This post is a follow-up to my “case for a non-mammalian food ethic.” I’ve given that case some more thought and have decided that honesty requires more nuance than either continuing to call myself a (straight) vegetarian or calling myself a “non-mammalian.” The latter term is confusing in any case, since “mammalian” could either mean someone who eats mammals or someone who doesn’t (because they love and defend them).
Here’s my thinking.
In making food choices, I consider at least the following criteria, in no particular order:
(1) taste (what I like and enjoy eating),
(2) nutrition (what my bodily health requires),
(3) companionship (what those I eat with hope or expect me to eat with them),
(4) cost and ease of getting and preparing specific foods, and
(5) ethics (social, ecological, political, cultural).
The last factor has a general conditioning effect on the others: I try to avoid food that I know comes from factory farms or from producers with unjust labor practices, ecologically unsound practices, etc.; I try to eat lower rather than higher on the food chain; I try to favor food with lower cost “offloads,” where, for instance, the cost of fossil fuel use is being “offloaded” to climate change victims or to future generations; and so on.
But it also trumps the other factors in the drawing of a few specific (“harder” or “softer”) lines of demarcation, namely:
(5a) I don’t eat mammals, since their sociality renders their individual lives far more worthy of protection (in my view, and more obviously in the view of their kin) than any desire I might have for their flesh. (And creating industrial systems that reduce mammals to mere foodstuff is even more objectionable to me, for reasons that I won’t get into here but that you could probably guess.)
(5b) I don’t eat cephalopods (octopus, squid, et al.) or others (an open category) whose individual intelligence and curiosity also puts them into a category too close to our own. (It’s not about being human-centered here, but about caring for those who are obviously intelligent and curious individuals, as opposed to those whose intelligence is of a more trans-individual and “distributed” nature, such as insects, probably all plants, and arguably fish and birds — though things get complicated there. Leaving this category open means negotiating around the question of whether to eat chicken, for instance.)
(5c) And I don’t eat things whose eating contributes to significant species endangerment or social or ecological suffering. (This last is a loose criterion that factors into the overall balance, but it’s pretty easy to come up with some examples where it functions as a demarcation line. For instance, if I had a choice between eating a peregrine falcon or a white-tailed deer, whose prevalence around here is pretty abundant, that choice, even despite rule “5a,” would favor eating the latter.)
The one significant exception to these rules (5a-c) is this: When a food would otherwise be wasted (or composted) and when its eating doesn’t significantly contribute to its further consumption (i.e., to perpetuating the system of its production & consumption), then eating it is okay. (That’s the “freegan” modification.)
So: what should I call this dietary preference?
It’s not quite “vegetarian,” and calling it “modified lacto-ovo-pesca-pollo-vegetarian” may be technically correct, but is far too complicated. The “modified” bit there is necessary, as the “LOPPVism” is modified in the direction of flexitarianism, freeganism, a bit of locavorism, and a broad eco-social justice orientation. “Flexitarian,” however, is a pretty meaningless designation once you get down to details. If it means “kind of vegetarian,” then it’s fairly accurate, but “flexi-” also suggests a kind of instability at the very core, which doesn’t do justice to the reality. Finally, “non-mammalian” doesn’t quite describe this set of value criteria, though it does describe a piece of it.
I think it’s useful and fair to retain some reference to “vegetarianism” insofar as that suggests a cultural affinity for vegetarianism as a broad movement and ethical orientation. In that case, the terms that suggest themselves are “quasi-vegetarian,” “para-vegetarian,” “flexi-vegetarian” (which is more specific than “flexitarian”), and “post-vegetarian.” At the same time, I have friends who eat locally produced meat who I see as more ethically consistent in their food habits than I am in mine, and retaining the word “vegetarianism” cuts them out of my loop of dietary compatriots. This tells me that no such term is going to be perfect. (And continuing to talk about all these ins and outs is also not what I want to do nor what most people would want to listen to.)
So, for now, I think I’ll alternate between “quasi-vegetarian” and “flexi-vegetarian” and see where that gets me.
Thoughts?
I find the order of your criteria interesting and in particular that the ethical considerations come last, though you admit they influence the other factors higherup on the list somewhat.
