You know, I'm not usually someone who gets hung up on labels, but this irks me. It's bad enough that people who eat fish flesh for instance, but not the flesh of other animals, fail to recognize that fish are animals too and still call themselves vegetarians. Totally not vegetarian.
But at what point did "vegetarian" come to include the excretions of animals, like milk and eggs? Any basic definition of vegetarian (when referring to humans, whereas the term "herbivore" would be a comparable description for other animals) is someone who eats a plant-based diet, consisting of grains, fruits and vegetables.
I don't know where, along the way, the term became modified to include animal-produced items. All I know is it is innaccurate and inclusive where it shouldn't be. And in ways other than regarding the ingestion of non-plant based foods. If you eat animal excretions, you are still participating in the torture and slaughter of animals. In fact, eating a cow or a chicken is a far less horrific act than keeping her alive for her milk or eggs. The main difference is that they are kept alive in more horrible circumstances for a longer period of time, before being brutally trucked and slaughtered.
Now I know there are many people who avoid specific forms of animal flesh for health reasons, with little concern for the animals' well being. Clearly if you are eating any flesh, you shouldn't refer to yourself as a vegetarian. But what about "vegetarians" that are avoiding flesh for ethical reasons? How do they justify avoiding one form of torture while continuing to participate in another?
Lately I've seen lots of discussions that include apprehensions about the difficulties people fear they will encounter in social or work situations if they tried to avoid dairy and eggs. I'm not saying that it's not a reality of modern life that these products are all around, being consumed by our peers. But at what point does peer-pressure override personal values? How can convenience and acceptance trump compassion, ethics and morals?
Please feel free to weigh in on this and I'll continue this in a later post....
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I think education is fundamental. When I was vegetarian but not vegan yet, I honestly believed that milk and eggs COULD be produced without cruelty and that most were fine. Once I understood just what you're saying, that they are in fact worse in many ways, it was obvious that I needed to become vegan.
Yeah, I know a vegetarian should eat only vegetables, but it's such a part of our vocabulary now, it's hard to shift around terms on people. Plus, many cultural vegetarians like Hindus eat dairy and/or eggs, so that muddies the water a little more.
When I talk to vegetarians I try to commend them for their compassion while also trying to kindly and politely point out the horrors of the milk and egg industries. I know that most are doing what they're doing out of good motives, but they're just missing part of the picture.
Another problem is the addictive quality of milk products, particularly cheese. So many vegetarians will tell me guiltily that they just can't give up cheese. I tell them that I also was pretty addicted but at this point I don't even really miss it. I also point out that the high fat and the hormones present in the cheese cause a boost in hormone production and then cause a reaction in the gut that encourages re-uptake of sex hormones. That sounds complicated but it means that yes, cheese actually is physically addictive, and the negative side of that addiction isn't just the artery clogging qualities of cheese, but that the hormone re-uptake increases the risk of many types of cancer.
But I tend to think that if you feel so compelled to eat something on a continuous basis and feel like your life would be over without it, that's a little scary. I mean, I love tofu and I love avocado and I'd miss them if I didn't have them, but not with that kind of "OMG I could never give up cheese ever, ever, ever, or I'd go into withdrawal and die" thing that many cheese-eating vegetarians tell me. To me that demonstrates just how out of control the hormone-addiction cycle is for them.
But good luck getting people to take that seriously--lots of people still smoke.
Milk and eggs are also tougher because they lack the immediate visual reaction that you get with animal flesh. Lots of people will want to adopt a diet that's kinder to animals but will slip back when presented with their favorite foods. However, if you can get them to watch some graphic movie about slaughter there is a chance they'll look at the steak or chicken on their plate and they'll connect that back to some terrible image. And that will help them to turn down something they really wanted to eat. But with a glass of milk, it's not you can see bones, or veins or blood and so it's harder to have that visual connection.
I don't know if that's true for everyone, but it certainly helped me. When I was in my teens and decided to stop eating meat, my family put a lot of pressure on me to keep eating animals, and the breaking point was looking at the bones in the chicken in front of me. Later my father tried to tempt me with shrimp and seeing the veins was really awful, so I didn't eat them. A cheese pizza doesn't look like an animal, so it's harder to connect. So we need to help people to make those connections.
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