On Brandon on Francione on Veganism

 [[This blog is intended solely to be a place for me to work out my own thoughts in "conversation" with various bloggers and thinkers with whom I come into intellectual contact, perhaps as part of Chris Bateman's Republic of Bloggers. I spend a great deal of time thinking, but not enough time writing, and I hope this exercise will enable me to put my thoughts in better order, and perhaps improve my communication of them at the same time]]

Brandon over at the excellent Siris blog writes in response to Gary Francione's article on owning animals and veganism. I have not yet read over Francione's full article, but mostly want to engage with the particular attitude that Brandon has in arguing against vegetarians and vegans, one which he has used a couple of times before. Basically, when Francione claims that veganism is morally necessary, Brandon responds that veganism is so difficult and expensive a lifestyle to maintain healthily that it can be written off as a moral imperative, and exists solely as a luxury choice made by those with the privilege to be able to do so.

Despite agreeing with Brandon that veganism is not morally necessary, I feel he is dodging the actual force of the argument. Francione's imperative could easily be restated to take into account other moral imperatives (such as the necessity of health and maintaining one's economic livelihood) by saying that veganism is necessary to the greatest extent possible given a particular person's economic and bodily temperament. I think few vegans would insist that meat and animal products be outlawed immediately, with no consideration given to how we would feed the 6 billion people who rely on them in the interim while farms and corporations scramble to fulfill the new animal-free market.

The force of arguments coming from vegans and vegetarians is that the death of animals to satiate our needs is a tragedy. Some of those needs in various places and various people may be inescapable, but a vegan/vegetarian still considers that to be a negative state of affairs in the world, not a "neutral" state. In order to effectively argue against vegans, you can't just say that "veganism is difficult or impossible for most people", because this has nothing to say against what they actually mean, which is that animals should not be raised and killed for sustenance unnecessarily ("unnecessarily" here being a hard use of the word). The fact is certainly that the world could be substantially more vegetarian than it currently is, with no adverse health side effects (and indeed, in many cases, substantial health boons).

To reiterate: I am not a vegan, and while I have not exhaustively played out the arguments for and against within my own soul, I'm inclined to think that raising and killing animals for food is morally permissible. But, when making these arguments, it's important to address the actual force of one's opponent's position, not the easiest to deflate. If Francione argues that veganism is of such great moral force that it overrides one's own health and economic concerns, he is almost certainly wrong. But the weaker version of his argument is, in this case, a much stronger opponent.