{"id":9408,"date":"2017-08-18T13:18:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T18:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=9408"},"modified":"2017-08-18T13:51:17","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T18:51:17","slug":"post-vegetarian-food-ethics-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/08\/18\/post-vegetarian-food-ethics-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-vegetarian food ethics, continued…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is a follow-up to my “case for a non-mammalian food ethic<\/a>.” I’ve given that case some more thought\u00a0and 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\u00a0someone who eats<\/em> mammals or someone who doesn’t<\/em> (because they love and defend\u00a0them).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here’s my thinking.<\/p>\n

In making food choices, I consider at least the following criteria, in no particular order:<\/p>\n

(1) taste (what I like and enjoy eating),
\n(2) nutrition (what my bodily health requires),
\n(3) companionship (what those I eat with hope or expect me to eat with them),
\n(4) cost and ease of getting and preparing specific foods, and
\n(5) ethics (social, ecological, political, cultural).<\/p>\n

The last factor has a general conditioning effect on the others: I try to avoid food that I know\u00a0comes from factory farms or\u00a0from 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,”\u00a0where, for instance, the cost of fossil fuel use is being “offloaded” to climate change victims or to future generations; and so on.<\/p>\n

But it also trumps the other factors in the drawing of a few specific (“harder” or “softer”) lines of demarcation, namely:<\/p>\n

(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\u00a0is even more objectionable to me, for reasons that I won’t get into here but that you could probably guess.)<\/p>\n

(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\u00a0about 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.)<\/p>\n

(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.)<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

So: what should I call this dietary preference?<\/p>\n

It’s not quite “vegetarian,” and calling it “modified lacto-ovo-pesca-pollo-vegetarian” may be\u00a0technically correct<\/a>, but is far\u00a0too complicated. The “modified” bit there is necessary, as the “LOPPVism” is modified in the direction of flexitarianism<\/a>, freeganism, a bit of locavorism, and a broad eco-social justice orientation. “Flexitarian,” however, is a pretty meaningless designation\u00a0once 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\u00a0the 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.<\/p>\n

I think it’s useful and fair to retain some reference to “vegetarianism” insofar as that\u00a0suggests a cultural affinity for vegetarianism as a broad movement and ethical orientation. In that case, the terms that suggest themselves are\u00a0“quasi-vegetarian,” “para-vegetarian,” “flexi-vegetarian” (which is more specific than “flexitarian”), and “post-vegetarian.”\u00a0At the same time, I have friends who eat locally produced meat who I see as\u00a0more ethically consistent in their food habits than I am in mine, and\u00a0retaining 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.)<\/p>\n

So, for now, I think I’ll alternate between\u00a0“quasi-vegetarian” and\u00a0“flexi-vegetarian” and see\u00a0where that gets me.<\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is a follow-up to my “case for a non-mammalian food ethic.” I’ve given that case some more thought\u00a0and 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\u00a0someone who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196],"tags":[350219,455072,455073,350215,350213,350214,350216,350217,455074,455071,350220,350212],"class_list":["post-9408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","tag-diets","tag-flexi-vegetarianism","tag-flexitarianism","tag-food-ethics","tag-freeganism","tag-locavorism","tag-mammalism","tag-mammals","tag-non-mammalian-diet","tag-post-vegetarianism","tag-veganism","tag-vegetarianism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2rK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8617,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/01\/12\/a-case-for-a-non-mammalian-food-ethic\/","url_meta":{"origin":9408,"position":0},"title":"A case for a non-mammalian food ethic","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Vegetarianism has been part of my identity for the last 25 years (thanks to arguments like this one\u00a0and this one), but I've been increasingly recognizing the term's limits. For one thing, I've eaten dairy, eggs, fish and seafood all along -- which makes me a lacto-ovo-pesco-vegetarian. For another, I've started\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Front Cover copy","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/01\/Front-Cover-copy-275x246.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8394,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/09\/18\/eco-humanities-glossolalia\/","url_meta":{"origin":9408,"position":1},"title":"Eco-humanities glossolalia","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just come across the earliest outline I wrote for the course I'm currently teaching (in its third incarnation), \"Environmental Literature, Arts, and Media.\" The course has also turned into a book project I'm working on, which will be a thematic primer to the environmental arts and humanities.\u00a0Both course and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11002,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/08\/25\/emotional-practices-part-2-affective-construction-the-triune-self-the-art-of-joyful-deliberation\/","url_meta":{"origin":9408,"position":2},"title":"Emotional practices, part 2: Affective construction, the triune self, & the art of joyful deliberation","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In part 1 of this article, I compared two recent books, each of which proclaims a \u201cnew paradigm\u201d in the scientific study of emotions and affect: Lisa Feldman Barrett\u2019s\u00a0\u201cconstructivist\u201d How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain\u00a0and Stephen Asma\u2019s and Rami Gabriel\u2019s\u00a0\u201cbasic emotions\u201d-rooted The Emotional Mind: The Affective\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/08\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5729,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/04\/03\/green-countercultures\/","url_meta":{"origin":9408,"position":3},"title":"Green Countercultures","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting call for papers from Ecozon@... 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