Thanks to all those who have already registered, and all those who have donated in support of this great outreach event!!

New Meet Your Meat CD-ROM

From a member:

"I have converted the "Meet your Meat" video into a higher-quality CD-ROM & will send a copy of it for free to anyone with a CD burner & a pledge to make at least 4 copies to give to their meat eating friends.

"Anyone willing to participate, please forward your mailing address to me."

Norway Bans Routine Castration of Pigs

"What do you eat?"

Matt Ball

It seems to me that perhaps the most common question I get is "What do you / can I eat?" I was thinking about this question as I drove down to get a sample of Burger King's new Veggie Burger. For example, just last week I got a call from a 43-year-old social worker in Chicago who had found Why Vegan and started crying 1/3 of the way through reading it. But he truly had no idea what he could possibly eat. I'm afraid that many vegans would say:

Well, you could eat a veggie burger at BK, but the bun has "butter flavor."
You could eat a bean burrito at xyz, but it has diglycerides of unknown origin in the shell.
You could have a cheeseless pizza at pdq, but they have whey in the crust.
You could eat a Boca Burger, but they are owned by bfd corporation.

Of course, many vegans would like there to be a chain of vegan fast food places run by vegans and supplied by vegans. But are the animals going to have to wait for this before our outreach can move beyond the tiny minority willing to live on the outskirts of society? (See review below.)

There are, of course, reasons to consider anything not vegan if you look hard enough. It is also ironic that some vegans insist on subjecting everything to endless scrutiny, regardless of how unique and powerful this product may be in alleviating suffering. Any minuscule trace of an officially recognized animal product will render a product taboo, potentially undermining a new introduction whose failure would greatly harm the advance of vegetarianism.

For me, "vegan" is not a binary label of "good" or "evil." A friend of mine (and long-time vegan) once wrote: "I grow weary of the term 'vegan.' It seems to become just a label for moral superiority." Nor is "vegan" something to be pursued in and of itself. As I've written elsewhere:

Being vegan, for me, is about lessening suffering as efficiently as possible. It has nothing to do with personal purity or my ego. "Vegan" is only relevant as a tool to reducing suffering. If, by some bizarre twist, eating a burger (or, better yet, a triple-cheese Uno's pizza – anyone? anyone? :-) ) were to advance animal liberation significantly, then I would do it.

In the end, "vegan" is simply meaningless if it does not translate into thoughtful, effective action to reduce suffering.

A review of Carol Adams' Living Among Meat Eaters

by Michael Greger, M.D.

Ten years in the making, Living Among Meat Eaters is a truly monumental work. It's really three books in one. On one level it offers practical advice on living abundantly in a meat-eating culture, rich with stories and graceful guidance. At the same time, Living Among Meat Eaters provides a unique exploration into the psychology of the meat eater. Either of these contributions alone would make for a valuable read, but Adams then takes it a step further and constructs a model based on her psychological insights for how we can best become vehicles to spread veganism, making it a veritable field guide for vegan advocacy.

Her practical tips on living true to oneself in a dominant meat-eating culture include suggestions on everything from handling holidays at home to sharing a kitchen with flesh-eating roommates. Living Among Meat Eaters explores the interpersonal dynamics of dealing with friends, family, co-workers. There's even a special section on with meat-eating parents, with an open letter to parents beseeching their support for their vegetarian teens. The book just overflows with anecdotes and wit and snappy one-liner retorts to all the annoying questions vegans get asked over and over. All this wrapped up with the obligatory recipe section for favorite comfort foods that Adams collected and personalized over the years.

Adams' foray into the mind of the meat eater begins with the thesis that meat eaters are just blocked vegetarians. Whether or not this is actually true, she argues that this is a useful way to explain much of the defensiveness and hostility they exhibit towards vegetarians. On some level, she argues, meat eaters know that a plant-based diet really is better. This requires that they must repress a considerable amount of information to continue to ignore this "hole in their conscience." By recognizing meat eaters in this way, her hope is that we can relate to them as potential vegetarians who are just conflicted and struggling with reconciling their dietary habits with their self-image of being a decent person. Not only may this allow us to become more patient and empathic, but may help us to be better provide meat eaters with the tools and space to discover veganism on their own.

Drawing on detailed journaling and hundreds of surveys of vegetarians' experiences living among meat eaters, Adams explores the blocks meat eaters have to [becoming] vegetarian. What are they so afraid of? And most importantly, what can we do to help them move through those blocks and put those fears to rest?

Adams' approach to vegan advocacy is similar to the philosophy Vegan Outreach and others promote. She would have us move away from angry, judgmental, self-righteousness to a more compassionate, welcoming openness. By taking a preachy argumentative tact, she argues, we are playing into the meat eaters’ stereotype of the humorless, joyless vegetarian. Who would want to become like that?

