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?

It's even made me wonder if I delude myself somewhat as a vegan

Why are you vegan?

If it's to reduce your carbon footprint then I think eating some local meat but avoiding long journey foods is a better balance. You could be vegan and cause just as much CO2 as anyone else.

If it's to avoid harming animals then I really think you need to understand that all farming affects animals, both good and bad. It is naïve if you think we can feed the world without things like culling rabbits, or that letting rabbits breed wouldn't be more harmful.

A carrot 'feels' pain as much as many fish (i.e. both register it but are not sentient). Eating calamari is much more cruel than eating prawns, cod, insects or honey because squid are sentient.

In other words, veganism isn't inherently better than any other choice. You can act according to your values without drawing strict lines or judging others. Accept that nothing you do will be perfect, it doesn't need to be.

Most soya is grown to feed livestock.

I don't understand why that makes any difference, it's just because more people eat meat. Soya is still worse than local meat and most crops.

If you want to eat in an environmentally conscious way, vegan or not, you avoid soya.

Try to reframe your thoughts on this to categorise the farmer that you work for as similar to the people who commission your services in your separate self-employed business. In both cases, the people who need your time and expertise pay you money to achieve A Thing. You do that thing, and get the money by which you need to live. If the thing you are doing is not morally dubious then that's as far as the transaction goes. You are not responsible for vetting the ethical stance of your customers in your self-employed business, that's between them and their own conscience and some of them will not be vegan but that's not your problem. Similarly, yes the farmer's ethical position is very different from yours but that's not your problem.

You could become a vegan separatist and only interact with other vegans who are also separatists, refusing any interaction with non vegans, or if that's too extreme for you then working for a farmer that prioritises his livelihood over the lives of wildlife that want to eat his crops is ethically no different from supplying goods and services to any other non-vegan person.

What the hell is with people throwing the word 'fascist' around willy nilly to describe basically any opinion that is 'more right wing' than their own? Sick of bloody seeing it all over social media.

It sounds like a pretty good place to work. Many, many industries cause animal deaths, such as tree surgeons (baby birds - first-hand experience of being told to put them through a shredder...), Golf courses & gardens (killing moles) etc,.not to mention meat and dairy. Offices kill rats and mice. There are so many ways people have invented to cause harm, but I suppose protecting crops is a more legitimate one and the animals have a slight fighting chance in that it's not industrialised, more taking pot shots. So I don't think you have to have it on your conscience as such as you are not responsible for it or contributing to its profits.

For some reason this post has popped up in my AIBU, not 'vegan', which also explains the militant meat eaters and the fake 'I used to be vegan until...' posts routing out the tiniest moral misdemeanour to ensure you have a 100% hypocrisy free, not killing a single gnat with insect repellant kind of lifestyle - go and get a grip and rebury your head in the sand, guys, trying to make yourselves feel better!!!!!

Excuse me not all tree surgeons but baby birds through a shredder FFS! They're not Evan allowed to touch the trees in nesting season

OP I am vegan and work in an animal prison (think zoo or aquarium), no one feels more hypocritical than me! We do what we can with the resources we have; if we can do more than that's great, but sometimes you just have to accept it.

For some reason this post has popped up in my AIBU, not 'vegan', which also explains the militant meat eaters and the fake 'I used to be vegan until...' posts routing out the tiniest moral misdemeanour to ensure you have a 100% hypocrisy free, not killing a single gnat with insect repellant kind of lifestyle - go and get a grip and rebury your head in the sand, guys, trying to make yourselves feel better!!!!!

I can only see two non-vegans on here and neither are extreme posts. Not all vegans look down on non-vegans. Not all vegans think other ethical food choices are invalid. The posts discussing the inherent conflicts of trying to be vegan/ethical are perfectly reasonable considering the OP.

Posts like this just feed the myth that all vegans are judgemental dicks.

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.

