I think it's interesting that when it comes to Factory Farming, meat consumption, and veganism and vegetarianism the conversation is always focused on absolutes. Like people advocating for animal...
Exemplary
I think it's interesting that when it comes to Factory Farming, meat consumption, and veganism and vegetarianism the conversation is always focused on absolutes. Like people advocating for animal welfare always seem to advocate for 100% veganism/vegetarianism lifestyles instead of simply reducing meat consumption, if for only as a first step.
Like I consider myself a "flexitarian" because there's no word for what I am. Veganism is 100% no animal products, vegetarianism is 100% no meat but ok on animal products, pescetarianism is 100% no meat except for fish.
And the reason I consider myself flexitarian at all and not a normal meat eater or whatever, is because I regularly eat vegan and vegetarian meals, I would even go as far as to say I prefer vegan and vegetarian meals as the majority of the food I consume, however I'm not going to lose sleep over a burger every once in a while, or adding bacon to my beyond burger. But my consumption of meat has GREATLY been reduced and I'll often choose the vegan option as opposed to meat.
And it's funny because my interactions with normal people around this has people who aren't vegan saying "Oh, I can't eat that, I'm not vegan," or looking at me weird when I have Bacon on a Beyond burger, and I'm like wtf you don't have to be vegan to eat vegan food, and mixing vegan with bacon isn't illegal. I used to get asked a lot when I ordered vegan food at a work lunch "Oh, are you vegan?" and I was always like "No, that just sounded good and I was curious what vegan shrimp was like."
And the funniest thing ever is watching a waitress stare at me blankly when I ask for bacon on a Beyond Burger and not comprehending what I'm asking and like they are suddenly entirely unsure of their concept of reality. "Sorry, we don't have Beyond Bacon." "Oh, real bacon is fine." "So you want a normal burger?" "No, a Beyond Burger with bacon." "But it doesn't come with bacon." "It says here adding bacon is $1.50, so can I add that?" "I'll have to check with our cooks, but I think we can do that..." Comes back, "So you want the bacon on the side?" "No, in the burger is fine." "You wanted a Beyond Burger, right?" "Yes. A beyond burger. With bacon." "And the cheese is also vegan, is that ok?" "Yes, that's perfectly fine." "Oh ok, let me get that for you..." Then I get my burger and the bacon is on a separate plate given to my partner and not me. I can't help but think of this scene from A Bugs Life. lol
But It's crazy how many people simply haven't even considered they can eat vegan and vegetarian food just fine, or that you can mix and match and the world won't implode. Or how many people haven't even considered the idea of meat reduction in a diet is an option instead of going full vegan or vegetarian.
I think back to the story about how American Airlines removed one olive from their salads and saved over $40,000($100,000 today) a year, and can't help but to think that if applied to meat consumption that if everyone had 1 vegan or vegetarian meal a week with no meat, even THAT would have significant impact on Factory Farming. And then move from there.
But I don't see anyone really advocating for that kind of thing. It's always all or nothing and going cold turkey on meat, which is a lot for people to adapt to and why it never sticks, and why people glaze over when an activist hands them a flyer about factory farming at the county fair.
My family has shifted so that our weekday lunches are almost always vegetarian, and more recently we've been trying for one vegetarian and one pescatarian dinner per week. I have seen this...
But I don't see anyone really advocating for that kind of thing. It's always all or nothing and going cold turkey on meat, which is a lot for people to adapt to and why it never sticks.
My family has shifted so that our weekday lunches are almost always vegetarian, and more recently we've been trying for one vegetarian and one pescatarian dinner per week.
I have seen this strategy advocated for, which is likely where I got the idea to try it myself. But in general, if you're passionate enough to strongly advocate for an idea, you are also likely passionate enough to take that idea to the extreme (in this case, "extreme" is just veganism), which is why you don't see a lot of strong support for this partial-vegan strategy.
This is how my partner and me eat. I usually cook 5-6 homemade from scratch dinners every week, the only protein we consume is poultry and I try and make it about 50/50 poultry/vegetarian meals....
