#veganpolitics — Public Fediverse posts

Scavenging, Freeganism, and Veganism

One area that I think there can be quite a bit of contention on is whether scavenging and freeganism are vegan. My answer to this is: it depends. I think the context in which the question is being asked is important.

My personal approach is to avoid scavenging and freeganism, and I feel this approach is optimal to the group of people in my particular situation as the optimal way to practice and model veganism. But I don't think it applies to people who live in extreme poverty or live a subsistence lifestyle where choices are greatly restricted because veganism is about doing everything practicable to avoid animal exploitation, and what is practicable to someone like me is not necessarily practicable to someone with greatly restricted resources.

Furthermore, I also think that in a context in which avoiding it is not practicable and the option is available, scavenging and freeganism is not only reasonable because it is practicable, but it literally is the vegan option. I think that practiced correctly, scavenging and freeganism do not exploit animals. I don't think all use of something that came from an animal is inherently exploitation.

Allow me to illustrate with a couple examples. If someone wanted to collect the hairs I naturally shed as I was walking around outside, I would not consider this exploitation. What would be exploitation would be forcibly cutting my hair, especially if I were treated in a similar manner as the vast majority of commercial sheep are (hyperexploitation). 

A big problem with  commercial sheep is they are bred to not shed their hair naturally, causing them to require shearing which their natural counterparts do not. This breeding is exploitation in itself, as it produces traits harmful to the sheep that exist only to benefit humans. Commercial sheep are then further exploitated in the most deplorable ways imaginable. Shearers are typically paid by the amount of wool they shear, not by how long they work, which incentivizes fast shearing that inevitably leads to frequent shearing injuries. Suffering is the price of profit to the capitalist class, for both the shearers and the sheep.

Consider another example. I die of natural causes or of an accident. If a human stumbles onto my rotting corpse, as long as they didn't cause my death, I don't think they're exploiting me if they decide to...eat that.  Not going to spend a lot of time thinking about it since I'm not personally into vore, but I wouldn't consider it exploitation. Now, other people may feel differently, and I think that should be respected, but I don't think human conceptions of the treatment of their corpses apply generally to nonhuman animals (though this is potentially a more complicated question for animals like elephants that also seem to practice their own death rituals).


So I think scavenging can not only fit the definition of veganism for qualifying as the best practicable option, I think that in some cases it fits the definition in the sense that it doesn't cause the exploitation of any animal.

Nevertheless, I don't think scavenging and freeganism is vegan for everyone. And one big reason for this is that capitalism exists. Capitalism makes exploitation inevitable in a search for greater and greater profits. And regardless of capitalism, people can lie to both themselves and others about whether something was truly scavenged or acquired in a freegan way. They can also simply be mistaken.

For example, eating the free non-vegan pizza served at the university event isn't practicing freeganism, though it may seem to be. This is because while that pizza may be free for the person eating it, it was bought by someone who is thus producing a demand for it. On the other hand, eating a non-vegan pizza that was obtained by dumpster diving is freeganism because no additional demand is being created by that act.

I also think that if an item is being sold under capitalism, that even if people start purchasing only scavenged items, a strong incentive exists to label items as scavenged that definitively are not, in the same way that greenwashing occurs and in the same way that corporations lie or exaggerate about how well they treat their workers.  Additionally, this incentive is increased given that scavenging is not nearly as scalable as more exploitive methods of production, and so practical veganism needs non-exploitive solutions that can be deployed at scale in order to effectively counter animal exploitation.

Quite simply, there is no way out of exploitation of any kind without being able to deploy solutions that can scale to fill the necessary demand, which scavenging and freeganism cannot do. And this is why, even though these can be vegan, even optimally vegan, in certain situations,they are not vegan in a general sense. Additionally, in the current environment, for some people, they are vegan only in the sense that better options are not practicable for the people in question. This is because I think it's important to show that one isn't 'too good for' ethical solutions that can be deployed at scale. Otherwise the position becomes that avoiding exploitation is somehow only for the well off, which is not itself a vegan position since that would necessarily only reduce exploitation for a small fraction of the animals currently being exploitated. There is therefore also a larger obligation, when possible, to push society to deploy the solutions that veganism needs to end exploitation at scale, and not just on an individual level.

And this also just so happens to help end the exploitation of the most oppressed and hyperexploited of humanity as well, because the hyperexploitation of animals of today is fueled by the hyperexploitation of human workers in a way that simply cannot be resolved at scale for the human workers involved without abolishing the exploitation of the animals involved.

The only reason it's ever more difficult to eat vegan is due to the selective way that that food is stocked in grocery stores and what is presented in restaurants. 

Most of it is relatively easy to veganize, certainly nothing that would be beyond the current abilities of stores and restaurants. And this would certainly not be preserving the 'just pay more for stuff with cheaper ingredients' nonsense or 'just put up with an extremely abbreviated range of choices' nonsense or the 'just remove the meat leaving a sad shell of a meal' nonsense or the 'serve something completely different and unrelated to the regular theme of the restaurant' nonsense that is so often employed for vegan food replacements.

