[Calum]

hello all, hope it's not too late to comment, there having been no activity in the thread for a week. Right. I'd like to comment on some posts by Anthony. Helo Anthony, this is my first post here, so you won't know me. I'm a (male) ovo lacto vegetarian living in scotland. Here we go...

I think that the first step is to get it commonly accepted that battery farming is immoral, and therefore should be illegal. Once the premise is there, reform will be a lot easier.

up till here i didn't really see anybody say anything that made me disagree to any degree, but i felt i had something to add here. I disagree that reforming people's diets, on a general scale, is something that should always be attempted only on a step by step basis. What you are essentially saying is that the entire eating population (which is most of them) should complete one step before another is attempted, and that's not workable. I agree that if, for example, a person stops having steaks the whole time and ends up being a vegetarian, that's, on the whole "better". I also think that it's even better if that person ends up cutting out dairy produce both for ideological and health reasons (well, they can have their own reasons for doing it! that's just the reasons for my opinion). What i mean is that there's no point giving up a dietary improvement as a lost cause simply because battery farms still exist. Nuclear power stations still exist and yet much is being spent on research into hydro, solar and wind powered electricity. Where would those projects (and the technology and industry involved with them) be if they had taken this attitude?

Getting people around to the concept is going to be trickier. Most people exist in blissful ignorance of what they are eating, but I also believe that most of them would be horrified if they saw the conditions that they were supporting.

this is the reasonable assumption, and yet many vegetarians and vegans aren't really aware of the suffering that animals are generally put through routinely as part of modern meat and animal produce production. They just think "well, i don't eat animals/consume animal produce, so it doesn't affect me". If people who have made the ideological choice to stop consuming animal produce don't even want to hear about animal cruelty, and many don't, then how can we expect that meat consuming people will be any more moved?

I suspect that these people would be more likely to care about the suffering of, say, foreign children, starving in some equatorial ex-colony than any animals, and we all know how apathetic many people can be to those sorts of situations. People are very good at brushing things under the metaphorical carpet of their mind.

Many people believe that animals are so unintelligent that they deserve any treatment they get, some people think fish are incapable of feeling pain, and that animals (except humans of course) don't even have emotions, or aren't even aware of the events that happen to them. A large number of people seem to believe one way or the other that humans are somehow more important than any other animal species, this may stem from the traditional christian belief that animals have no soul. Many religions teach that animals are in fact put here by God for us to eat (although even they are notably silent on how we treat them before we eat them). Don't sneer, many people are devoutly religious, and those that aren't probably don't realise how much of their attitudes they have internalised from religious influences in their society's development.

So the challenge is to make people more aware of what they are eating, which is a nice side-effect of a food labelling campaign such as this.

true, but i think it is easy to give onesself a big pat on the back and say "i relabelled some food! that's made the world a better place". Sure, it has made the world a place where people can see whether the soil association vouches for their food or whether it has over 5% genetically modified content or whatever, but does it change the way the food industry operates? is it a case of straining gnats while passing camels? (so to speak) All i'm saying is, a good thing, okay, but a better thing, that's better.

I have already spent an large amount of time discussing the various issues with you, and don't regret that; it is always useful and interesting to debate them. However, it has now descended into nit-picking, arguments over semantics and straw-man arguments that I no longer find helpful or interesting.

i actually disagree. While i find Astro Cat's posts quite hard work in terms of assimilating all the information (over on her own forums, that is) i can't actually see anything in this thread that's been a waste of space. Again, i agree her discursive style can be uncomfortably brutal and direct, which is not a good way to make others see your point of view (since it gives them a good excuse to back out) but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, as you say this thread is a wealth of valuable information. Maybe one of Astro's posts could be attached to every food label!

I apologise if this sounds rude, but I am sure that you would rather I was honest about it. I would rather spend my time promoting the campaign, designing leaflets and so on.

here, and i hope you don't find this rude, i think you actually show the tendency i just mentioned. Rather than continue discussing in the raw atmosphere that Astro's discussion has created, you say "i'd rather bow out of this uncomfortable atmosphere and do something i am familiar with", because after all leaflets are about disseminating the information you already know, whereas discussing involves (if you're doing it right) assimilating new information and checking the facts independently as well. I'm not trying to criticise you too much, but i am trying to illustrate that this *is* what most people tend to do. They think "well, i haven't got time, i've 'done my bit', someone else will fix it up in time".

In my opinion, why not give people the reasons as well as the facts. Keep telling the buggers until they listen to reason. Market forces drive the food industry you know. The more people buying one way, the cheaper and more available a product or product niche will become. This means that the more people are vegan, or vegetarian or whatever, the fewer battery farms there will be (although there is that point about eggs and milk bolstering the backbone of the meat industry but that's not too on topic).

You clearly have a wealth of energy and time available which could very much assist the campaign, but trying to bludgeon me with endless questions (which is what it feels like) really doesn't help.

on one hand, i agree that abuse is in the perception of the recipient, but i also think it behooves any activist to try and have as thick a skin as possible! I don't think Astro was trying to badger you, i think generally this has been a deliberate attempt to get you to commit to an answer about these questions, endless or not. I notice you don't question the content of the questions, only their number.

I tell you what would be really useful - a vegan guide to writing menus. Assuming that we would encourage a restaurant to offer a vegan meal, what would you like to see? what are the common pitfalls of vegan labelling? I have already agreed with the Vegan society that we will pass them anything we produce in this aspect for comments and approval, so it would be best coming from a vegan such as yourself.

i agree, that would be useful. Interesting that you mention the vegan society's approval however. Does Label My Food consider the vegan society to be the authority on veganism? Just wondering as there seems to be some confusion on whether this is the case following the vegan society's reinterpretation of the definition of veganism following the death of its founder Donald Watson. Also, the phrase "a vegan meal" worries me. Do you consider it the case that there'd be one meal on the menu that's ok for vegans and the rest all have meat and so on? Why not encourage restaurants to have a decent number of non-meat/non-animal meals? Many products are now available that are indistinguishable from meaty products, and restaurants could easily offer many existing dishes as vegan/veggie "options" without altering their menu at all, just their recipes and ingredients. In my opinion some markets, like airline food and burger vans, could replace their existing food with soya based alternatives at a stroke and the meat eaters wouldn't even be able to tell the difference!

In any case, just wanted to point out that your suggestion is a good idea (i think) which is nice since many people fleeing from a discussion might not bother trying to think of a positive.