Getting Past "Can't"

While I'd like to humor myself and think that this blog is read by individuals with a wide swathe of dietary preferences, I think it's safe to say that in reality almost anyone reading this is probably already a vegan or vegetarian. That means that, invariably, each of us has had the experience of being offered a delicious looking, but not animal-friendly dish, and responded "I'm sorry, I can't eat that." In my opinion, as soon as the word "can't" leaves our lips, we, as vegetarians, have done a great disservice to our cause.

I'll admit that we as a society spend far too much time talking about labels and semantics, and not enough time engaging in actual action. Hillary Clinton waffles about whether she is a "liberal" or a "progressive." The Bush administration feuds with the UN over whether Sudan is a "genocide" or simply a "mass killing." And thousands of people are riled up because well-meaning multi-culturalists prefer "Happy Holidays" to "Merry Christmas." But in this case, I think it's worth examining the impact that a simple word choice can have.

Stating that we "can't" eat meat, eggs, or dairy turns our dietary choices - which we all adopted for the positive reasons of protecting our health, preserving the environment, and helping animals - into something negative. "Can't" makes me think of overbearing parents or traffic regulations. People who are lactose intolerant can't drink milk; people on diets can't eat fatty food. But almost all of us can eat whatever we want - the point is that we don't. That's a distinction worth paying attention to. At the risk of sounding too corny, I believe that being a vegetarian or vegan should be a joy, not an onus. None of us has been coerced into being a vegetarian - so let's stop acting like it.

When we choose to say "can't" instead of "don't," we set up barriers between ourselves and the meat eaters - and let them off the hook. As soon as you say you can't eat something, the first thing going through the carnivore's head is "well, I can - I've got perfectly good canine teeth and a perfectly functioning digestive system." The discussion ends - there's no reason for them to learn more about the reasons behind your dietary choices, because evidently it's some kind of pathology. In contrast, saying that you "don't" eat something immediately prompts the question "why" - a perfect opportunity for vegetarians to cite the multitude of excellent reasons for their decision not to consume animal products.

Saying "Can't"? Just don't do it.

A Good Use of Our Princeton Education

Since PAWS was featured on the mtvU show Cause Effect, we’ve received lots of emails praising our dedication to animals. Of course, we’ve also met some critics. For example, today I got home from a long day of classes to read this email from “Dave”:

“I sure am glad that you are putting that high dollar Prinston [sic] education to some use. Have you ever given some thought to all of the suffering PEOPLE in this world? It is no different than the treatment of animals. Women are beaten Children are born into this world with HIV, Crack Cocaine in their system and Meth in their system. There are homeless people and people freezing in the streets. Go Girl save those chickens. Must have been the easiest choice for a project assignment!!”

It would be easy for me to dismiss this email, because we hear this argument all the time, and we think it is self-evidently wrong. Our automatic response is that eating humanely does not take any time away from your other causes, and hey, what are you doing to save the world with all your free time, anyway? By eating meat, are you able to spend more time helping people? Probably not. It often seems that the people who are the most critical of our activism are the people who have never been activists themselves, and have no desire (it would seem to me) to make the world a better place. PAWS activists, on the other hand, tend to be the exact same people who participate in a variety of other positive, progressive activities on campus. Many of us participated in the anti-torture protest last year, many of us care about enacting universal healthcare in this country, alleviating global poverty, and fighting AIDS. We are compassionate, ethical people who care about reducing suffering—no matter who is suffering.

In short, fighting for animals and fighting for people are in no way mutually exclusive. And because of global warming and health, they are actually complementary.

But let me look at this criticism a bit more seriously. While it doesn’t take any more time to be a vegetarian, Dave is actually correct: it does take time to be animal activist. When I’m out setting up demonstrations, leafleting around town, and writing blogs like these, I’m fighting for animal rights when I could be fighting for human rights.

But does that imply that I implicitly put a higher value on animal life than human life? Am I saying that I care about animals more than humans? That seems to be what Dave is accusing me of. Believe it or not, I do think that would be wrong. In general, humans are more self-conscious, more rational, and more emotionally attached to their loved ones than animals can be, so I would have no basis for saving one animal life over one human life. But I don’t think that’s what I’m doing.

Instead, I’m using my unique passion, skills and motivation to make a difference exactly where I can make the biggest difference. Other people who feel passionately about other issues should fight for those causes. In no way am I saying that animal rights is the most important cause—just that it’s my most important cause.