This is how my partner and me eat. I usually cook 5-6 homemade from scratch dinners every week, the only protein we consume is poultry and I try and make it about 50/50 poultry/vegetarian meals. Some of those vegetarian recipes are also vegan. As long as the meal had been designed from the start to be vegetarian or vegan it usually works really well. Indian cuisine is a great example of being able to eat vegetarian with no compromise.
I've always thought of veganism as a semi religion, the ideology comes first instead of just trying to live your best life, do what you can and don't worry if you need to consume an animal based product. Neither of us at home are interested in consuming vegan cheese, so when that comes up in a recipe I just swap in real cheese. No big deal. I don't see any reason to be extremist about it.
Being whey intolerant gets me much the same reaction, like dairy allergies are unheard of. Just don't butter the bun or use real cheese on my burger, how hard is that. I do often eat vegan since...
Being whey intolerant gets me much the same reaction, like dairy allergies are unheard of. Just don't butter the bun or use real cheese on my burger, how hard is that. I do often eat vegan since that's (almost always) safe. (Polyols are also a no go, not uncommon in fruits, including avocado, the usual vegan "creamy" choice. There's also vegan whey now, which makes trips to vegan ice cream shops fun and confusing for all involved.)
The diet culture war and its adherence to teams and treating foods exclusive to a diet is wild. I think sometimes we really do rock someone's social reality with non-standard orders.
I can't even convince my folks to try a bite of my tofu stir fry, that's food for vegetarians and they eat meat! Nevermind the food they eat that's incidentally vegetarian/vegan, that doesn't count for some reason. I don't know how to make folks realize they don't have to go all in if I can't get them to take a single step. Or that if you're going to eat meat, you better know how it's getting to you. But folks take that as an attack on them and their morals.
And like I'm not a perfectly consistent individual, I know all of this and still choose a burger sometimes, I certainly don't expect others to be better. Perhaps that's part of the problem for folks, they'd like to think that they act perfectly morally and being flexitarian forces you to face the morality of meat consumption while not acting in perfect accordance to that moral. I imagine that's where this all or nothing attitude comes in. I say, at the very least, know the implications of your actions and try to do your best even if it isn't perfect.
Edit: I've also known a lot of vegans, the depiction of the rabid zealot is quite the caricature. Most live and let live, are happy to hear about folks taking a meat free day, that sort of thing. The zealots would find some other moral to lord over folks and boost their ego if it weren't veganism.
We tend to forget this, but food is an inherently cultural artifact. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people involved with any given food product you buy at the grocery store, and each of...
We tend to forget this, but food is an inherently cultural artifact. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people involved with any given food product you buy at the grocery store, and each of them has piles of subtle meanings behind them.
One interesting thing I've heard people discussing lately is women using their dates' opinions on tofu to see if they will be a good match. It seems insane at first, but when you hear their reasoning about how they don't want to deal with men who have their masculinity threatened by a block of bean curds, it starts to make sense.
To be honest, though, I don't know any so-called "militant vegans" in real life. I've seen them online, for sure - I mocked them when I was younger, even. When it comes to me, personally, I only wear the title "vegan" half-heartedly. I didn't start living like this for the animals, I did it for my health. Everything else was just a bonus. There are times when I break down and have food with dairy in it; I actually had a bread pudding not even a week ago. To me and to everyone else I've met traveling this path, we don't care if you aren't successful in avoiding eating animal products 1% of the time; what's more important was the 99% of the time when you were doing better than you did before, and 100% of the time you're doing better than the people who refuse to even try.
Moderation is usually a good philosophy in many different aspects of life, though its been ruined somewhat by the perception of "fence sitting centrists" in politics. "All or nothing" is rarely a...
Moderation is usually a good philosophy in many different aspects of life, though its been ruined somewhat by the perception of "fence sitting centrists" in politics.
