Against blind faith to veganism — we can still eat meat in sustainable fashion

Referring to a diet that excludes sentient animals for ethical or practical reasons, veganism is a loaded term and concept, rife with political affiliations and social implications that have allowed for various interpretations of the practice.

Sometimes, it is deemed a typical killjoy embodying the young liberal archetype that complains excessively about the state of the world; in other circles, it is simply a new way to be, practiced in the quintessential spirit of the progressive moral puritan.

The benefits of reducing meat consumption in general are admittedly undeniable and well-known across the board. As a freelance writer and vegan advocate Dejan Jotanovic writes in the Guardian that, unlike other social justice causes, veganism is negotiated by “real, quantifiable, fundamental behavior change” that inherently causes dissonance and discomfort in those who do not clearly practice what they preach; vegans take pride in the proportionality of their actions to measurable impact.

However, instead of blindly adhering to a vegan diet or becoming preoccupied with the reductive dogma to which veganism is susceptible, I believe it is best for consumers to adopt a more flexible mindset when making judgments about the "ethical" diet and transcend the binary that pits veganism against meat consumption.

While I recognize the advantages of veganism, I would like to contend that it is not the most ethical, nor feasible diet for everyone. Instead of striving to eliminate meat from one’s diet completely, which entails several side effects, or deem it the ideal solution, one must practice sustainable eating in a holistic fashion.

Veganism often leads to the unfair demonization of meat consumption and indiscriminate valorization of all plant-based foods, which is a stance containing several fallacies.

Not all vegan options are truly ethical or environmentally friendly; furthermore, meat consumption can also be ethical. Even plant-based vegan food sources can be harmful to the environment as well.

Research from the University of Manchester discovered that asparagus eaten in the United Kingdom has the highest carbon footprint compared to any other vegetable, due to its method of importation being by air, mostly from Peru. The land and water use of succulent green stalks was also the greatest out of the other 56 vegetables used in the same study. The cultivation of avocados, a common alternative to animal fat and protein, similarly requires water in exorbitant amounts.

Such data help demonstrate that an exclusively plant-based diet is not the panacea to the environmental ailments caused by the meat and dairy industry. Of course, vegan diets do generally tend to leave a significantly reduced carbon footprint when compared to meat, but it is critical that consumers be mindful that veganism and environment-consciousness are not always mutually inclusive. In order to truly bring quantifiable changes via diet, one must assess everything at stake.

Furthermore, the label vegan or plant-based has also entered the lexicon of the health halos effect, a term used to describe a phenomenon in which consumers associate certain health benefits with certain labels such as sugar-free or fat-free. In other words, the word vegan has also become an oversimplified synecdoche for ethical or healthy eating, when in reality, veganism is all too often instrumentalized as a means to boost sales in its respective market nowadays, taking part in corporate greenwashing.

This is prominent in other industries, such as the marketing of vegan leather, which, paradoxically, consists of plastic materials. Take, also for instance, the ultra-processed plant-based foods out in the market, marketed for their health benefits as well; these products are grossly misleading, as such ultraprocessed foods have proven to be rather detrimental to human health, changing the internal food structure and eviscerating their vital nutrients.

Importantly, there are ways in which meat consumption can still remain an environmentally conscious option. Multiple steps along industrial meat production contribute to harming the environment via various means, leading to soil erosion, greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and forest destruction due to grazing.

Such are very real and tangible problems; at a closer view, it becomes clear that reforming the entire enterprise, not curtailing meat consumption, can be a more viable long-term solution. Vaclav Smil, a prominent Canadian scientist, has offered insightful views on the matter.

Although he acknowledges that meat is “undoubtedly an environmentally expensive food,” Smil also argues for “rational meat eating.” He maintains the view that different steps along what he calls the “meat production-consumption chain,” such as improvements in agriculture, livestock operations and meat processing methods, can increase efficiency and help mitigate the current burdens created by the meat industry.

Additionally, not using large amounts of such plant crop processing residues will prove to be costly. To Smil, making meat production sustainable is a matter of ensuring the integrity of the Earth’s biosphere.

Similarly, conservationist Isabella Tree makes the case in the Guardian that “biodiverse pasture systems” that allow animals to graze naturally, aid soil restoration and biodiversity, and also reduce methane emissions, by forgoing the harmful usage of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

Tree thereby suggests that reform of pasture systems on which livestock are raised can lead to a lower environmental footprint.

By looking carefully at the processes involving meat production and why it has wreaked such environmental havoc, one can devise specific ways of improvement, instead of administering a boycott to abolish the industry. Vegans err by overestimating the impact of their individual choice to exempt meat from their diet; but in reality, it is not merely individual choice, but the food production systems that have evolved into its current damaging forms that could and should be reformed.

Aside from the fact that meat consumption can still be ethical via improvements, it is also defensible from a rights perspective. Although many vegans tend to moralize the matter of eating plants or meat for all of its benefits to animals and the environment, morality can be said to function as a socially constructed belief system, a value that is ascribed a posteriori.

Do not people who wish to continue eating meat have the right and freedom to express such a desire, and furthermore, to continue eating meat while exploring sustainable methods of meat consumption?

In addition, do not populations whose limited options for sustenance include meat have the right to eat meat without being unjustly morally shamed for it?

In this regard, one may notice that puritan veganism hinges on an absolutist stance. While vegans may argue that the more prevalent veganism is adopted across the globe, the less animal suffering and environmental degradation, this perspective fails to account for the privilege exercised by those who are able to afford being vegan.

The moral duty to be vegan is simply not universally feasible. According to Kathryn Paxton George, a philosopher who has criticized the practice of veganism from feminist and classist perspectives, although veganism “may be adopted as a personal lifestyle choice or a political stratagem,” it cannot be a “moral ideal” that is universally applicable across age, sex, class, ethnicity, or culture, as everyone has different bodies, and lives under different circumstances.

Veganism as a moral ideal fails to consider, for instance, people who live in food deserts with a lack of access to healthy produce within nearby distances, or the socioeconomically disadvantaged who cannot afford regular vitamins and supplements necessary to fill the nutritional shortage caused by a vegan diet.

Moreover, as critical animal studies scholars who highlight the intersectionality of oppression point out, in order to properly address the problem of speciesism, we must also address other oppressed groups in human society.

Jung Haine is a Korea University student studying media and communication.