How Do You Respond to 'Veganism is Extreme'?
Articles Reflecting a Vegan Lifestyle From All-Creatures.org

Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.

FROM

Free From Harm
April 2012

Veganism is dismissed as extreme in our culture only because veganism challenges the dominant classes disconnection between what they say they believe about respect for animals and their actions which support the unnecessary exploitation and violence to animals.

How many times have you heard the dismissive phrase veganism is extreme? Even if you’re not a vegan and the subject comes up in conversation, you’re bound to hear this knee jerk reaction from someone. Veganism is dismissed as extreme in our culture only because veganism challenges the dominant classes disconnection between what they say they believe about respect for animals and their actions which support the unnecessary exploitation and violence to animals.

What is extreme is not veganism but its polar opposite, carnism, which remains largely invisible and unexamined...

  • What is extreme is the fact that a species of 7 billion kills 120 billion land and aquatic animals every year for a food source that is not necessary for survival or health.
  • What is extreme is the delusional belief that we are the only species that matters and the manner in which we live as if “the others” have no interests.
  • What is extreme is the notion that we are somehow “above” rather than an integral part of the natural world.
  • What is extreme is that we act on the principle of might makes right in our exploitation of other species to serve our own ends.
  • What is extreme is the level of violence and oppression that fuels the current meat eating culture.
  • What is extreme is the endless moral acrobatics and irrational defenses that the meat eating culture uses to justify its barbaric use of animals.
  • What is extreme is the denial that plagues a society that ignores the reality behind their food, a reality of suffering and death that they already find abhorrent.
  • What is extreme is the charge that veganism is irrational and purely emotional when all of the extremes mentioned above are completely irrational and lack any empirical basis.

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