"All or nothing" is rarely a convincing argument for most people. Reduce, reuse, recycle is a great way to think about it, obviously "reducing to 0" would be ideal, but its also a lot harder to do that.
Honestly I still believe that veganism is a better response to factory farming than any given attempt to make the government affect a change, at least here in the US. There’s a chance that an...
Honestly I still believe that veganism is a better response to factory farming than any given attempt to make the government affect a change, at least here in the US. There’s a chance that an individual can be convinced to give up meat and dairy. I’d say it’s easier to convince someone on a carnivore diet to switch to veganism than it is to convince the government to change its agricultural policies contrary to the desires of “Big Ag”. They have huge well oiled lobbying machines and even if they didn’t they can always claim “if you don’t pass my laws, people will starve”, which seems to work regardless of the continued lack of veracity of those statements. Asking the government to change things contra to what big ag wants is like trying to wring blood from a stone.
Personally convincing people to go wholly or partially veg isn’t going to make a huge difference to the world. But it does make a difference, and on the individual level it can be extremely impactful. Especially when it comes to health outcomes. The more people we can collectively convince to change, the less powerful animal agriculture will have over government, and that is how we will come to those big impactful changes. Heck, we’ve already got at least one major victory - the latest USDA publication of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans actually provides advice for vegan diets, and that happened during a conservative administration! A lever has been placed; we just need to keep pulling on it.
I'd have to disagree. Relying on individuals moral choices to ensure animal health seems fragile at best. It's also of course not an either or situation. People can go vegan/vegetarian/partially...
I'd have to disagree. Relying on individuals moral choices to ensure animal health seems fragile at best. It's also of course not an either or situation. People can go vegan/vegetarian/partially so and at the same time we shouldn't give up the on affecting government. This doesn't necessarily have to be through federal law. I imagine local and state government could have an impact on animal welfare no?
I'm sorry but I don't think you're being the remote bit rational about this. Given food insecurity in the United States right now, I don't think it's valid to assume that people have the economic...
I'm sorry but I don't think you're being the remote bit rational about this. Given food insecurity in the United States right now, I don't think it's valid to assume that people have the economic ability to eat vegan.
The current statistic for food insecure Americans is currently somewhere around 13%, 42 Million, or 12% of Americans were on SNAP in 2025, while 40% of food is wasted anyways!
You just can't expect average Americans to make an individual change in their diet when they can barely keep food on the table. It's a nonstarter. That's not even getting into the preparation time required for vegan food, (whereas poor Americans might be working 2nd or 3rd jobs and just won't have the time), food deserts, the culture war, or underfunded school lunch problems!
Of course the AG industry is going to lobby hard, and be really hard to shift. While Americans weren't watching, corporations took over the country, and now lobby really hard for their own priorities. Individual decision making fixes nothing,.
Heck, we’ve already got at least one major victory - the latest USDA publication of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans actually provides advice for vegan diets, and that happened during a conservative administration! A lever has been placed; we just need to keep pulling on it.
That's just MAHA adding in their rider to the USDA's policies. It satisfies their base in the Trump coalition. They love to promote the science of an alternative healthy diet, while slashing medicare and public health policy. While they were doing that, by the way, the USDA was also threatening my home, as an economic weapon for my home state.
Please look around you. The time is for collective action, not hoping that enough individual decisions will actually influence power.
I get the feeling that you are very passionate about this so I'm going to do my best to avoid turning this into an argument. Generally speaking, food insecurity in the US is not an issue of there...
Exemplary
I get the feeling that you are very passionate about this so I'm going to do my best to avoid turning this into an argument.
Generally speaking, food insecurity in the US is not an issue of there not being enough food, it's an issue with access. People cannot access food because they cannot afford to buy it.
