apathetic to the plight of animals in our agriculture system, but I am saying I didn’t begin this journey because animals were suffering. I became vegan because humans are suffering.
¼ to ⅓ of all carbon emissions around the world come from the agriculture industry. Not only that, the production of meat and animal products uses much more water than the production of vegetables. Even the production of chicken uses over four times more water than it takes to grow vegetables (Fig. 1). Animal products simply use more energy and more resources.
Fig. 1
Not only are more resources used in production, but where they end up can be detrimental to human health. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), a type of factory farm, are intensive feeding operations where meat and other animal products can be produced fast and in large quantities. 98% of all meat consumed in the US comes from CAFOs. The problems that stem from these operations are almost infinite. CAFOs produce 3 to 20 times the amount of human waste produced in a year with no sewage treatment requirements or regulations. They leach ammonia into surrounding waters which kills aquatic life and pollutes water sources. “The excess production of manure and problems with storage or manure management can affect ground and surface water quality. Emissions from degrading manure and livestock digestive processes produce air pollutants that often affect ambient air quality in communities surrounding CAFOs [Fig. 2]. CAFOs are also a source of greenhouse gases which contribute to global climate change.” Treating animals with antibiotics is greater in CAFOs because of the large number of animals in close confinement which increases the likelihood that disease and bacteria will spread rapidly. “Seventy percent of all antibiotics and related drugs in the U.S. each year are given to beef cattle, hogs, and chickens as feed additives,” and worse they are “identical to ones given to humans.” “There is strong evidence that the use of antibiotics in animal feed is contributing to an increase in antibiotic-resistant microbes and causing antibiotics to be less effective for humans.”
Groundwater pollution, surface water pollution, air quality decline, greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change, antibiotic contamination, insect vectors, pathogen spread, and falling property values. These are all side-effects of CAFOs which more intensely affect those living near them. And who has historically been systematically forced to live near CAFOs? Poor people and communities systematically and historically marginalized by structures of power. The history of racism in the US agricultural system is deep. An article that goes more in-depth about it is linked here, but basically, historic planned redlining has forced generations of Black and Native American farmers out of business and built large industrial CAFOs and waste facilities in their marginalized communities that are not afforded the resources to fight back. A case study of this recently happened in North Carolina where residents began pushing back against the water pollution caused by the CAFOs nearby. This case study was in regards to the company Smithfield Foods but Monsanto currently and historically has been terrorizing small-scale farmers and using their power to control the agricultural industry in their favor.
However, one person eating a more vegan diet won’t fix climate change or water pollution, or the massive problems stemming from CAFOs. The myth of personal responsibility is already sold to us by oil companies and large corporations. But adopting vegan habits is the physical manifestation of the breaking of a boundary; a change in the way we can think about our values for community and who we want our community to be.
But it’s not that easy to just ‘stop eating meat tomorrow.’ There’s no binary switch to flick. Many people feel like a meal is not complete without meat as the center dish. It’s hard to rewire our brains to see what eating can look like without it. It takes resources and education to learn what vegan cooking looks like; how to cook tofu or just that we can discard the rhetoric tying masculinity to meat and protein in America and embrace beans.
A quick note here on food apartheid. Food apartheid in the US is a barrier to veganism or any type of intentional food consumption for many people, however interested and passionate they might be. Food apartheid is “a system of segregation that divides those with access to an abundance of nutritious food and those who have been denied that access due to systemic injustice.” In other words, redlining and historically planned racist systems in the US deny marginalized groups, mostly along the basis of race but also economic status and the intersection of the two, access to plant foods. “Unequal access to healthy food contributes to hunger, obesity, and related diseases like diabetes and heart disease; it harms people of color at higher rates than white people; and it is linked to the industrial animal agriculture system.In 2020, food insecurity affected just over 10% of households in the United States, with Black and Hispanic households experiencing the problem at rates of 21.7% and 17.2%, respectively - roughly double the national average.” A case study demonstrating this exact problem can be seen in a neighborhood in Jacksonville, FL where fresh produce is hard to come by and many do not have the resources to travel to acquire them.
So how do we embrace beans? How do we embrace the values that eating vegan embraces and adopt community-minded intentional consumption? More than physical boundaries, this project is about the social construction of boundaries; how we view veganism as political consumption, as a way for those of us who can to exercise our privilege in an intentional, compassionate, way. This approach, from yet another discipline, provides a framework for unpacking what this can look like and how we can discuss it. Naomi M. Kolb-Untinen lays out a helpful concept in their thesis titled “The Disruptive Potential of a Queer Vegan Praxis.” They discuss how “arbitrary vegan-nonvegan binaries and notions of purity and perfection can be deconstructed using a queer framework.” This is exactly the problem that I have with the culture and social boundaries that surround the idea of the “vegan” label. I have addressed some of the practical and accessibility issues around assuming everyone can just wake up tomorrow and choose to be 100% vegan. However, their focus is rather “to show the potential that veganism holds to further disrupt the normativity and binaries that the queer community is already so dedicated to dismantling.” I’m queer and I’m vegan. I never really put the two together but I guess my brain did in a way thanks to Standpoint Theory. There are few things I see as black and white, especially when it comes to identity. And when the label of vegan is being treated as a black-and-white identity I have a problem. Militant veganism and binary polarization are suppressing sustainable eating habits.
My favorite part about studying the environment and studying food and agricultural systems is that food is a social binder. Community is built around food. Our bodies digest food more efficiently when we eat with people. Culture is built around food. The foods you eat reflect social status (and often economic/class status). Some of these may be a choice, but many of them are the physical manifestation of planned social systems. It is an act of privilege and political consumption to intentionally change what we eat.
So I’m habitually vegan because of humans, and because the act of being habitually vegan reminds me of personal actions that uplift communities and values through sharing food and common experience. This also allows me to focus on my own values and habits around veganism instead of trying to evangelize or guilt others into eating a certain way. I don’t really care what you do. There are so many factors I don’t know and can’t control, I only know what works for me. So, I am constantly trying to adopt personal habits for intentional consumption. My passion for studying the intersection of the environment and agricultural systems has led me to a habitually vegan conclusion.
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