I made this comment on [email protected] and it feels like something I want to revisit at some point, or post at others who go on about “easing into veganism” But a random comment might get lost and also I’d like some feedback on it.
The problem with “Eventually affordable cruelty-free meat” is that it gives the fence sitters a cushion to delay making a commitment. And we need people to make a hard commitment, either against veganism (i. e. nothing changes) or for veganism (i. e. suffering reduces). There are a certain type of people that wear cruelty like a badge of honor. There was no convincing them anyway. But for most people I would think the cognitive dissonance “I don’t like being cruel vs. I am being cruel” simply has to outweigh the perceived amount of labor that goes into changing ones habits.
And I understand that meat-alternatives tip the scales by lessening the amount of labor required to change ones dietary habits, which is great. I am hugely in favor of that. But there are a couple things that I feel one needs to be mindful of.
a. The focus gets shifted away from the animals and to the “sacrifices” the (former?) oppressor has to make. E.g. This salami is good, but not as good as the “real” one
b. There is a constant reminder of the “sacrifices” the vegan makes. In contrast to the cruelty that is usually completely invisible to the consumer. E.g. every time I eat some vegan salami
c. Substituting meat with vegan alternatives means that if someone decides they are “done sacrificing” comfort, they can simply substitute back. E.g. It’s been such a stressful week, sick of all the vegan salami, just this once…
d. It makes it harder for children of vegan parents to recognise vegan food vs non-vegan food. E. g. Yeah we eat salami at home, so why shouldn’t I eat the salami in the kindergarden? I wish we had more of an alienation from non-vegan food from the beginning with our kids.
It’s the nicotine patches argument all over again. I’m not against meat-alternatives per se, but (here in Germany) there’s such a huge huge trend to offer all kinds of alternatives with little thought given to how we should be approaching this problem. Free nicotine patches to all addicts sounds great but there needs to be a movement for moving past “nicotine addiction” in general which I’m not seeing anywhere.
With the lab-grown flesh stuff I fear all the points above amplified 100fold. It’s functionally flesh, that’s the whole point. Plus since it’s not a practicable alternative it has, for the past 13 years, actually tipped the scales in favor of the “cruelty” cognitive dissonance, by giving it an “eventually”. The amount of (perceived) labor seems greater now than it will be once an “affordable(!) flesh-substitute” arrives, which is somehow always right around the corner. The “I’m too stressed to give up smoking right now” argument. Like yeah don’t quit smoking a week before a big exam, but don’t wait until you can afford a beach vacation either.
I hope that makes sense, in a vegan context it’s of course a bit different because the stakes are quite a bit higher. Do give up murdering as soon as possible. An exam is not more important than someones life. But if you’re so dependant on your current dietary habits that you couldn’t function without it due to some health concerns then lab-grown flesh or other alternatives might be an idea? It is kind of hard because here the oppressors have to police themselves. This is a situation where the oppressed cannot make their voices heard and so we must double and triple-check ourselves and when in doubt go with the more laborious option.
There’s also the point about the food traditions we pass on. (Which is the thread that sparked this argument)
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
Like yeah we are dealt this hand by the generations before us and we have to make the best of it, but lets also be mindful of how we are passing things on. Do we really want the next generation to have lab-grown flesh as a staple in their diet?
One thing that plays into this is concerns about food quality. For instance, there is a chemical difference between grass-fed beef and factory-farmed beef. The latter is the overwhelming majority of what’s on the market today, and the former can (and should) be prohibitively expensive.
For the past 2 decades, fast food places have been adding larger and larger fractions of textured vegetable protein into the mix of menu items with ground meat. In some cases (Subway chicken?) it was as much as 45%. People that want to be eating maximal amounts of animal tissue are going to be disappointed that they’re in one sense almost halfway to replacing all the meat in their diet.
An encouraging trend is how much better the vegan ground (and cutlet) options have been getting, and how they are approaching price parity with meat. Perhaps economic forces will do most of the work on their own.
I’m optimistic that there might not end up being all that much rhetorical convincing to do.
I’m not sure you understood my post? I’m saying that meat substitutes should be a temporary measure for people that can’t go vegan cold turkey. People with who already have a problematic relationship with food and what they can eat (eating disorders, quite a few autists e.g.) might need such a temporary stopgap, but we as a society should wean ourselves of it. It still serves as a reminder of the exploitation that is possible, it still pulls the focus away from the oppressed and on to the treats of oppression, it’s one of those traditions thats going to weigh like a nightmare of future generations.
I wasn’t talking about lab-grown meat, but about Beyond, Impossible, Gardein, and similar product lines.
The reason why people eat meat ultimately comes down to habituation, a lot more than any deep preference. Supermarket shoppers are already alienated from production in that they buy products that are already obscured from their sources; the only way you can visually identify a pork sausage is by the label. Economic incentives currently prop up the meat industries. If favorable policies to making animal products were erased, we would quickly see a major shift in consumption patterns.
For the time being, and potentially always, there is going to be an inherent concern about contamination of meat, quality of livestock feed, also bone and cartilage pieces in ground products, that simply don’t exist with plant-based products.
As for lab-grown muscle tissue, AFAIK it will always run into the trophic ladder problem, which will prevent it from reaching price parity.
Just because “hamburger” traditionally meant cow flesh doesn’t mean it always will. We can have an ideal of something that is nutritious and umami that is detachable from how it originated. “Burger” can come to mean anything of that texture and macronutrient composition. Ultimately, I would say it doesn’t matter too much whether someone is eating Gardein cutlets vs. seitan or tofu or tempeh. The Beyond eater does not necessarily visualize themself eating an animal body. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these products, though what you’re observing does have some situational applicability to how things are today. But if the Impossible burger tastes better and is cheaper and doesn’t involve the same risks as the beef burger, won’t everyone come to see the plant-based product as ideal, and quickly come to see slaughtering animals everywhere as barbaric because of its economic irrelevance? I don’t think people have an underlying tendency to revert to animal products just because they’re animal products. I think they’d be perfectly happy to forget all about what animal products look and feel and taste like, if the plant-based “imitation” product is better in every way.
20 years ago I remember Quorn burgers being totally unpalatable. These days I could go to Burger King, order an Impossible burger, enjoy it more than I would a beef burger, not have to worry about the ethical/karmic burden, and not give a single thought to “what I am eating is ‘supposed’ to emulate animal flesh”. We don’t have to wait for a “one day”; I would say that day is here right now.
Maybe there are some people who will always be drawn to the idea of eating an animal that was killed. However, I think the vast majority of people would be okay with cheap plant-based protein as soon as they got used to it. I don’t think the idea of “vegan food should look distinct from animal products” is a useful approach, for the same reason you gave of expecting oppressors to voluntarily police themselves with no incentive. I don’t think it’s worth it to worry about the aesthetic and semantic purity/distinctiveness of vegan food, as long as the vegan food displaces the animal products. But that’s just my opinion.