But lets imagine for a moment that it was an issue with the amount of food available. If that were the case, the government would actually have a better case against eating meat. Meat spoils very quickly, especially when comparing to dried staples such as grains and legumes which can last for years without refrigeration. Raising animals at scale take a huge amount of resources that humans need to live - things like water, food, and land. You might want to check out this interesting website for a better picture: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
I believe you might be under the impression that vegan food is something extremely difficult and costly to make. But that couldn't be further from the truth. There are some high profile vegan foods that are very overpriced, true, but that's not the majority of what vegans eat. For me persionally, a meal is more often than not some vegetables that I either shredded to add to spring rolls (which don't require any cooking), or tossing some frozen veggies in the microwave with a sauce and some tofu. Both of these are very cheap and about as fast as a homecooked meal can be. I could make more complex dishes, I suppose, but like most people, I'm lazy. I eat like this because I'm on a whole food plant based diet, but if I weren't I'd have a lot more options including fast and tasty processed foods like ramen and whatever "next generation vegan protein" like Impossible and Beyond - which, admittedly, I do eat from time to time, especially when I'm out of the house.
I also want to state for the record, for both you and @archevel, that I'm not really against collective action to end factory farming. I'm actually very in favor of it. I'm just disenchanted and demoralized. It just feels like too much of a bar to pass. Even with that, though, that doesn't mean that it's not important to get everyone around us to eat less - preferably no - meat or animal products. I'm sure I don't need to go into detail, but the shortlist is climate change, animal exploitation, climate change, human exploitation, climate change, political corruption, and have I mentioned climate change? That last one's a big one.
Of course, there is the added benefit that people who are living a vegan lifestyle are much more likely to be motivated to advocate for the policies you want. You say the time is for collective action, and I'm saying to build the collective. We're actually on the same page, but the two of you are just more optimistic about change than I am. Or perhaps it's more accurate to call me jaded.
You know what's vegan? Rice. Beans. Corn. Lentils. Frozen vegetables. Most cooking oils/fats. Most packaged ramen. Oreos. If someone has no time at all for cooking, it's true that fast food almost...
You know what's vegan? Rice. Beans. Corn. Lentils. Frozen vegetables. Most cooking oils/fats. Most packaged ramen. Oreos. If someone has no time at all for cooking, it's true that fast food almost always includes meat. But if someone barely has enough money to keep food on the table, eating vegan is less expensive than eating meat.
Until recently meat was really good bang for your buck, protein and calorie dense, cheap, and easy to cook. It always really bothered me how cheap meat is. I know that they made meat cheap by...
Until recently meat was really good bang for your buck, protein and calorie dense, cheap, and easy to cook.
It always really bothered me how cheap meat is. I know that they made meat cheap by creating the factory farms that people switch to veganism in order to protest. I know that swapping to a more humane way of providing meat for us citizens will make meat more expensive. I’m okay with that.
Instead we’re in a situation where meat is no longer cheap and its still factory farmed slop quality. Because we couldn’t pass any regulations to fix it. I don’t think its the consumers fault and when I was so poor that ramen was expensive I would buy ground beef on sale and mix it with my rice and beans cause that shit was like $2 a pound at Walmart where I live.
And really, meat was only ever cheap because it's heavily subsidized. There are certain cases of pasture farming where the land use doesn't really make sense for produce and so rearing livestock...
And really, meat was only ever cheap because it's heavily subsidized. There are certain cases of pasture farming where the land use doesn't really make sense for produce and so rearing livestock makes economic sense, but in most cases it's always going to be cheaper to eat the produce directly as opposed to having another animal eat it for you and then eating that.
We’re still kinda stuck in that problem though like we made meat cheap, everyone relied on it cause it was cheap calories, and now its expensive and everyone still relies on it. What the...
We’re still kinda stuck in that problem though like we made meat cheap, everyone relied on it cause it was cheap calories, and now its expensive and everyone still relies on it.
What the government really should do is pass the laws and then subsidize the extra expense, but theres no way in hell they’re gonna stop spending billions on war machines to but a few million into better food quality for Americans.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you're understanding what food insecurity is. Additionally, I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I'm specifically talking about how veganism as a personal...