And how does that improve the world.
OP: I think you are missing a trick here. You can't expect to change everyone else, but you have a chance to put another perspective to them. If you can do this with lighthearted charm & humour, you'll have influence.

I'm always reminded that Ruth Baders Ginsberg was good friends with Anthony Scalia on Supreme Court. They couldn't be further apart in political, legal & social philosophy, but they found other common ground. They immensely both enjoyed the challenge of telling the other why they were wrong & agreeing to disagree, to respect right to have other views. It's how lawyers are and not a bad model for how humans can be tolerant.

That would be your lectures on carrots' feelings and soya deforestation misinformation😂

if the farm is virtually organic what is used to fertilise the earth? Animal 💩 doesn’t sound very vegan either.

As far as I know, no beef is fully reared on pasture due to lack of growth in autumn and winter. It's likely these cows are supplemented with soya-based foods through these months

That would be your lectures on carrots' feelings and soya deforestation misinformation

Carrots don't have feelings, that's what non-sentient means. I didn't post the information about deforestation but I agreed that soya isn't great for the environment and should be avoided/limited by vegans who care.

tree surgeons absolutely can do tree work during nesting season!

That would be your lectures on carrots' feelings and soya deforestation misinformation😂

Is that supposed to be witty?

You're dilemma is that farmers shoot wild animals that are eating his crops?!! The badger thing is questionable if it's not culling but farmers don't happily put up with their crops being eaten, OP. I don't see how you can be so shocked, frankly. Farming is not gardening.

I mean, you're trundling along OK working alongside racists but the mere notion of a farmer shooting pests and you're up 'in agony', crying all night?!!

Do not watch Watership Down, hun.

Thanks Christ you don't live round here, the sound of guns going off in pheasant season would probably have you hiding under your bed 'in distress'.

Soya produced in South America is produced for livestock, not for humans. Soya milk and tofu etc. produced for human consumption is made with soya from Europe - the origin is usually declared on the packet.

To answer your question OP I think it is impossible to live a 100% vegan life. Even if you leave your job now, you will occasionally buy products that have resulted in the killing of an animal. How do you know that the food you buy hasn't been produced by a farmer with exactly the same attitude as the one you write about? There is a limit to what you can control. There comes a point where you have to accept that you can only do so much. You sound like a very kind and caring person, cut yourself some slack - you can't be perfect.

Some friends of ours have a farm and "pest control" is part of it I'm afraid anything that threatens their livelihood they will have to sort out which involves killing things

It is difficult your personal views conflict - farm work is as it is

Have you considered getting something perhaps in retail or another area or even branching out yourself

There's a school mum who's vegan and she has a business from home doing catering for buffets, baking cakes and doing mailbox brownies and she also has branched out making dog and cat treats

Hopefully you'll find something your more suited too

@Tubbytenbums that isn’t even slightly true, soya is used in the production of less than 40% of beef cattle.

Yeah, any farm will likely to the same.

Unfortunately without pest control you wouldn’t have any of your vegan foods. The only way to make sure you are 100% vegan is to grow your own food to eat, spin your own cotton for clothes and basically live like an ancient vegan caveman.

Yes, more soya is consumed by livestock but it is the waste product after it's been squeezed for a drop of milk. The same is true of orange juice, brewers grains and a whole range other things. The truth is that livestock is fed on the waste produced by feeding vegans and vegetarians, how green and environmentally friendly.

Presumably your ideal will be for everyone in the world to be vegan. If so you will have to stop animals from destroying crops.

Most vegans although conscious of the environment just don't want to eat decaying animal flesh or their by products. Eating meat is also much more harmful to the environment anyway, but feel free to carry on trying to justify contributing to the suffering of animals and sneering as those who don't wish to be a part of it.

My point wasn't about quantities it was about the romantic idealisation that cows are out grazing in January! I live on a sheep and cow farm and know what they're supplemented with during the colder months. They are not grazing for 12 months of the year