For a thought experiment, let’s say that it was possible to estimate, empirically, the magnitude and intensity of the suffering inflicted by current global problems. We could then rank world atrocities and potentially name the worst atrocity in the world right now. Now, let’s assume that global poverty towered over all the other problems in the world right now—far worse (empirically, remember) than genocide, air and water pollution, AIDS, the US healthcare system, the Iraq War, animal exploitation, and all other problems. If a ranking like this came out, should all activists stop what they are doing and switch to fighting against global poverty? Would that even be effective?

I think the answer is clearly no. We bring about the most change by fighting for what we care about. If everyone worked on one issue (or if everyone worked on “human” issues) then less positive change would occur—spreading out our efforts offers the largest marginal benefit. Everyone making the free choice to pursue her own passions will be what makes the world a better place, even if some problems are clearly worse than others.

Yes, I agree: there are many serious issues facing the world today. While crusading for animal rights won’t fix all of them, criticizing us for taking on this issue won’t solve any. At least we’re doing something.

Joke of the Day

Thanksgiving Food for Thought

Dear friends,

The Thanksgiving holiday—a relaxing day to celebrate family and friends, to appreciate your blessings and to give thanks for all you have—is almost here. Unfortunately, the holiday also means the slaughter of 45 million turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner table centerpieces. While we understand that the turkey—a symbol for warmth and love and contentment—is a tradition of the holiday, just a quick review of what eating turkey really entails will be more than enough to destroy those unfounded associations. (If you are already convinced you don’t need a thanksgiving turkey, just skip down below for yummy ideas for alternatives!)

In fact, turkey production means anything but happiness. Take a minute to read up on the standard industry practice of strangling as a standard method of killing sick or weak birds or watch undercover video footage of the Butterball turkey farm. If you’re not up for actually seeing where turkeys spend their lives (in which case you probably shouldn’t be eating them), you can simply think about these intelligent birds who spend the last five months of their lives with less than 3.5 square feet of space per bird. The birds who have their upper beaks and their toes seared off with hot blades so they don’t peck each other to death in their stress-inducing conditions. The birds who, due to unnatural breeding techniques, now grow twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors with especially large breasts, making it impossible for them to breed naturally (or as the report states, “males can no longer mount females.”)

But wait…maybe ‘free-range’ or ‘organic’ labels get you off the hook? Unfortunately, the standards are extremely lax, with free range meaning nothing more that the turkeys can go outside at some point in their lives. Yes, any positive step is a step in the right direction, but with conditions like this on an actual “free-range” farm, it’s hard to say how free-range is any better than factory-farmed raised. We don’t really think it’s better at all.



Luckily, the horrors of the turkey industry don’t mean that you have to go hungry on Thanksgiving; they just mean you get to explore new foods and start new traditions. And that’s the reason for this letter—to tell you about some delicious alternatives to the traditional turkey. Here are some links and recipes to help you create new healthy and humane traditions.


• Tons of Thanksgiving recipes for appetizers, soups, entrees, sides, desserts, etc!
• Tips for celebrating a veg holiday
• 196 Vegan Thanksgiving recipes
• Sample Vegetarian Thanksgiving menu w/ recipes
• The new Veggie Turkey Breast With Wild Rice and Cranberry Stuffing, available at Whole Foods (what we’ll be having in my house, I hope!)
• Pumpkin pie
• Post your own recipes in the comments section!

Now more than ever, we should all be thankful for having the ability to make ethical, humane and environmental friendly choices.

Best wishes,
Princeton Animal Welfare Society

PAWS on mtvU

Check it out!

College Veg Pledge

Next Tuesday, November 13th, thousands of college students—including hundreds at Princeton--will be going vegetarian for College Veg Pledge 2007. These students have pledged to give up meat to show support for their vegetarian friends, to demonstrate their understanding that meat does have serious environmental and health issues, and, quite simply, because going vegetarian is not that hard to do. In fact, we’re hoping that these people will realize that going veg is so easy and fun that there is no good reason not to give up animal products permanently!

There are over 1500 students who have pledged and 34 colleges and universities officially participating. The pledge reads:

“As a university student, I realize that I am a leader for my generation and an example for society. I am concerned about the inherent cruelty of consuming animals for food and the impact meat has on global warming, the environment, and my health. By signing my name, I pledge to abstain from consuming meat on November 13th, 2007, and commit myself to exploring a more ethical diet in the future.”

Here at Princeton, we’re celebrating the veg pledge (and the 250+ students/faculty/staff already signed up) by throwing a dessert party! Other schools are also celebrating in fun ways – for example, a University of Pennsylvania dining hall is throwing a “Vegan Thanksgiving,” Dartmouth is throwing a Veg Out movie night…



College Veg Pledge is sponsored by Students for Animal Rights (StAR), a new organization devoted to helping college animal rights groups be as effective as possible. The College Veg Pledge is StAR’s first event. We hope you enjoy!

