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Discrimination and Bias in the Vegan Ideal

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Discrimination and Bias in the Vegan Ideal Discrimination and Bias in the Vegan Ideal KATHRYN PAXTON GEORGE Department of Philosophy University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83843, USA Abstract The vegan ideal is entailed by arguments for ethical veganism based on traditional moral theory (rights and~or utilitarianism) extended to animals. The most ideal lifestyle would abjure the use of animals or their products for food since animals suffer and have rights not to be killed. The ideal is discriminatory because the arguments presuppose a "male physiological norm" that gives a privileged position to adult, middle-class males living in industrialized countries. Women, children, the aged, and others have substantially different nutritional requirements and would bear a greater burden on vegetarian and vegan diets with respect to health and economic risks, than do these males. The poor and many persons in Third World nations live in circumstances that make the obligatory adoption of such diets, where they are not already a matter of sheer necessity, even more risky. Traditional moral theorists (such as Evelyn Pluhar and Gary Varner whose essays appear in this issue) argue that those who are at risk would be excused from a duty to attain the virtue associated with ethical vegan lifestyles. The routine excuse of nearly everyone in the world besides adult, middle-class males in industrialized countries suggests bias in the per- spective from which traditional arguments for animal rights and (utilitarian) animal welfare are formulated. Keywords: animal rights, animal welfare, children, diet, ethics, scien- tific reasoning, values, vegan, vegetarian, women's health. Introduction In his book, Rachel and Her Children, Jonathan Kozol (1988) interviews the poo~ and homeless of New York City. Mr. Alessandro, an Italian man, has lost his wife, his job, his home, and 45 pounds from hunger. He lives with his 73-year-old mother and his three children in a single room in the Martinique Hotel (pp. 54-59). Every day Mr. Alessandro looks for work, and he looks for permanent housing on a wel- fare allowance too small ever to give him hope of leaving the hotel. His food stamp allowance for himself and the three children is $50 per month (p. 60). During the interview Kozol realizes that the children are quite literally starving. He gives Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 1994, 7(1) 19-28 20 Kathryn Paxton George the man $20 to buy food. There is no local supermarket, only a convenience store. Mr. Alessandro brings back "a box of Kellogg's Special K, a gallon of juice, a half gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, a package of sausages, a roll of toilet paper" (p. 59). Rachel and her children live in the same hotel in a similar room: When we moved here I was forced to sign a paper. Everybody has to do it. It's a promise that you will not cook inside your room. So we lived on cold bologna (p. 66). Plenty of children livin' here on nothin' but bread and bologna. Peanut butter. Jelly. Drinkin' water. You buy milk. I bought one gallon yesterday. Got this much left. They drink it fast. Orange juice, they drink it fast. End up drinkin' Kool Aid (p. 68). These are America's urban poor, 700,000 of whom are children living in New York City alone (p. 5). Most of them live in households headed by women. They do not have a healthy diet. Their parents cannot cook fresh vegetables for them, even if they could buy them. Although many hotel residents break the rules and use hotplates, Kozol attests to the difficulty of cooking any kind of meal in these conditions. Many hotel residents do not even have refrigerators to keep food from spoiling. Did Mr. Alessandro do something wrong when he brought meat, eggs, and milk home for his children to eat? My colleagues arguing on the basis of traditional moral theory (rights and utilitarianism) would say yes, but these people are excused They cannot help doing these wrongful things (e.g., Regan, 1983; Pluhar, 1992). We aren't supposed to blame them but forgive them. I object to the attitude that all these people are by circumstance and by phys- iology, as I shall later show, morally deficient. The vegan ideal, the idea that people oughtto abstain from eating not only meat but all animal by-products, is the stan- dard against which they are measured an~ fail. In this paper I will show that the ideal itself is discriminatory in that it supposes that a single definable class of persons is better than--more virtuous than--all others. The class of morally superior people is defined by its physiology and by its power. 1 What is "vegan ideal"? As I am referring to it here, it is a vision of oneself to which some persons think we should a//aspire. Those who attain the ideal or attempt to attain it come to possess an admirable character trait or a virtue. Regan (1983) and Singer (1975) argue explicitly for a rule of moral vegetarianism based on the interests of animals in not suffering pain and death. Those who follow the rule are moral, those who do not are doing something immoral. By direct implica- tion, persons who consistently follow such rules are said to be virtuous; those who ignore or fail to obey valid moral rules are said to be vicious. Thus, if Regan and Singer are correct, virtuous persons would be vegetarians at least, and vegans ideally since vegans eat no animal flesh or products. Thus, Regan and Singer endorse the "vegan ideal. ''2 Now, this ideal in their view is mora1Iy required of good persons. It is not simply something a good person would do as a charitable act of kindness. Charity is not required in any strong sense. In their view it is Discrimination and bias in the vegan ideal 21 a matter of justice to pursue the vegan ideal. Following a simple moral rule that forbids the killing of animals who pose no threat to us is required for those who aspire to be truly good persons-persons of integrity, virtue, and high moral character--persons who would be just as well as charitable. The vegan or vegetarian ideal did not arise ex nihilo, but instead has complex historical roots in many different religions, morality, and even in the origins of agriculture itself. For instance, when related to dietary practices, the improvement of the soul and especially the promotion of rationalistic and mystical knowledge has been thought to be served by restrictions on meat consumption. In fact, all major world religions have vegetarian sects within them. The more exquisitely spiritualistic the religious order, the more likely the monastic male is to exist on a limited diet of bread and water--a vegan ideal. In fact, bread and wine (both all- plant foods) are still the celebrated Christian sacred symbols of life and spirit. Like- wise, the idealization of vegan and vegetarian food practice is linked to class dis- tinctions and the hierarchical search for power. It has been used to separate men from men, women from men, the poor from the rich, the "dregs" of society from the "highest and most holy." While these themes could and do take up whole books, my aim here, as in the past (George, 1990, 1992, 1994), is simply to show that the "vegan ideal" is not an ideal for all. It may be adopted as a personal lifestyle choice or a political stratagem, but it cannot be a moralideal applicable to all regardless of age, sex, class, ethnicity, or culture. To argue for such a universal application would be discriminatory and presuppose a bias in favor of adult, middle-class males living in high-tech societies--the group with the most power in our world. The appropriateness of vegan or vegetarian lifestyles is relative to individual and cul- tural circumstance. It is not universal. In arguing for vegetarian or vegan diets on traditional moral grounds, philosophers suppose that all humans have the same bodies and that the burdens are relatively evenly distributed--we are all pretty much the same physiologically and differences among us may safely be ignored as morally irrelevans Both assumptions are false. Women and men are not the same physiologically. Children and adults are not the same. The aged and the young are not the same. Indeed, in at least a few respects relevant to food practice, races and ethnicities are not the same. The empirical evi- dence for this has been a recent topic of debate in this journal (see Pluhar, 1992; George 1990, 1992 in addition to the articles in this issue). What all my opponents center on is r/s/c But risk is not the primary issue. 3 What is at issue is this: From whose perspective shall we assess risk? From the perspective of predominantly white, adult Western males? Or from the perspective of Third World women or their chil- dren? Shall we ask these questions from the perspective of the powerful or the vul- nerable? The answer to such questions depends upon whom you think ethics is meant to serve. If ethics is meant to protect the rich and the powerful, their rights and privileges, then perhaps you will not agree with my arguments in this paper. But I believe that ethics must consider the concerns of the vulnerable and that some attempt must be made to draft an ethics which accounts for and concerns itself with the perspectives of the very differently situated persons and animals with whom we share the earth.
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