Photo by Claudio Schwarz

While in Delhi late one evening, on the drive back to the hotel after a terrific meal in a Kashmiri restaurant, our taxi stopped at a traffic light in the middle of a congested and major intersection. The air is less than salubrious, thick with car exhaust, dust, and humidity. A small, thin child, aged between five and eight, approaches our car. She’s selling balloons. Initially, we thought she was a little boy. We can only see a closely cropped head of hair and a sooty face and hands. We can’t see the little tattered dress she’s wearing. An adult nearby seems to be directing the selling activities, hers and a few others scattered across the large intersection.

We all fall silent at the sight. We all have the same thoughts; our hearts are shattering and throats constricting. One passenger has leftovers from dinner, and she rolls down the window and gives them to her. The little girl happily accepts. She runs off to the median strip between the lanes of traffic and sits down next to an even smaller girl with whom she shares the goodies. As the stop-light and traffic permit, we drive away.

Our fellow passengers are some of the most committed to human rights and social justice issues. They’re not vegan and don’t consider being vegan to be of fundamental importance. This isn’t a moral judgment of them. We respect and admire them for their work. We all see and understand how exploitation affects humans, and we’re all against it. We understand the arbitrary reasons for this exploitation, whether complex or straightforward. None of those reasons are acceptable to any of us on moral grounds. None of us would dream of exploiting humans in the same way.

But when we put animal products on our plates, we behave similarly. We don’t stop to think about the death and suffering we inflict on completely harmless and vulnerable animals each time we have a meal or a snack. Why? Because we’re used to it, think they taste delicious, or are convenient for our lifestyle. This is analogous to the oppressive and unjust actions by powerful humans against other humans, which we can easily read about in history books and see in daily news reports.

Lack of Justice for Sentient Beings

The primary reason we use to distinguish our own oppressive and unjust behavior towards animals is we believe they’re somehow lesser than us and, therefore, we’re better than them. Every reason for this lesser-better judgment on our part is arbitrary because we make up the rules as they’re convenient to us in a similar way any oppressor makes them up for their convenience against who they oppress.

During that trip, we had much time to reflect upon this and other similar incidents. Each time, something our friend Ben MacEllen, Australian author, playwright, and trans activist, said resonated: ‘Every serious and thoughtful social justice activist should, by default, be vegan.’

He’s right. How else are we supposed to eradicate unacceptable behavior if we behave similarly? How can we permanently make the world a more just place for humans when we give little to no justice to sentient, feeling beings as vulnerable as the little girl selling balloons in traffic? Just as we recognize her right not to be exploited and fight against social injustice, we must recognize the same fundamental right for animals and include them in seeking a fairer world for everyone.

Veganism and Poverty: Reconcilable and Intersectional

Whether it’s possible to reconcile veganism as a fundamental moral obligation with the realities of poverty requires that we reflect on the tensions between these two concepts. If these tensions do exist, they’re a matter of systemic class and economic oppression—it’s not because of any perceived impossibility of understanding the concept of veganism. When we say veganism is only for the rich, it’s important to remember three things. First, animal farming, slaughter, and processing industries rely particularly heavily upon poor communities in terms of their location and to supply a workforce.

The workforce primarily comprises ethnic minorities, people of color, migrants, refugees, those with limited educational opportunities, and others in vulnerable situations. These industries are generally located in poor communities, ostensibly to bring jobs to communities with limited political clout and long-term economic deprivation. Although they create some jobs, these industries have a direct negative impact on these communities. Animal agriculture is particularly harmful with respect to, among other things, environmental degradation and resulting ill health, increased mental health issues and domestic violence among slaughterhouse workers, and worker exploitation because of limited or no other work opportunities and dangerous working conditions.

Exploitation of workers, horrible working conditions, low pay, uncertainty, sexual........

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