The Skepchick blog is mostly a sadly typical example of bien pensant left-“liberal” orthodoxy trying to pass itself off as “skepticism”. In a rare fit of common-sense, though, the blog acutely observed that “Food is for white liberals what sex is to the religious right”. Ignoring that the statement is yet another example of modern leftism’s obsessive anti-white racism (Skepchick might want to consider the obsessive food rules of various “brown” religions, for instance), it also has more than a grain of truth.
As a famous sketch from Portlandia satirised, the “liberal” left (and not just the white ones) wear their “sustainability” credentials like a purity ring. But, like an “abstinence”-educated teenager knocked up at 16, are the more-heirloom-than-thou, grain-fed, free-range farmers-market vegans really so pure as they pretend?
Probably the most vegan item you can buy in the supermarket is a pound of grass-fed beef.
I was thinking that heretical thought as I drove through my neighboring countryside, scanning empty cornfields for signs of life.
It’s about here that the writer begins to skid off the rails into a load of Gaia-ist hogwash about “life energy”, “the hubris of mankind” and other such hippie nonsense: even an “empty” cornfield, for instance, is bursting with life, after all, especially the unseen biomass in the soil. But the basic point is sound:
Sadly, in the practice of agriculture as it exists now, it is impossible to refrain from causing endless suffering to many living creatures…I don’t believe in any way that a vegan diet actually causes less suffering in the long run than any other diet. All annual agriculture provides fertile ground for the casual extermination of hundreds of species of animals on a yearly basis. If I include in my analysis all of the animals harmed in the grand scale of agriculture, including the invertebrates and not just the large mammals, I have to conclude that cultivating the cornfield is the most murderous of all activities.
That is why, in truth, a pound of grass-fed beef accounts for less suffering per capita than a pound of corn.
It is not difficult to agree with the basic idea at the heart of veganism – animal suffering – but veganism as a practice is frankly utterly divorced from reality. Not just the reality that death is an inevitable consequence of eating, but that veganism itself probably causes more suffering. Veganism, then, is about assuming a false cloak of moral superiority.
Cultivating a savior complex is a natural result of following any ideological cause, and life is then seen through a frame that excludes anything that doesn’t fit into its limited ideology. And the reality is that we all consume life energy, endlessly, in order to live our daily lives…If the primary goal of veganism is to reduce suffering, then many of us are vegan, and a diet composed of primarily grass-fed beef and dairy, as well as free-range chicken eggs and perennial plant products, is the most vegan diet that I can think of. A diet based on grass that is never tilled, with no worm disturbed, no gopher sliced in half, allows nature to grow and flourish without our annual agricultural blades, machines, and chemicals.
Consider, on the other hand, the acme of millennial veganism and the avocado.
Acres of rainforest are being bulldozed to plant more avocado trees. Demand is so high that Mexico, which produces about half of the world’s supply, is thinking about importing avocados,while an average Mexican can’t even afford to buy them to eat.
Farmers in Mexico are cutting down pine forests in order to grow the lucrative crop and may threaten the habitat of Monarch butterflies.
All this to say, having your vegan raw food avocado chocolate cake isn’t as harmless as you may think.
medium.com/@drewfrench/grass-fed-beef-the-most-vegan-item-in-the-supermarket
So put down the avocados and have a steak. But don’t settle for the supermarket stuff: go really vegan and order a free-range, sustainably-sourced treat, with some Whale Meat bacon.