Vegan Feminism

[cista]

I'm hoping we can have a reasoned discussion about this.

I've been vegetarian since I was 11, much longer than I've been a feminist. I became a feminist when I went to university at 18. I became vegan at around 22, after learning more about the reality of the dairy industry. I never really saw the connection between the two areas until a bit later, but now it seems obvious. The majority of animals in the dairy industry are female. They are literall abused because they are female.

I realize that not everyone has the same compassion and concern for animals as I do, and that is fine. However, I would like to hear what other feminists think about this. All opinions/ questions welcome!

Also everything Bahhumbuggye said

where's the OP?

Well written BahHumbygge, I especially liked your last line about nourishing soil being a feminist act!

Assassinated

I was vegan for four and a bit years, veggie for a few months before that, as well as being veggie in my late teens/early 20's.

I think that it is very difficult, nutritionally and logistically, to be a vegan without eating intensively grown imported foodstuffs like almonds, soya and palm oil. Locally grown organic veg is great for bulk, fibre and micronutrients, but it needs filling out with proteins and fats... the UK doesn't do too great in providing those in vegan format. Vegetarian yes, eggs, butter and cheese are great. We also need to plant more nut orchards here.

And I would say being a "bad" vegan is far better than being a "bad" meat eater, due to the trophic waste of growing a field of crops with heavy industrial chemical/energy inputs then feeding it to animals... it's only something like

I complete agree with @BahHumbygge.

Not wanting to derail but picking up on

In this she outlines her own journey into and out of veganism as it wrecked her health (degenerative spine disease, anxiety, depression, digestive problems etc).

One reason a vegan diet isn't great is that we rely on several nutrients that can only be got through dairy, eggs and meat for our health.

This but is possibly a feminist issue but not in the way the op meant. Due to our dairy industry, and careful supplementing in known deficient areas, cretinism is almost never heard of - due to iodine, mainly from dairy and white fish (some from seaweed; not as well absorbed and

Arse posted too soon

• and some seaweeds can have the potential for heavy metals.)

Unfortunately the majority of food in Britain is imported and artificially cheap - so when we see British food for sale it seems much more expensive (and British food isn't necessarily "local" if you're in Cardiff and the farms in The Scottish highlands but it's better than flying it over I suppose). It is more expensive but it's more important to me to always support the local economy of wherever I am in the world. However I really struggle to do that at home despite purposefully looking for British/welsh where possible, products.

I understand it can be a cost issue and if you have £10 to feed yourself for the week don't fuck about with British products buy what you can to eat as well as possible. But I'm not sure poverty can be blamed for all of It.

I wonder what it would take to get people eating locally and seasonally, get farmers producing back at the levels they were 40-70 years ago and so forth. I'm not sure. But we can all do our bit (if we can afford it).

I'm a vegetarian, by the way. But my family all eat meat. I do however buy organic and local whenever possible. Pleased to say that when at home my cheese is from England and my milk and eggs come from a farm not 40 miles away from where I live, but I can't say the same/guarantee the same, if something I eat has dairy in it already and that dairy product came from overseas. I do try, though.
I don't think vegans are doing their best for the environment, TBH. As already stated the insatiable appetite for a lot of vegan products and substitutes is destroying a lot of land and ecosystems, as well as small economies, across the world.

www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/what-would-happen-if-all-americans-went-vegan

This is quite an interesting read - pointing out that the drop in greenhouse emissions from moving to an entirely plant-based diet isn't as much as you might think, because some of the bits of plants we currently feed to animals (e.g. the stalks of grain plants) aren't readily digestible by humans so would go to waste, producing GG as they rotted.

So veganism is good for the environment, but not as much better for the environment as you might naively think based on the back-of-the-envelope how much grain to feed beef cattle on an intensive feed-lot.

(NB, seem to remember this particular study has produced quite a lot of controversy with people trying to reinforce/dispute its findings in more or less equal numbers).

Sorry keep being interrupted!

We need much more iodine during pregnancy- just about fine if you're a vegan and taking a vit pill with the RDA for pregnancy, but there aren't many besides pregnacare, plus they're expensive. The developing baby needs it for brain development as well as the mother needing it for thyroid health - healthy thyroids grow to produce upto 50% extra thyroxine. Babies don't produce their own till around the middle of the second trimester. Mum and baby are at risk of cognitive and thyroid issues.