Please take the pledge!

The Next Stage of the Cage Free Campaign

Because of discussions with Greening Princeton and the Princeton Animal Welfare Society, Princeton Dining Services decided last year to serve only cage-free shell eggs. This year, Dining Services has started serving cage-free liquid eggs as well, a great victory considering the difficult pricing and packaging issues they had to overcome. Dining Services has said that they are hoping to be completely cage-free in the next few months.

And that brings us near the end of stage one of our cage-free campaign: getting battery cages out of our dining halls. Now begins stage 2: expanding the circle of compassion for egg-laying hens beyond the Princeton boundaries by reaching out to local schools and businesses.

We believe that like Princeton University students, Princeton town members don’t want to support the cruelty of battery cage egg production. Most of the eggs in this country, about 95%, come from chickens in battery cages – small, wire cages that give each chicken less than the size of a standard sheet of printing paper to spend their entire lives. The cages come in long rows and tall columns that allow tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of birds to fit into one huge shed. The hens cannot walk, cannot spread their wings, and cannot perform any other natural behaviors like foraging or dust-bathing.

The movement away from this inhumane system goes well beyond Princeton, and we want it to keep going. That’s why stage two of our campaign will be to talk to local schools and businesses about the difference between cage-free eggs and battery cage eggs, and encourage them to make the same bold move that Princeton University made in adopting a cage-free egg policy.

Tomorrow at noon, PAWS will have a planning meeting to discuss this next stage of the cage-free egg campaign.

The Next Few Weeks

In the next few weeks, PAWS will be celebrating the lighter side of the animal rights movement. We have planned some fun events—mainly around food—to remind us all just how much fun it is to stop eating carcasses. Seriously, as a vegan, I think I have more fun dreaming about and eating food than the average person. Just look at the names of the cakes we’ll be having at our upcoming dessert party: “Banana Bliss,” “Key Lime High,” “Chocolate Raspberry Reincarnation,” and of course the Mudd Pie Rice-Cream and vegan peanut butter cookies… I could go on and on naming all the food I lust after… But I’ll stop. At least for now.

This Thursday is Princeton’s Halloween. We could spend it costumed, drunk and at the Street (which, to be fair, is probably what we’ll be doing after this event). But beforehand, it’s time for some “Reverse Trick-or-Treating”! PAWS members will celebrate the holiday by going door-to-door with animal-friendly treats! The candy will come with a friendly little note encouraging the recipient to take the College Veg Pledge. Costumes are optional…but fun.

Then when we get back from fall break, it’s time for the national College Veg Pledge on Tuesday, November 13. Already, near 200 Princeton students have already signed up (1000s have nationally), and we expect the Princeton number to grow fast. That evening, PAWS is throwing a decadent dessert party (with the above mentioned pies) that you won’t want to miss. If you haven’t signed up yet, make sure you do! You can just email me at animals@princeton.edu and tell me you’re taking the pledge. That simple!

Or just fill out the online petition here.

So, get excited! It’s time for some fun=food (=vegan food).

Welcome to the Rumor Mill

The debate about the appropriateness of the Animal Liberation Project has definitely continued past last night. I've already made my contribution; but I did want to make one clarification for any and all interested parties.

It came to our attention last night that a rumor has been circulating campus that the ALP originally had a panel showing the Holocaust, and that this panel was not set up at the request of Jewish student leaders. This rumor led one person to ask me "why did the concerns of the Jewish community resonate with you in a way that the concerns of the African American community did not?"

Let me start by saying that PAWS did not choose the panels that came to Princeton. The exhibit consists of twelve panels, all of which travel together and all of which were chosen by PETA. They do not include a panel displaying the Holocaust. Sangeeta Kumar of PETA explained to me that the reason for this is that PETA has already made the Holocaust / slaughterhouse comparison a million times and wanted to try something new. So just to be clear, PAWS did not talk to any Jewish leaders, there was no Holocaust panel, and the rumor is completely made up.

That said, I believe that a Holocaust panel would have been completely appropriate. I continue to view this demonstration as an "all or nothing" affair; if one connection between human and animal suffering is okay, I believe that all twelve panels are appropriate. I do not believe that huge abuses like the Holocaust or slavery can be quantified, nor do I believe that we can say that one is "worse" than the other. If it is appropriate to show slavery and Pol Pot massacres, I believe it must also be appropriate to show the Holocaust. No one group can claim a monopoly on the "worst" oppression or "worst" history, and then refuse to allow that history to be used to the benefit of others.

