Non-vegan work, huge dilemma

[WanderingFruitWonderer]

I'm feeling very stressed at the moment. I don't know what the heck to do.
I'm a strict vegan, and passionate about animal rights.
I'm self-employed, with a background in the arts, and usually work from home. However, I lost a lot of work due to the pandemic; and have been doing other bits and pieces of casual work on top, to make ends meet. Last year I worked on a fruit farm for a couple of months, picking strawberries and other things. I have to say I loved it - being outdoors, working hard etc. So I decided to do it again this year. Unfortunately it's not going nearly so well. I discovered the full-time year round workers are basically all fascists! Well, that's an exaggeration, but all much more to the right than me, with terrible attitudes to immigration etc. Then about two weeks ago the farmer used a very racist word, which I won't repeat. I politely explained the word is very offensive, and to be fair he apologized.
But the final straw came yesterday, when he told me that he shoots rabbits and, on occasion, badgers, on the farm, if he thinks they're a threat to his crops. I was aghast.
I've been up half the night feeling upset. I was planning to do work there (not every day) till early August. But feel like such a hypocrite if I do. But, I haven't got much other work lined up till then, and desperately need the income.
Would you leave immediately? Wait till you've found something else? Just stick it out for the next few weeks, knowing you wouldn't return next year? Have you ever done work that clashes with your beliefs?

Oh noooo, bless you. It’s so hard when your personal views conflict with your employer. Ours is usually quite nice about respecting views and not putting people on certain clients etc but it’s not like you can really go elsewhere within the business.

I’d probably stay there until you have something else lined up and can move on to somewhere a bit more suited to you morally💕

xxx

I don’t mean to sound patronising but this is very normal on a working farm and it was possibly a bit naive of you to not have considered this in the past. You yourself are not harming animals but if you are this upset about it maybe you won’t be able to continue the work

Entirely up to you.

Reality is for a commercial farmer with crops like fruits and salady stuff rabbits etc are a real menace and unchecked can cause a lot of damage.

Principles are fine but so is eating and paying rent/mortgage.

Thank you @xxcatcatcatxx for understanding. Yes, I'm thinking that seeking something else, but sticking it out till I find it, is probably the best option

Yes, I probably was being naive. It's even made me wonder if I delude myself somewhat as a vegan 😔 But as someone who went on an anti-badger cull protest a few years ago, I have a very troubled conscience. I hope one day to grow my own food

I thought you were going to start talking about pesticides tbh.

Oh mayt, definitely work on getting out if you went on an anti badger cull march. Obviously stay for the mo if you can as you need food/living etc but it just seems a bit too directly opposed.

You could literally drive yourself mad with the hypocrisies in life/ values so I’d try not to think about it personally. It’s awful when you figure out how the world works so I’d just stick to the morals that work for you to navigate life💕 Much love xxx

Well, funnily enough, that too! Though to be fair, the farmer hugely minimises his use of chemicals. Not totally, but he's virtually organic. That was one of the things that impressed me last year. I didn't know about the other stuff. I've got into more conversations this year...

I think, as a vegan, you are kidding yourself if you think that the food you eat isn’t grown by farmers who do shoot and destroy pests in order to protect their crop.

Ironically, certain foodstuffs which are popular with vegans come with a much higher body count than meat. To produce soya, rainforests and other land may have been cleared resulting in the death of thousands of animals in addition to the permanent destruction of their habitat.

You have simply come face to face with the reality of food production. It’s a shame that more vegans can’t do the same, it may lead to a slightly more balanced perspective on the morality of different diets.

Thank you. Yes, I'm thinking along those lines I think. I'll start looking for some other temp work from this evening.
I know what you mean about being driven mad. I honestly wish the farmer hadn't told me. I'd have continued in blissful ignorance. I realise that sounds awful, but I now I know, I can't not know, and I can't ignore it

I'm not a vegan but as an outsider, my perspective would be that by not using animal products yourself, you prevent whatever amount of animal suffering or death would've been necessary to provide those things. By not working on this farm, you won't actually prevent any animal suffering or death. So there doesn't seem to be a moral imperative on you, within what I understand your belief system to be, to move jobs immediately. It's more about your own discomfort and preference, which other people can't dictate. But as I said, I'm an outsider, so maybe other vegans would think differently.

Not just food. Pretty much everything. It's impossible not to be complicit.
Your phone for instance - the plastics contain animal fats. As do money notes.

So - what will you do about that OP?

By the way I used to be vegan. I look back at my naivety and shake my head. The fact is trying to avoid a whole category of things is just a fantasy. It's not really the way to go about improving the human system, how destructive we are. It just makes you feel good about yourself.

Most soya is grown to feed livestock.

I think the vast majority of soya that's grown in destroyed rain forest land is used to feed beef and dairy cows?
I'll address some of your other points later.
Forgive me, I've got to go to said work. It starts early. I'll go today anyway, as I'll let people down if I don't. I'll see how it feels to be there... Thank you for all responses. I'm very grateful. I've been in agony much of the night...

.Ironically, certain foodstuffs which are popular with vegans come with a much higher body count than meat. To produce soya, rainforests and other land may have been cleared resulting in the death of thousands of animals in addition to the permanent destruction of their habitat

6% of soy grown is for human consumption, most is for livestock. It is a strawman to deny that veganism is not the most enviromemtally conscious way to eat.

I suppose what I'd say is that food and supply chains are complicated.