Like the primary reason processed vegan food is often so comparatively expensive is that it doesn't have access to the economies of scale that nonvegan food does. If it did we'd be able to get huge blocks of vegan cheese for less than it costs to make dairy cheese. Likewise, there's no inherent reasons that there needs to be fewer types of vegan options available. In my vegan utopia, there will be as many options of vegan cheese as there is dairy cheese in our current meat dystopia. More options, even! Vegan green cheese with vegan green ham! Vegan bleu cheese and Star Wars style vegan blue cheese! And more!

Also, why is it so common to think that the vegan version of a dish is just the meat version with the meat removed? If I want a replacement for spaghetti and meatballs, I want a vegan substitute for the meatballs. You can't just say, "Oh, I veganized spaghetti and meatballs" and then just give me a plain spaghetti with marinara, no parmesan! Unacceptable! Vegan meatballs are cheap and no more difficult to produce than murder meatballs. Even making vegan parmesan at home is just a few ingredients, a food processor, and a few minutes of time away. Am I to believe restaurants cannot possibly handle this?

Also, if the theme of the restaurant is barbecue, why is the vegan dish a hummus platter? Am I to believe that barbecue soy curls or seitan or jackfruit or tofu are all somehow too hard for a restaurant? 

Like the only reason any of this is ever comparatively harder for customers is because of an active, concerted effort by suppliers to suck up to the meat and animal products industries.

I think that political labels can be important, but they also shouldn't be over-relied upon to adequately delineate someone's beliefs and positions alone. I think for that it's necessary to engage with the details of what someone is saying to truly understand their politics.

This is why I don't like to put much in the way of political labels for myself in my bio--because I don't think my political beliefs can be adequately summed up by a few labels, and also because I'm still trying to more fully understand what different political labels even mean.

I don't mind using political labels for myself in my regular posts, though. I've got to talk about the specifics of my politics at some point, after all.

I think a combo that would be pretty accurate for me is an anti-zionist vegan communist. However, three words cannot properly delineate my specific positions on these matters, nor are they inclusive of all political positions that I hold. To that end, I want to say a little about how I think about each of these terms.

I am pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide, and anti-apartheid. Zionism is support for a Jewish ethnostate, which in its existing iteration is violently anti-Palestinian and in any possible iteration would be pro-genocide and pro-apartheid. This is what it means to support an ethnostate. There can be no justice where Zionism takes root.

I am vegan, which is to say that I support animal liberation (but not the author of Animal Liberation Peter Singer because I am very much opposed to the philosophy of utilitarianism, even when it's not being used to argue for ableism as Singer does). I am thus against slaughter or exploitation of other animals for human benefit. I not only think that animal liberation is compatible with human liberation, but that support for animal slaughter and exploitation often goes hand in hand with lending support for human oppression. However, even if not a single hair on a human's head was ever harmed in the name of animal slaughter or exploitation, these things would still be indefensible. I hold the same position regarding the environmental harms animal agriculture causes. These things are linked, but even if they weren't, unnecessarily harming another creature for one's own benefit is egregiously indefensible.

Though I do not consume animal products myself, and I think this is something most vegans should avoid, I do not think this is either a necessary or sufficient trait to call oneself a vegan. Veganism is the cessation of all harm to other animals that is practicable to avoid, but I acknowledge that what is practicable or even possible to avoid is not going to be the same for all people, and that some people cannot avoid animal products in their diet. In my judgment, that doesn't mean they aren't vegan, as long as they advocate for animal liberation and avoid the slaughter and exploitation of animals to the extent practible for them.

Lastly, I am a communist (nondenominational). While I acknowledge that there's a lot I have to learn in this area, my understanding of history and current events indicates that communism is simply the only sufficiently coherent anti-capitalist ideology that exists at this point in time, and the only way to adequately oppose the omnicide that capitalism promotes.

One reason I'm vegan and not just vegetarian is that I see the exploitation of animals as inextricably linked to their death. For example, the reason I'm against eggs is that even in an 'ideal' backyard eggs scenario where the chickens are treated as pets, treating eggs as commodities requires the continued intentional breeding of chickens in ways that are harmful to the chicken and shorten their lives. Chickens produce an enormous number of eggs of large size. This shortens their life and is harmful to their health. The same can be said of cows and milk, where cows have been bred to produce enormous quantities of milk which is taxing on their bodies and shortens their lifespan. Similarly, sheep have been bred so their bodies no longer naturally shed their wool, which eventually endangers their lives if they are not sheared. Being against this is really no different than being against breeding dogs to have respiratory problems so they will look "cuter".

And that's not even getting into the fact that all of these animals are routinely killed at a fraction of their lifespan after they stop being sufficiently profitable. Many chicks are routinely killed shortly after birth if they are not judged to be egg layers, and calves are often killed just so they don't have to be fed and/or so they can be used in something like dog food. Here's an article that is from an animal welfarist perspective, not a vegan one, but which I think has some value in that it discusses the practicalities and economic incentives behind the widespread slaughter of calves in the dairy industry that the layperson may not be familiar with.

RE: https://fandom.ink/users/unspeakablehorror/statuses/113342281559363144