I don’t think it is wise to classify yourself as someone who does not eat mammals if you still consume their products (such as dairy and eggs for example). The production practices and ethical problems with their consumption and production could fill many, many pages. I urge you to consider the ethics of the vegan option which implicate much more than just one’s diet. It also contributes to shaping one’s worldview and our place in the community of beings on this planet. Abuse and exploitation for our consumption has many parallels in human abuse and exploitation in the current world economic and political systems. Inevitably a move towards veganism has and will have a massive impact politically and economically worldwide as economies of scale kick in, and though slowly, they are definitely now both kicking ass and kicking in!
Hi Pam – I listed the criteria “in no particular order,” and I don’t think they can easily be ordered. There are ethical arguments that trump (sorry for using the word) other ones, so perhaps I should list them first. But in my life they certainly did not come first (chronologically) nor do they seem to in most of my everyday food decisions (such as whether to eat Italian food or Vietnamese, drink tea or juice, etc.).
If I were a vegan they certainly would. But I find that my life has enough intensity applied to enough things already that taking on a vegan lifestyle would tip the scales toward impossibility. I live among meat eaters (and “soft” vegetarians), eat out a lot, have very little time for preparing food or going to greater lengths to seek it out and to ensure adequate nutrition, etc. (Well, I suppose I could stop blogging, facebooking, and all that. But I won’t.)
I’m aware of the arguments for veganism, but also some against. Being a pragmatist inclines me to seek out the things that agree with my habits (of eating, socializing, etc.) rather than those that require remaking myself more radically; and to seek out larger coalitions (e.g., with the very vibrant local food movement here in Vermont, including those who practice sustainable animal husbandry and all that, and to the traditions of livelihood around the world that are or could constitute alternatives to the global capitalist food system) rather than smaller ones (e.g., with vegans, who constitute a tiny minority globally).
Long story short… Be well.
On the mammals point, I began life by consuming human breast milk, but that never made me a cannibal. I think our options for sustainably feeding 10+ billion humans (a number that’s inevitable) would be severely limited if we eliminated millennia-old traditions of locally/regionally adapted pastoralism and animal husbandry that are still extant around the world.
In the long haul, I think that global veganism could become a real option, but it would require a more total remake of the planet. Global warming could actually help that happen, as it would extend the growing season for a lot of things in parts of the world that are currently “underpopulated,” while giving time for the massive populations of domesticated animals (and industrial meat production) to decline. But it may depend on industrial ag practices in ways that (lacto-ovo-)vegetarian and meat-based diets today don’t necessarily have to, at least not where there’s a rich local food culture to benefit from.
not sure that labels (apart from advertising in say restaurants or grocery stores) are so helpful in the long run along these lines, something like eco-friendly or eco-aligned might be in the right direction maybe?
any signs of this (https://www.thenation.com/article/democrats-can-win-rural-voters-by-taking-on-big-agriculture) where you are? here in Iowa we don’t really have a viable alternative to BIG AG that would do anything but speed up the inevitable collapse of our state economy/politics (no learnin from Kansas here, we are immune to evidence to the contrary) and I can’t even get our local lefties to take degrowth seriously let alone the moral majorities.
I find labels necessary only because I often get asked (when invited to a meal) whether I have any dietary restrictions…
Vermont has a huge (for its size) small ag industry, but I find the class composition of its supporters to be somewhat limited.
gotcha, I’ve just found it easier (given how loose/variable these terms are in use, so many “vegetarians” that eat fish, birds, etc) to list ingredients that are out,
sad news but unsurprising (was hoping for a little Bernie bounce tho he seems pretty disconnected from the political potential of food/supply-chains) so many folks sucked into the consumerism of their liberal politics being reduced to trips to the farmers market or buying into some share of microgreens and the rest that real politics/economics isn’t really on the table or even really at the farm.
Well, I think it is “real economics”: good food is just more expensive than cheap food, and cheap food is what capitalism excels at giving us. We do have some policies meant to tweak that (farm-to-school programs, etc.), but they swim upstream of the economies of scale that make life affordable for 7.5 billion humans. (Well, 6.5; nearly a billion are chronically undernourished.)
consumer “choice” is prescripted by the ‘real” econ/pol of crony-capitalism not the other way around was just my point, Monsanto/Bayer etc rule our rural ag states poison our land and water and extract the value to big cities/investors, plus as we you know we subsidize the very commodities that make us chronically ill and bust our govt budgets while vegetables and the like get little to no tax $ and on and on.
just wait in this country when the growing gap in vet coverage really hits the industrial animal production supply chains, will we cut back on production to be safe? ha…
Like most big decisions in life, my decision to turn vegan was not driven by data, but by emotions. I was aware of the harm diets like mine caused to the planet https://vivavideomaker.com/