We also need more during breastfeeding too.

This is also an issue if children aren't getting enough iodine. And too much is also an issue!

Some countries supplement various foods; we don't in the uk as dairy and white fish was always such a big part of our diets.

It would be a shame for women and children to be affected due to extreme health fads.

And unfortunately organic milk has around half the iodine that normal milk has. (Due to iodine being used as a disinfectant.)

I've been vegetarian for 26 or so years. I couldn't eat meat again even if I logically wanted to, or at least I think I would find it very difficult to try. At an emotional level I just don't want to eat dead animals, even if I knew that logically it was the best thing for the planet.

A slight aside on locally produced food - it's now more than 70 years since the end of WWII. Lest we forget, one of the major reasons for the North Atlantic convoys was that even back then, the UK wasn't self sufficient in food. We relied heavily on imports even then, and our population has gone up massively since.

Also, the sums on imported versus home produced are not necessarily straightforward. If you want tomatoes out of season, tomatoes imported by lorry from Spain probably have a lower carbon footprint than tomatoes grown in artificially heated greenhouses in the UK. (Obviously there are interesting exceptions to this - the Icelanders grow stuff under UV lamps all year round - but the electricity to do so comes from geothermal energy with zero carbon footprint).

hairy
That's part of my point too, eating seasonally. But I understand that without that you are definitely correct.
That's interesting with regards to ww2 - I hadn't actually known that, just that we've lost many many farmers in the last few decades. That's not to say we had enough then either, I suppose!

Swerfy, it's fascinating talking to my dad (who was a kid in the war, and lived through post-war rationing). He mentioned collecting rose-hips from the hedgerows and borrowing a neighbour's press to make and bottle rose-hip syrup. His words "it wasn't fun, it was survival" - tying into pillow's point about deficiencies, without the rose-hip syrup they wouldn't get enough vitamin C through the winter.

Thanks for the replies, lots to think about!

I do agree that if male animals could produce milk/eggs, then they'd be abused too. However, I do still think that the females get much worse treatment, purely based on their biology. No, I wouldn't call it "rape", but I'm not sure what to name it instead.

One thing people always think is odd is that I would eat my placenta/ taste my breast milk if I ever had a baby. I'm not sure how it's any different to eating cow/ rat/ hippo milk?!?

I am vegan and feminist. The two have a correlation but not the same causation.
I am vegan primarily because I don't believe my taste buds are more important than an animals suffering. Secondly, for me the health benefits of being vegan are enormous. I do not drink almond milk( oat - and U.K. Where possible), consume palm oil and I try to be as ethical and seasonal as possible.
I do think being feminist makes us perhaps more sensitive to female cows suffering in order to produce milk. They are forcibly impregnated and their newborns removed in order for humans to drink their milk, which is unnecessary for an adult human to consume another species breast milk.

Cows are not 'forcibly impregnated'. They come into season and either artificially inseminated or mated.

If you've never dealt with an animal in season then you can have no concept of what its like for them. But it does explain the number of people shocked when their pet bitch or cat makes frantic attempts to leave the house and mate.
Female ferrets have to mate when they come into season, or they die.

really? how so?

I think it's not helpful to apply human emotions to other animals as they are different to us in how they respond. Animal rights don't need to be human rights, there should be consideration of other animals as living beings in their own right. They should be treated properly according to their respective needs.

newtlover Prolonged high doses of oestrogen cause aplastic anemia, which is a grim way to die.

www.sheknows.com/pets-and-animals/articles/1111329/ferret-facts

vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/ferrets-problems

I used to be vegan and still have vegans on Facebook and really resent the idea that a woman can’t be a feminist without being vegan. It makes me so cross - it’s not a man vs. woman issue (if it’s womens responsibility to save the lactating cows and egg laying hens, is it men’s to save the male dairy calves and chickens?).

As a previous poster said - another stick to beat women with.

What bah and Sarah said.

upstart my uncle is a farmer. I work in the veterinary industry, I am aware of cycles. The farmers call where the cow is mated (I don't agree with the term) a 'rape rack'.
A ferret has a totally different cycle than a cow, who has a different cycle than a cat or a dog.
It is still unethical to force an animal to be continually pregnant, so you can take their baby and utilise their milk for your own profit or gains. That is not anthropomorphism.

wow upstart the things you learn on MN!