I'm sorry, but I don't think you're understanding what food insecurity is. Additionally, I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I'm specifically talking about how veganism as a personal decision is insufficient for motivating agricultural policy.
Low / No Income: i.e. someone's income is insufficient to purchase sufficient food, regardless of the quality.
High Cost of Living in an Area: i.e. an area has higher costs than the income someone has to procure food.
Lack of Access: Food deserts, especially when factoring in public transportation options.
13%, or 42 Million people are food insecure. These are people who are struggling to keep food on the table. This not a simple fix of "people need to stop buying more expensive options," this is a fundamental problem in my country. Additionally, 13% is the low estimate from 2025. Data collection has gotten spotty in this administration, especially for figures that sound bad.
For people who have the ready access to afford a vegan lifestyle, your argument holds some water. However, I personally gave up on 'people should individually make the ethical choice' arguments after Covid.
Finally, Oreos, per their [official website](Many OREO products are suitable for Vegans but may include cross-contaminants of milk, so please check allergen advice. You can find a complete list of our Vegan certified products on The Vegan Society Website.), are not certified vegan, as they risk cross contamination from Dairy.
agreed. how moral can raising animals in a contained space for slaughter or being milked their entire lives be? I like to think of the thought experiment of a vastly more alien species treating me...
Exemplary
agreed. how moral can raising animals in a contained space for slaughter or being milked their entire lives be? I like to think of the thought experiment of a vastly more alien species treating me like that. Would I be okay with that?
I think it's interesting that when it comes to Factory Farming, meat consumption, and veganism and vegetarianism the conversation is always focused on absolutes. Like people advocating for animal welfare always seem to advocate for 100% veganism/vegetarianism lifestyles instead of simply reducing meat consumption, if for only as a first step.
Like I consider myself a "flexitarian" because there's no word for what I am. Veganism is 100% no animal products, vegetarianism is 100% no meat but ok on animal products, pescetarianism is 100% no meat except for fish.
And the reason I consider myself flexitarian at all and not a normal meat eater or whatever, is because I regularly eat vegan and vegetarian meals, I would even go as far as to say I prefer vegan and vegetarian meals as the majority of the food I consume, however I'm not going to lose sleep over a burger every once in a while, or adding bacon to my beyond burger. But my consumption of meat has GREATLY been reduced and I'll often choose the vegan option as opposed to meat.
And it's funny because my interactions with normal people around this has people who aren't vegan saying "Oh, I can't eat that, I'm not vegan," or looking at me weird when I have Bacon on a Beyond burger, and I'm like wtf you don't have to be vegan to eat vegan food, and mixing vegan with bacon isn't illegal. I used to get asked a lot when I ordered vegan food at a work lunch "Oh, are you vegan?" and I was always like "No, that just sounded good and I was curious what vegan shrimp was like."
And the funniest thing ever is watching a waitress stare at me blankly when I ask for bacon on a Beyond Burger and not comprehending what I'm asking and like they are suddenly entirely unsure of their concept of reality. "Sorry, we don't have Beyond Bacon." "Oh, real bacon is fine." "So you want a normal burger?" "No, a Beyond Burger with bacon." "But it doesn't come with bacon." "It says here adding bacon is $1.50, so can I add that?" "I'll have to check with our cooks, but I think we can do that..." Comes back, "So you want the bacon on the side?" "No, in the burger is fine." "You wanted a Beyond Burger, right?" "Yes. A beyond burger. With bacon." "And the cheese is also vegan, is that ok?" "Yes, that's perfectly fine." "Oh ok, let me get that for you..." Then I get my burger and the bacon is on a separate plate given to my partner and not me. I can't help but think of this scene from A Bugs Life. lol
But It's crazy how many people simply haven't even considered they can eat vegan and vegetarian food just fine, or that you can mix and match and the world won't implode. Or how many people haven't even considered the idea of meat reduction in a diet is an option instead of going full vegan or vegetarian.
