What is DefaultVeg?
From All-Creatures.org Animal Rights/Vegan Activist Strategies Articles Archive

FROM Creature Kind
November 2020

By making plant-based food the default, we make the choice at every meal to help animals, the environment, and other people.

DefaultVeg is simple. By making plant-based food the default, we make the choice at every meal to help animals, the environment, and other people (including farm and meatpacking plant workers all over the world). At church or other group events, we give people the choice to opt in for meals with animal products if necessary, instead of having to opt out of them. A DefaultVeg approach is simple, inclusive, and cost-effective.

DefaultVeg helps Christian communities turn their commitments to creation care, farmed animal welfare, justice, and stewardship into eating practices that mean good news for everyone. Every plant-based meal has benefits for farmers, farm and slaughterhouse workers, the global majority, animals, and the environment. And with DefaultVeg, everyone can choose the food that’s right for them.

DefaultVeg makes meals inclusive, accessible, and just.

Examples of DefaultVeg in Action

To be CreatureKind means to change the way we see ourselves and other creatures. We see that we are one among many of God’s beloved creatures. Just as we are aware of our vulnerability as human creatures, and the vulnerability of the humans we love, so we become aware of the vulnerability of the creatures around us, many of whose lives are even more fragile than our own. We become aware of the power we exercise over these other creatures: how our lives impact theirs.

By adopting DefaultVeg for our meals, and especially by adopting DefaultVeg in community or group settings, we can significantly reduce our demand for animal products, and witness to the possibility of a more peaceful co-existence with God's other creatures.

When we gather for fellowship and food, we can love our neighbors well by reducing our consumption of animal products to provide benefits for:

Animals

Worldwide, about 70 billion land animals are killed for food every year and 109 million metric tons of fish are extracted from the oceans. God sees every sparrow who falls, but the standard practices of industrial animal agriculture fail to treat animals as anything more than protein-production units. By adjusting our meals to focus on plants, we can begin to abstain from participation in an inhumane and unjust system.

The Environment

The world’s largest user of land resources is livestock raised for the production of meat and milk. Industrial farming produces enormous quantities of waste and pollution which threaten the health of workers and nearby residents and damage ecosystems. When we begin to rely on plant foods for our nutritional needs, we drastically reduce our ecological foodprint.

Farmers and Slaughterhouse Workers

Small family farmers are suffering from laws and policies that favor the unhealthy practices of mega-corporations. Many industrial farm and slaughterhouse workers are migrants and immigrants who are exploited to the extreme. These vulnerable people are routinely sickened and injured by working conditions. Reducing demand for products from this system will help drive desperately needed reform.

Other Humans and Ourselves

Decreasing our demand for animal products improves food and water security, contributes to healthier diets with lower disease risks, reduces the problem of growing antibiotic resistance, and reduces the risk of new zoonotic diseases such as swine and bird flu.

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