On June 20 I went to a conference in New York called The Seed. It is organized by a consortium of activists and nonprofit organizations who promote the vegan lifestyle, and this annual conference is a special event to complement a monthly vegan market and meetup which they group also hosts. At their events they have caterers selling vegan food, and educators sharing vegan philosophy, and then physicians talking about diet and health. Doctors who publish books and papers like Neal Barnard and T Campbell present at these events. When I go I feel humbled that so many people are so eager to ask for health information, because I hear them asking for the kind of information which I share with Consumer Reports. It makes me a little sad that so many people seem so eager to ask questions about their health, and it seems so awkward to me that the doctors who present at these things have the public asking them intimate questions about health problems that one would only wish people would have time to discuss with their personal physician.
At The Seed the focus is on people avoiding the consumption of animal products for a range of reasons especially on the basis of compassion for animals, but in the health talks, the conversation turns to avoiding eating animal products for personal health reasons. Doctors will say there that patients present with health problems, and the problem is caused by eating animal products, and by switching to a vegan diet the person’s condition improves.
I have looked at these issues on Wikipedia, and I know that Wikipedia articles on diet and nutrition are among the more popularly consulted health topics. People have a lot of questions in this space and there are not ready answers. There are a range of reasons why there is not good information. In my opinion, a major contributing factor in the lack of good information in this space the tendency of grassroots nonprofit activists to conflate a range of ideas and lower the respectability of all of a set of differing social movements such that the worst aspects of each one tend to taint all of the others.
As an example, there is an organization called PETA which seeks to promote compassion for animals. PETA was founded in ??? and has a public image for doing shocking things, including showing gruesome pictures of industrial animal processing, running a campaign called “I would rather be naked than wear fur”, and encouraging its activists to throw red paint as a representation of blood on wealthy people who wear luxury furs. Nowadays all of these behaviors are just considered to be expected behavior from PETA. From one perspective PETA has a victory because their brand and mission is known and people are broadly aware of their positions. From another perspective, PETA’s brand influences all conversation on the use of animal products, and people who wish to share any opinion on consuming animal products will be judged based on the public perception of PETA.
It might be fair to say that PETA is the leading promoter of the vegan diet in the United States. Because of this, PETA led the narrative of activism for the vegan diet to focus on compassion for the feelings of animals. That is a worthy cause, but it is not a convincing justification to all people, and in my opinion, not the most persuasive justification. Other reasons for promoting a vegan lifestyle include environmental conservation; reduction of global resource consumption; protection of antibiotics as livestock production increases antibiotic resistance; social equality in that in unregulated market, meat is a luxury product and ought to be more expensive than vegetables; and personal health.
After reading what I can in the medical literature I am not convinced that eating animal products is unhealthy, especially in moderation. I am more convinced that almost no one who eats animal products does so in moderation, so the idea that meat and animal products is healthy is more of a theory than something that is practical to live. I think that people who had their diets managed by a dietician could eat meat and be healthy, but in the United States, consumption of animal products seems to me to be the most obvious cause of obesity and obesity is the most serious health problem in the United States. From my perspective, the best reason for an individual to adopt a vegan philosophy is because by being conscious that eating more plant based food is the easiest way to avoid eating too many calories. Of course in this scheme, there is the problem that vegan food offerings in the marketplace are trending to become increasingly unhealthy. The most common vegan diet includes too much oil, too much sugar, and a lot of processed food with little nutrition. Still, I think the vegan philosophy is the most likely path to raising consciousness about obesity, protecting the health of individuals, and increasing public health by overall encouraging societal weight loss. It is wonderful that we live in a time when people have enough to eat and I recognize that we got to this point because in the past, there was a healthy way to consume animal products and it was in a more ethical context without industrial animal production.
A second argument which makes me support a vegan lifestyle is that industrial livestock production creates antibiotic resistant superbacteria, or “superbugs”. Almost all antibiotics are created and sold to be fed to animals because they boost meat production. For well-understood reasons in the theory of antibiotic resistance, this leads to bacteria evolving to become resistant to those antibiotics. The bacteria that become resistant in this way then can infect humans, and subsequently, the cheap and safe medicines which used to treat humans are becoming less effective. It is extremely expensive to develop new antibiotics and we need to protect the ones we have. Future generations will despair at how casually we mistreated our antibiotics through meat production, and good stewardship of antibiotics means that it is profoundly unethical for pharmaceutical companies to produce antibiotics for the purpose of providing them to industrial meat production.