I think back to the story about how American Airlines removed one olive from their salads and saved over $40,000($100,000 today) a year, and can't help but to think that if applied to meat consumption that if everyone had 1 vegan or vegetarian meal a week with no meat, even THAT would have significant impact on Factory Farming. And then move from there.
But I don't see anyone really advocating for that kind of thing. It's always all or nothing and going cold turkey on meat, which is a lot for people to adapt to and why it never sticks, and why people glaze over when an activist hands them a flyer about factory farming at the county fair.
My family has shifted so that our weekday lunches are almost always vegetarian, and more recently we've been trying for one vegetarian and one pescatarian dinner per week.
I have seen this strategy advocated for, which is likely where I got the idea to try it myself. But in general, if you're passionate enough to strongly advocate for an idea, you are also likely passionate enough to take that idea to the extreme (in this case, "extreme" is just veganism), which is why you don't see a lot of strong support for this partial-vegan strategy.
This is how my partner and me eat. I usually cook 5-6 homemade from scratch dinners every week, the only protein we consume is poultry and I try and make it about 50/50 poultry/vegetarian meals. Some of those vegetarian recipes are also vegan. As long as the meal had been designed from the start to be vegetarian or vegan it usually works really well. Indian cuisine is a great example of being able to eat vegetarian with no compromise.
I've always thought of veganism as a semi religion, the ideology comes first instead of just trying to live your best life, do what you can and don't worry if you need to consume an animal based product. Neither of us at home are interested in consuming vegan cheese, so when that comes up in a recipe I just swap in real cheese. No big deal. I don't see any reason to be extremist about it.
Being whey intolerant gets me much the same reaction, like dairy allergies are unheard of. Just don't butter the bun or use real cheese on my burger, how hard is that. I do often eat vegan since that's (almost always) safe. (Polyols are also a no go, not uncommon in fruits, including avocado, the usual vegan "creamy" choice. There's also vegan whey now, which makes trips to vegan ice cream shops fun and confusing for all involved.)
The diet culture war and its adherence to teams and treating foods exclusive to a diet is wild. I think sometimes we really do rock someone's social reality with non-standard orders.
I can't even convince my folks to try a bite of my tofu stir fry, that's food for vegetarians and they eat meat! Nevermind the food they eat that's incidentally vegetarian/vegan, that doesn't count for some reason. I don't know how to make folks realize they don't have to go all in if I can't get them to take a single step. Or that if you're going to eat meat, you better know how it's getting to you. But folks take that as an attack on them and their morals.
And like I'm not a perfectly consistent individual, I know all of this and still choose a burger sometimes, I certainly don't expect others to be better. Perhaps that's part of the problem for folks, they'd like to think that they act perfectly morally and being flexitarian forces you to face the morality of meat consumption while not acting in perfect accordance to that moral. I imagine that's where this all or nothing attitude comes in. I say, at the very least, know the implications of your actions and try to do your best even if it isn't perfect.
Edit: I've also known a lot of vegans, the depiction of the rabid zealot is quite the caricature. Most live and let live, are happy to hear about folks taking a meat free day, that sort of thing. The zealots would find some other moral to lord over folks and boost their ego if it weren't veganism.
We tend to forget this, but food is an inherently cultural artifact. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people involved with any given food product you buy at the grocery store, and each of them has piles of subtle meanings behind them.
One interesting thing I've heard people discussing lately is women using their dates' opinions on tofu to see if they will be a good match. It seems insane at first, but when you hear their reasoning about how they don't want to deal with men who have their masculinity threatened by a block of bean curds, it starts to make sense.
To be honest, though, I don't know any so-called "militant vegans" in real life. I've seen them online, for sure - I mocked them when I was younger, even. When it comes to me, personally, I only wear the title "vegan" half-heartedly. I didn't start living like this for the animals, I did it for my health. Everything else was just a bonus. There are times when I break down and have food with dairy in it; I actually had a bread pudding not even a week ago. To me and to everyone else I've met traveling this path, we don't care if you aren't successful in avoiding eating animal products 1% of the time; what's more important was the 99% of the time when you were doing better than you did before, and 100% of the time you're doing better than the people who refuse to even try.
