Beyond the Farmed Animal Focus of Veganism
CW: this article contains images of a deceased animal, incarcerated animals and environmental destruction.
Take a look at a page dedicated to animal rights or veganism. Any page, any country, any region. What do you see? Or more exactly, who do you see?
I’ll put money on the focus being on a handful of specific species of farmed animals.
The faces of pigs, sheep and lambs, cows and calves, and chickens (often competing for space in the images with activists themselves) dominate the vegan space. Feature length documentaries that are dedicated to the farmed animal experience receive the majority of attention, educational outreach largely centres on videos of farmed animals, the images of farmed animals are used in logos and branding. The vegan dialogue zones in on farmed animals and the culpability of a society that perpetuates their exploitation. We could certainly argue that this is because of the sheer volume of farmed animals on this planet; according to research 96% of all land animals are either humans or farmed by humans, and 70% of all birds are farmed poultry, with just 30% of bird species remaining wild. Farmed animals are more prevalent and comparably more visible than their wild counterparts; even though the processes of exploitation and slaughter are rendered somewhat opaque by physical and political machinations, the products manufactured from the bodies and lives of farmed animals are themselves manifestly visible.
But there’s another, less palatable, reason why as a movement we focus so much time and energy on farmed animals rather than the issues facing animals who exist outside of human society (but are no less impacted by it); the relative visibility of farmed animals makes it easier to advocate for them, whilst simultaneously representing an area of advocacy that absolves us, the vegans, from culpability for the perpetuation of harm.
Vegans don’t eat animals. We don’t consume their flesh, their milk, their eggs. We don’t wear their skins or fibres created of their bodies, such as wool or silk. We abjure the exploitation of other animals for our consumer choices as far as is practicable. And we uphold this rejection of other animal exploitation as an ideal that should be embraced by any member of human society, an ideal that drives us into the community to advocate for other animals, whilst pushing us into conflict with the community at the same time.
But veganism itself extends beyond our consumer lifestyles, and rather should encompass the totality of our relationships to other animals with whom we are supposed to share this world. And if we are to be genuine to ourselves, we must recognise that many of the behaviours we engage in as consumers, irrespective of our being vegan, still create significant harm to other animals. The problem is, we have either become desensitised due to its prevalence (such as the sight of road-kill on our streets and highways), or it is too difficult to bear witness to due to the distance between our centres of habitation and the sites of violence that exist in remote rural and wilderness regions. Or the very systems in which we operate (systems we admittedly did not ask to be born into) can appear so vast as to be overwhelming and unapproachable. And as access to vegan products becomes easier, with plant-based cheeses, mock meats, egg substitutes, ice creams and chocolate proliferating the market (mostly produced by multinational corporations and often requiring global transport), we are becoming increasingly resistant to the notion of revisiting our consumer choices in response to the environmental impacts on other animals; in our obstinance we are often much like the “carnists” we so vociferously advocate against.
As such, populist activists and corporate activist groups infrequently step beyond representations of farmed animals in their advocacy; of the farmed animals who feature in advocacy, fishes are arguably the least represented due to the additional difficulties of access their aquatic locations represent (or our inability to recognise their sentience, as with crustaceans or molluscs who are too often excluded from our moral compass and advocacy). And there is overt hostility amongst some individuals and groups directed towards those who advocate for environmentalism within the scope of veganism, despite the observable impacts of native logging on other animals, land-clearance and the killing of animals for cropping, habitat loss for roads and housing, or the pollution of oceans with plastics, oil and run-off (all of which vegans do continue to contribute to).
Veganism does not grant the individual ethical purity or moral superiority. What it does is provide an ethical framework within which we can investigate our behaviours and interactions with other animals to their logical conclusion. But if we are to pursue those investigations further, a closer examination of ourselves becomes a necessity. Sadly, the opportunities for closer examination are becoming lost to the rise of vegan consumerism and populist vegan advocates lulling the movement into a sense of apathy with promises of fast food and the rhetoric of “winning,” along with the dominance of corporate activism that creates dependency on a handful of groups for inspiration and mobilisation (activism that has been significantly hampered by shut-downs of the public space under COVID-19 and an inability to diversify tactics beyond the holding of signs or video screens).
We don’t eat farmed animals. We don’t wear farmed animals. We don’t exploit farmed animals. But we do still consume other animals. And as advocates we all too often choose to overlook how we continue to consume other animals; perhaps not intentionally, but it does present as a mechanism to maintain the moral superiority we may (subconsciously) feel is necessary to be able to advocate for other animals amongst the non-vegan community. And so we retain the primary focus of our advocacy on farmed animals, due to relative ease of access, visibility, and the absolution of our own continued culpability this focus can provide.
The fact of the matter is, mainstream veganism as a tactic is failing. Apolitical “go vegan” strategies that fail to address the industrial complexes that influence our lives (beyond animal agriculture) as well as our own biases and behaviours, that instead focus on farmed animals as the most obvious symbols of our exploitation of other animals, do not come close to creating the environments necessary to facilitate the liberation of other animals from the yoke of human domination. Veganism is a non-action, that does not grant purity or absolution but instead provides an ethical framework for our actions, that if taken to its logical conclusion (with the inclusion of environmentalism and a critique of consumerism within its scope) may lead to the actualisation of a liberated future that is inclusive of all.