While editing Wikipedia I have done my best to find apologies or explanations from either the pharmaceutical industry or the meat production industry about how they justify the intensive use of antibiotics in meat production. So far as I have been able to determine in searching Google, Google Scholar, PubMed, books on Amazon, and meat industry trade group websites, there is no published statement anywhere by anyone that the use of antibiotics in meat production is a sustainable practice. There are many prominent scientists which call for stopping this kind of use. Based on all the information I have been able to find, the driving force behind continued use is that the pharmaceutical industry does not feel responsible for regulating how antibiotics are used and simply seeks to provide them to meet market demand. On the meat industry side, they are concerned by profit, which is regrettable because meat production is not a high profit market sector for investors and not a high value market sector for consumers. The meat industry in the United States is heavily subsidized in a range of ways because of legacy lobbying from a time when Americans wanted greater food security. Nowadays there is enough food generally but not enough healthy food, and having inexpensive meat on the market causes strange market pressure in which animal products, although resource intensive to produce and unhealthy to eat in large quantities, is affordable in the marketplace to the poor; while vegetables, although less resource intensive to produce and healthy to be diet staples, are relatively expensive and even a financial burden for the middle class to consistently have.
I would like farming subsidy law at the government level to be reformed to reduce tax breaks for the production of animal products. I think this should be done with intent to improve the health of individuals by overall allowing the free market to decide the price of animal products, probably leading to a doubling of the price of meat, dairy, eggs, and fish. It should also be done to be mindful of protecting antibiotics. If the prices of animal products rise then I think people will naturally reconsider their diets and shift to healthier eating as a response. Farming subsidies can shift to providing more vegetables to more people, and regarding the poor – we have enough wealth in America and beyond to provide everyone with vegetable staples so that everyone should have enough to eat even if they are otherwise in poverty. The changes that big data are bringing to supply chain management ought to bring huge efficiencies in verifying that everyone has enough healthy food to eat.
I regret that PETA’s narrative of animal rights overshadows these arguments. I also think that PETA supporters have a reputation for being an unreasonable fringe, which they really are. PETA makes some indefensible statements, like prohibiting the use of animals in medical research while simultaneously not saying anything reasonable about how medical research can be accomplished without using some animals in testing. I want ethical use of animals in research and compassion for animals. Frankly, animals in research are tortured, and I want them less tortured and treated with respect, and used in a controlled, regulated, and minimal way, but I am not prepared to say that an animal life is equally valued to a human life as PETA’s organization statements say. Medical research cannot be done in computer models or only in humans as it is inconceivable for a range of reasons that medical research could be reasonably effective with any amount of reform, except maybe human slavery and torture of the sort that is currently used on animals. Unethical human research already happens enough.
PETA done an excellent job of making themselves known and most people in the United States who reflect on the use of animal products eventually find PETA educational materials. Most people who continue to reflect on the issue come to the conclusion that PETA is a nutty organization with outdated ideas, but I respect its successful strategy for bringing people into the conversation. Perhaps it is best that PETA attempts to draw people in with unreasonable ideas, and a mark of success for the organization that people consider what they are saying, reject it, then go on to more moderate and practical positions after putting personal thought into the issue.
It intrigues me that there could be such a thing as activist outreach which begins with presenting ideas that necessarily have to be rejected, on the assumption that from that point people will do their own research and come to deeper understanding. Part of the Consumer Reports strategy is to provide enough information on topics to permit people to make informed decisions, ask questions, and do more research as they like. When I share Consumer Reports ideas on Wikipedia, I often find that when I list advocacy perspectives on Wikipedia I am remixing information in ways that neither Consumer Reports nor anyone else is doing.
As an example of this, I develop articles on antibiotic misuse. Consumer Reports advocates that antibiotics use in livestock production is excessive and should be moderated with regulation based on scientific consensus rather than meat industry decision. Consumer Reports takes no position on the vegan diet, but there is overlap in what I heard at this vegan conference and Consumer Reports’ interest in protecting antibiotics.