Moderation is usually a good philosophy in many different aspects of life, though its been ruined somewhat by the perception of "fence sitting centrists" in politics.
"All or nothing" is rarely a convincing argument for most people. Reduce, reuse, recycle is a great way to think about it, obviously "reducing to 0" would be ideal, but its also a lot harder to do that.
Honestly I still believe that veganism is a better response to factory farming than any given attempt to make the government affect a change, at least here in the US. There’s a chance that an individual can be convinced to give up meat and dairy. I’d say it’s easier to convince someone on a carnivore diet to switch to veganism than it is to convince the government to change its agricultural policies contrary to the desires of “Big Ag”. They have huge well oiled lobbying machines and even if they didn’t they can always claim “if you don’t pass my laws, people will starve”, which seems to work regardless of the continued lack of veracity of those statements. Asking the government to change things contra to what big ag wants is like trying to wring blood from a stone.
Personally convincing people to go wholly or partially veg isn’t going to make a huge difference to the world. But it does make a difference, and on the individual level it can be extremely impactful. Especially when it comes to health outcomes. The more people we can collectively convince to change, the less powerful animal agriculture will have over government, and that is how we will come to those big impactful changes. Heck, we’ve already got at least one major victory - the latest USDA publication of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans actually provides advice for vegan diets, and that happened during a conservative administration! A lever has been placed; we just need to keep pulling on it.
I'd have to disagree. Relying on individuals moral choices to ensure animal health seems fragile at best. It's also of course not an either or situation. People can go vegan/vegetarian/partially so and at the same time we shouldn't give up the on affecting government. This doesn't necessarily have to be through federal law. I imagine local and state government could have an impact on animal welfare no?
I'm sorry but I don't think you're being the remote bit rational about this. Given food insecurity in the United States right now, I don't think it's valid to assume that people have the economic ability to eat vegan.
The current statistic for food insecure Americans is currently somewhere around 13%, 42 Million, or 12% of Americans were on SNAP in 2025, while 40% of food is wasted anyways!
You just can't expect average Americans to make an individual change in their diet when they can barely keep food on the table. It's a nonstarter. That's not even getting into the preparation time required for vegan food, (whereas poor Americans might be working 2nd or 3rd jobs and just won't have the time), food deserts, the culture war, or underfunded school lunch problems!
Of course the AG industry is going to lobby hard, and be really hard to shift. While Americans weren't watching, corporations took over the country, and now lobby really hard for their own priorities. Individual decision making fixes nothing,.
That's just MAHA adding in their rider to the USDA's policies. It satisfies their base in the Trump coalition. They love to promote the science of an alternative healthy diet, while slashing medicare and public health policy. While they were doing that, by the way, the USDA was also threatening my home, as an economic weapon for my home state.
Please look around you. The time is for collective action, not hoping that enough individual decisions will actually influence power.
I get the feeling that you are very passionate about this so I'm going to do my best to avoid turning this into an argument.
Generally speaking, food insecurity in the US is not an issue of there not being enough food, it's an issue with access. People cannot access food because they cannot afford to buy it.
But lets imagine for a moment that it was an issue with the amount of food available. If that were the case, the government would actually have a better case against eating meat. Meat spoils very quickly, especially when comparing to dried staples such as grains and legumes which can last for years without refrigeration. Raising animals at scale take a huge amount of resources that humans need to live - things like water, food, and land. You might want to check out this interesting website for a better picture: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
I believe you might be under the impression that vegan food is something extremely difficult and costly to make. But that couldn't be further from the truth. There are some high profile vegan foods that are very overpriced, true, but that's not the majority of what vegans eat. For me persionally, a meal is more often than not some vegetables that I either shredded to add to spring rolls (which don't require any cooking), or tossing some frozen veggies in the microwave with a sauce and some tofu. Both of these are very cheap and about as fast as a homecooked meal can be. I could make more complex dishes, I suppose, but like most people, I'm lazy. I eat like this because I'm on a whole food plant based diet, but if I weren't I'd have a lot more options including fast and tasty processed foods like ramen and whatever "next generation vegan protein" like Impossible and Beyond - which, admittedly, I do eat from time to time, especially when I'm out of the house.