Adams asserts that not only does anger put meat eaters on the defensive, it is the reaction they are seeking. Meat eaters want us to reinforce their negative stereotypes of vegetarians leading wretched bitter lives. She argues that we must not let ourselves be manipulated into being the angry ones. They may feel miserable eating meat, but they need to see us as even more miserable to justify their continued consumption of dead animals. But what if we didn't fall into their trap? What if instead we were inviting, welcoming, loving, nonjudgmental?

Another fear that we may inadvertently reinforce is their fear of scarcity. When we don't plan ahead for meat-eating family gatherings and end up martyring ourselves by glumly eating the parsley garnish, we reinforce this fear that veganism is about sacrificial deprivation – a diminishment of freedom. We can combat this misconception by exemplifying instead a life of joyful abundance. We can bring a fabulous vegan dish, for example, to eat and share. We can act as role-models, living our vegetarian lives with ease and grace.

Living Among Meat Eaters explores ways we can nurture and affirm ourselves, letting our fulfillment shine through. Our demeanor could tell meat eaters, "We are at peace, how about you?"

Carol Adams is also a big fan of inviting meat eaters over for a meal. Show, not just tell, how much excitement and variety we enjoy. Show how much we love food. Adams recently spoke at the Liberation Now conference in Washington D.C. An audience member asked what one should do if one didn't know how to cook. So convinced that this is one of our most powerful tools, Adams simply replied, "Learn how."

We also fall into other traps. Too often our first instinct as vegan activists, for example, is to want to recite facts. Living Among Meat Eaters cautions, however, against reeling off statistics. It tends to make people suspicious and to feel like they're being lectured at, manipulated. It makes us look as if we're trying to be experts. Certainly, it's not very conversational. Adams [thinks] people do not respond positively to having facts thrown at them. We're seen as biased, as someone who's trying to convert them, to change their minds. The walls go up.

How, then, can we communicate the urgency of the situation? Hand them a Why Vegan? or Vegetarian Living pamphlet. She argues that when a person comes across the same statistic themselves (for example reading it in a pamphlet), then the discovery is theirs, the voice is theirs, and they are more likely to consider it. We need to give people space and allow time for these new ideas to incubate. Sometimes less is more.

I agree that vegetarian activists tend to believe that if we could just convey the right statistic, have just the right answer ready, we would sway the meat eater who would then somehow thank us for opening their hearts. This is another trap. The problem is not that we don't have enough information; the problem, Adams asserts, is that one cannot argue with a people's mythology and that meat eating is one of our culture's mythologies. And the reason why our failed attempts at converting people aren't met with appreciation is because we are coming between them and their self-deceptions.

Meat eaters are too often not interested in genuine discussion, but in one-upmanship, in thinking of their next question instead of listening. This is where the "What if you were on a desert island" questions tend to surface. Living Among Meat Eaters shows how we can turn those questions around. For example, instead of answering why you became a vegetarian, how about asking "Why do you continue to choose to eat meat?" We don't have to have to have an answer to every question. We can say things like "That's a complex issue, but I think you'd have to agree that being vegetarian does help reduce animal suffering..." We can bring it back in focus. We can make it real; make it about feelings, not just about facts.

Carol Adams is a master at this sort of verbal Jujitsu, using the aggression of the attacker against themselves. She reviews the various communication tools we can use to enable us to sidestep meat eaters' defenses. She discusses the use of irony and humor.

Some readers may be surprised by some of the suggestions in the book. For example, she discourages vegetarians from bringing up vegetarianism at meals in which people are eating meat. To some this may feel like that's being too nonconfrontational, too passive. But Adams questions the effectiveness of bringing the topic up at the dinner table. "Discussing the animal's death," she writes, "may actually sacrifice the animal again." Adams fears that bringing it up while people are actively consuming such products may make them dig their heels even deeper and become more rigid in their position. In the end, she's afraid, more animals will be lost. Incorporating her theories of meat-eater psychology, Adams makes powerful arguments to back up her claims. Living Among Meat Eaters argues for a more inviting approach that connects to the part of them that desires change, not the part that blocks change. She asks us to try to find commonalties, to listen to their stories, and to reflect on the time in our lives when we may have been meat eaters ourselves.

Our movement sadly lacks theorists. Carol Adams is one of our brilliant exceptions. Her frameworks have provided pivotal understanding into the role of meat eating in our culture. Those familiar with her more densely academic works like the Sexual Politics of Meat may find Living Among Meat Eaters much more readable and accessible. Living Among Meat Eaters is frankly entertaining – in some parts literally laugh-out-loud funny. This is the book we've been waiting for to finally make sense of all the hostility, of all the same stale questions. Finally, not only a coherent picture of what we're up against, but an array of tools we can use to free ourselves and others from contributing to this death culture of meat consumption. Living Among Meat Eaters is a must read for anyone serious about vegan outreach.

Vegan Outreach is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the suffering of farmed animals by promoting informed, ethical eating. All donations are tax-deductible. Vegan Outreach POB 30865, Tucson, AZ 85751-0865