One final note about the rumors that have been circulating; which is that PAWS ignored the concerns of the African American student body. PAWS listened attentively to the concerns of the African American groups we contacted and attempted to address them in the panel and the literature we handed out. NO campus group was willing to meet with PAWS to discuss their concerns, NO group allowed me to make a presentation to them, and NO group asked to see the entire display - they judged it based on what they had heard about it, not the actual content. Perhaps most importantly, NO group requested that PAWS not bring the display to campus. Without specific, articulated concerns, there was no reason for PAWS not to bring this important display to the attention of the student body.

Hopefully that clears the air, and we can resume discussing the more important philosophical issues this demonstration brings up.

Slaves and Slaughterhouses...

The following editorial will be in the Prince tomorrow morning:

If you attended the Princeton Animal Welfare Society’s screening of the film Earthlings last week, you are now aware that 28 billion animals are tortured, exploited, abused, and eventually slaughtered for human consumption in the United States each year. But if you’re like most Princeton students, you didn’t go to the screening, and probably aren’t aware of that fact, much less been forced to think about it.

As of this week, though, every Princeton student passing by the Frist North Lawn will be forced to consider these issues, thanks to a series of panels set up by PAWS juxtaposing historical abuses of human beings with on-going abuses of animals, and comparing the justifications for each. The fact that the average student has not been to one of PAWS’s more sobering events, yet will be forced to think about animal welfare thanks to the Animal Liberation Project display, in and of itself shows why the eye-catching, controversial tactics employed by the demonstration are an unfortunate necessity to draw attention to an otherwise ignored issue.

That said, PAWS respects the position of individuals concerned about comparing the suffering of animals to the suffering of human beings, particularly those panels that show animal slavery alongside human slavery. That’s why PAWS reached out to a variety of campus groups before the demonstration arrived, giving them an opportunity to engage in dialogue with us about this exhibit. One of the most common fears expressed to us was that PAWS is suggesting that some groups are “no better than animals.” This concern is, of course, particularly acute for the campus’s African American community, who have experienced a legacy of discrimination that included the claim that they are more similar to animals that other human beings.

These concerned students are right about one thing – we are comparing humans to animals – but wrong to say that in doing so we are being racist or degrading. Sure, African Americans appear in the demonstration – as do Asians and whites, men and women, children and adults. The point of this demonstration is not to make any one race or group of human beings out to be more “animal-like” than the others, but instead to say that we are all animals, insofar as we all want to live lives of dignity, free from suffering. We are not trying to degrade anyone – humans or animals – but instead trying to raise all beings up to the level where their rights and interests are respected.

I know as well as you do that child laborers, slaves, political prisoners, and other groups depicted in the exhibit are not the same as chickens and pigs. We know, too, that all human beings differ from one another. In the end, however, it should not be our differences that matter, but our commonalities. What all human beings share is a desire to avoid suffering and live a life of our own choosing. Whether or not you accept it, the truth is that we share this desire with non-human animals as well.

Slave owners – just like animal exploiting meat-eaters today – justified their actions by seizing upon irrelevant differences like skin color or gender to draw lines between the exploited and the exploiter, the powerful and the powerless. Today, few people accept that the lines that divide us into categories of race, gender, or sexual orientation have anything to do with our right to live unfettered and our obligation to treat others with respect and dignity.

This demonstration is about tearing down one more barrier that has been used to justify discrimination – species. When we challenge the justifications for speciesism, we simultaneously combat racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other noxious forms of discrimination by attacking the ideology that underlies them all. This ought to be a cause that all of us, especially students from disadvantaged or minority groups, should be able to get behind.

It is easy to understand why so many people – even those genuinely committed to living an un-prejudiced lifestyle – have such a hard time with this exhibit. As I pointed out at the beginning of this editorial, few of us have ever been forced to think critically about our consumption of animals. This demonstration demands that we do by pointing out that meat eaters can justify their behavior only with the same delusional thinking that has led to centuries of abuses of human beings. Such a strong demand for change is bound to be a little disconcerting.

Individual change, however, is the only way that prejudice can truly be overcome. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “We must become the change we wish to see in this world.” If you want to see change, if you want to see an end to prejudice, then you live non-discrimination in your life. You can take a step to reject the ideology behind speciesism, racism, and sexism tomorrow, all at once: stop consuming animals. Becoming a vegetarian is change for the better of humans and of animals, embodied three meals a day.