Even if you stop working at this farm, presumably you will still be buying fruit and veg where the farmers may be shooting rabbits, and to an extent supporting this. It's uncomfortable but rabbits do eat plants....

Wild rabbits will naturally die from being eaten by predators, starvation, disease. A clean shot I don't think would produce more suffering.

I have met some vegans who have opted out as much as possible- they have moved to communes and grow as much as possible themselves, and only mix with other very committed vegans. They are happy I assume, but very separate from mainstream society. They are very introspective and spend lots of time discussing their ideals together, but can't understand why your average person doesn't agree with them, and get increasingly distanced from others. I would say they are also unrealistic- their ideals just don't work at large scale.

I also know vegans who make the 'high yield' decisions like eating vegan, but accept that by living a normal life they can't avoid all animal harm. They mix with both vegans non vegans. They can have (light hearted) discussions with others about veganism, can see others pov, and I think will be far more likely to inspire others to reduce their meat and dairy consumption.

Racist comments shouldn't be allowed to pass. However if people have different views about immigration to you it doesn't mean you shouldn't work there, as long as you can either have a polite discussion or avoid the topic!. The divisions in politics currently are a big problem - an us and them mentality. Being able to tolerate those with different points of view, and ideally have some polite discussions, is more productive than just leaving. If they are having frequent rants to you about immigration and won't stop, that is different. In that case I would look for another job, but not leave until you have one.

I think it’s impossible to do no harm at all. I try my best and now even get vegan paint but I know that when crops get harvested then animals will get hurt. I know that more crops are needed to feed livestock so more animals would suffer plus the livestock if I were to eat meat., but I still need to eat.

You still need to earn money and I would continue there until you can find somewhere else. Potentially you can try arguing against the badger culls and racist behaviour but you might just end up with a large head ache.

Makes me think of ‘the best laid schemes of mice and men’.

This really OP

Also, where do you cross a line? You're ok with picking live fruits for money, standing on insects, depriving birds and insects of their food sources, picking fruit that's been sprayed or bio control of insects to e sure they grow, but it's not ok to do the same to sone animals who threaten the farm in other ways?
Does the farmer wear leather, would that bother you?
What people talk about at work needs resilience from you, you can't control it, the farmer needs crops picking before they go bad so he's not going to manage these casual workers like in a normal workplace

Live and let live, and look for something else

@WanderingFruitWonderer @Goodskin46 To a degree, this is my point. I’m not suggesting for a second that eating meat isn’t damaging however what I am saying is that many vegans refuse to acknowledge that almost every dietary, and indeed lifestyle (as @heldinadream pointes out), choice comes with a moral and environmental cost. When the suggestion is made that Veganism comes with its own costs (soil damage, monoculture, water use, habitat loss and yes, the destruction of pests), there is never an acknowledgement of that fact, there is simply the stock response “but livestock farming is the most damaging etc etc”.

Personally I have done my research. I do eat meat, but I don’t eat meat that has been fed on soya. I eat British reared, 100% pasture fed meat. I eat seasonal fruit and vegetables rather than fruit that has been grown 1000s of miles away on land that used to be rainforest, irrigated to within an inch of its life and picked by workers being paid pennies a day.

So I return to the point of my original post, Veganism doesn’t absolve you from your food having a moral and environmental cost. In most cases, however, it does enable you to ignore that cost by telling yourself and the world that livestock farming is the epitome of evil. In finding out that rabbits and badgers are shot to protect crops you have simply come face to face with the unpalatable (to you) face of food production. Life isn’t black and white and our choices are not as simple as meat = bad, vegetable = good. In reality it’s all just different shades of environmental damage and destruction.

On the plus side, at least some of the anti-immigration lot are actually doing the fruit picking that they voted to stop the nasty foreigners coming here to do.

This is one of the reasons I can't fully understand veganism. Surely it is more moral for the rabbits killed to be eaten? It's a good source of protein and cheap.

If you don't kill the rabbits then you lose your crop, if you can find a way to keep rabbits out of all your fields then the numbers increase but the food supply diminishes so you will have starving rabbits. Is that better?

Growing your own food is an ideal but not easy to achieve, I have a pear tree in my garden, in a couple of months I will get more pears than I can eat but they won't last.

Theoretically they can be stored but I don't have the room or the knowledge.

I'm not trying to put you off, I think you need to look into what you can and can't grow and what you may need to do to grow your own food.

The badger cull and badgers being shot on the farm are actually two different issues so you aren’t being a hypocrite. The badger cull was because badgers carried bovine TB and it was killing a lot of cows. From a vegan point of view, badgers were killed so that people carry on eating beef and having diary. A farmer killing a badger on a farm is pest control. He isn’t organic, virtually organic isn’t organic. He’s undertaking pest control, not mindlessly killing badgers so that another farm can make some money from killing a cow. You need this job so reframe it until you can find something better.

in the interests of balance, I should however also point out that it is illegal for the farmer to shoot badgers unless it is part of a licenced cull. It is perfectly legal for him to shoot rabbits, deer and a number of different species of birds (not all species) in order to protect his crop. Crop protection is not a legal reason to shoot a badger.

I think you need to understand that animals are used to produce ALL food. It could be by filling foxes, rabbits and birds to protect livestock and crops, using sheep and cows in rotational grazing to improve soil health, mice and rabbits stuck in combines, using fish blood and bone as fertiliser. You can’t get away from it unless you are growing your own food completely from scratch.

Whatever you do, you are contributing to animals being used in food production. You don’t have to go shooting with the farmer but it’s happening everywhere, every single day for your food.