I also want to state for the record, for both you and @archevel, that I'm not really against collective action to end factory farming. I'm actually very in favor of it. I'm just disenchanted and demoralized. It just feels like too much of a bar to pass. Even with that, though, that doesn't mean that it's not important to get everyone around us to eat less - preferably no - meat or animal products. I'm sure I don't need to go into detail, but the shortlist is climate change, animal exploitation, climate change, human exploitation, climate change, political corruption, and have I mentioned climate change? That last one's a big one.
Of course, there is the added benefit that people who are living a vegan lifestyle are much more likely to be motivated to advocate for the policies you want. You say the time is for collective action, and I'm saying to build the collective. We're actually on the same page, but the two of you are just more optimistic about change than I am. Or perhaps it's more accurate to call me jaded.
You know what's vegan? Rice. Beans. Corn. Lentils. Frozen vegetables. Most cooking oils/fats. Most packaged ramen. Oreos. If someone has no time at all for cooking, it's true that fast food almost always includes meat. But if someone barely has enough money to keep food on the table, eating vegan is less expensive than eating meat.
Until recently meat was really good bang for your buck, protein and calorie dense, cheap, and easy to cook.
It always really bothered me how cheap meat is. I know that they made meat cheap by creating the factory farms that people switch to veganism in order to protest. I know that swapping to a more humane way of providing meat for us citizens will make meat more expensive. I’m okay with that.
Instead we’re in a situation where meat is no longer cheap and its still factory farmed slop quality. Because we couldn’t pass any regulations to fix it. I don’t think its the consumers fault and when I was so poor that ramen was expensive I would buy ground beef on sale and mix it with my rice and beans cause that shit was like $2 a pound at Walmart where I live.
Yeah, when it was a good deal, it was a good deal. I don't think we're in that world anymore.
And really, meat was only ever cheap because it's heavily subsidized. There are certain cases of pasture farming where the land use doesn't really make sense for produce and so rearing livestock makes economic sense, but in most cases it's always going to be cheaper to eat the produce directly as opposed to having another animal eat it for you and then eating that.
We’re still kinda stuck in that problem though like we made meat cheap, everyone relied on it cause it was cheap calories, and now its expensive and everyone still relies on it.
What the government really should do is pass the laws and then subsidize the extra expense, but theres no way in hell they’re gonna stop spending billions on war machines to but a few million into better food quality for Americans.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you're understanding what food insecurity is. Additionally, I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I'm specifically talking about how veganism as a personal decision is insufficient for motivating agricultural policy.
Food Insecurity can be caused by multiple factors:
13%, or 42 Million people are food insecure. These are people who are struggling to keep food on the table. This not a simple fix of "people need to stop buying more expensive options," this is a fundamental problem in my country. Additionally, 13% is the low estimate from 2025. Data collection has gotten spotty in this administration, especially for figures that sound bad.
For people who have the ready access to afford a vegan lifestyle, your argument holds some water. However, I personally gave up on 'people should individually make the ethical choice' arguments after Covid.
Finally, Oreos, per their [official website](Many OREO products are suitable for Vegans but may include cross-contaminants of milk, so please check allergen advice. You can find a complete list of our Vegan certified products on The Vegan Society Website.), are not certified vegan, as they risk cross contamination from Dairy.
TIL Oreos are vegan, for some reason I always assumed the filling contains milk
Well they are “chocolate Creme” cookies. But I don’t know if it’s ever actually contained cream before.
agreed. how moral can raising animals in a contained space for slaughter or being milked their entire lives be? I like to think of the thought experiment of a vastly more alien species treating me like that. Would I be okay with that?