(To be welcoming to all readers, this essay avoids graphic descriptions of violence against animals.)
Quitting meat is easier for some of us than for others. Most people today have no intention of quitting it; a minority of vegetarians and vegans already go without meat; and there is a large number in the middle who have considered it, or would like at least to reduce their meat consumption, but without getting there.
I write for people in the third group. For reasons that I discuss, it is increasingly important that we collectively reduce our consumption of meat and other animal products. People who already lean that way can play an important role in making that a reality. If that applies to you, then this essays offers mental resources to finally act on what you feel is right.
I also write for a group of readers who may or not overlap with the first: those disheartened by the prospect of progressive causes in the near future. The 2024 US presidential elections have led millions of people to feel defeated and paralyzed, wishing for a way to make a difference but without knowing how. I will suggest that your food choices have tremendous power to make a difference. The meals you have each day hold the potential to keep progress going on several fronts during the uncertain years ahead. Quitting meat can be your platform to feel active and useful in troubled times.
A word about me: I am not a professional activist (I spend most of my time teaching and researching literature) and my engagement with these issues is recent. I grew up in Brazil, where beef is a matter of national pride. I ate meat until seven years ago, and eggs and dairy until two months ago. It may seem presumptuous of me to advise others on behaviors that were mine until so recently. But there is value, I think, in being close to that decision, as I retain fresh insight into why it was difficult. And because I am not a notable activist but just an average member of the large public, the thoughts that follow may also seem closer to home, and the suggestions more attainable, for others.
This is the first part of a two-section essay. It draws heavily on my personal experience dealing with animal products. The second part then touches on topics that transcend any individual’s life, and will accordingly rely mainly on studies and investigative work done by others.
Before getting to my main topic, let me say two things by way of encouragement:
1) Although I have chosen veganism for myself, this post will not pass judgment on readers who decide to do less. My goal is to help you do more, even if you establish different limits. There is value in that, as I discuss below.
2) There is joy beyond meat, including at table. Giving up on meat is an opportunity to discover new food you will enjoy. And it is easier to forego things you like if you are having other things that you also like.
Breaking the impasse
A growing number of people believe it would be good for them to eat less meat. This belief may be inarticulate, a glimmering at the back of minds occupied with other daily worries. That voice within expresses concerns of various sorts: about health, animal suffering, or the environment. But these concerns haven’t had the power to cause outward change.
None of us likes to be told what to do, and personal change is always easier when the motive is self-given. This is why I decided to address people who already have some sense that changing their diet would be good for them. To have this intuition is to have the most important instrument for moving forward. And one good place to start is to take that intuition and finally give it some airing. Bring it from the background to the foreground of your mind. Zoom in on it and let it speak. Why is it telling you to change, and why don’t you? Figuring this out will bring clarity to your impasse. Somehow you are facing impediments to change that are stronger than your reason for change.
My case offers an illustration. My reason for quitting meat seven years ago was my love for animals. I wanted a better world for them, and I sensed that my food choices were out of sync with that wish. I lived for part of my childhood on a farm where my relatives raised cows, pigs, and chickens for food, and even as a child I felt uneasy looking those animals in the eye.
I only stopped eating meat many years later, but I continued to feel at odds with myself. I had heard that eggs and dairy caused animal suffering too, and if people were to put me in the spot and ask if I should be eating them, I probably would have said no. (Maybe I would have argued my way around it, but I will say a word about arguments in a moment.) For all intents and purposes, I ate meat for forty-two years and continued to eat eggs and dairy for another seven, as for the most part I avoided thinking about the whole thing.
Avoidance was my obstacle.
Like so many people, I don’t deal well with seeing suffering. I cross the street if I get a glimpse of a dead squirrel, as the sight will spoil my day. Witnessing what happens to cows and chickens at industrial farms was unthinkable to me. It is not that I’d never seen it. I had, but I was at a stage where the experience had not been sustained enough to have had enduring impact. I was able to dispel the flashbacks if they came to me. And for most of my life my avoidance of mental anguish took priority over my wish to protect animals.
I only found a way forward two months ago, almost by chance. I had come to Princeton University on a research fellowship, and my Center gave me an office right next to Peter Singer, the philosopher who helped to launch the animal rights movement with Animal Liberation (1975). Singer researched and wrote about factory farming at a time when very few people were concerned about it. When I arrived he had just retired and was no longer around, but the traces of his presence had a psychological impact on me. Those walls and hallways, which had witnessed so much of his work, seemed to be asking why I avoided an issue he had so courageously confronted.
On some level I knew that my avoidance had a cost. When I shielded myself from the plight of animals, I denied them the opportunity to access my compassion. Their suffering disappeared for me but not for them. I also deprived myself of an experience that could be transformative in the long run, even if unpleasant right away.
My dilemma is a common one. A big hurdle for animal liberation is that the very gravity of their condition deprives them of our pity. When asked to watch footage of factory farming, most of us tend to say: “Don’t show it to me. I don’t want to see it.” But the more we don’t see it, the more it is allowed to continue.
I got up one day and decided to see it — really see it. I read Singer’s essay “The Case for Going Vegan” (which is short but poignant) then sat in front of my computer and took a deep dive into the reality of the dairy and egg industry. I watched footage, not for a few seconds but for a few minutes. It was harrowing in all the ways I expected. But it hit home and broke my paralysis. My opposition to animal suffering got the boost it needed to finally tip the balance in their favor. That day I was able to tell myself: this is too high a price for milk and eggs.
If avoidance is your problem as well—if you, too, care but find it easier to disengage—then take a moment to consider whether the objects of your concern deserve a hearing from you.
The discomfort you feel indicates that you disapprove of things as they are, and that you desire change. But your desire for change has little power if instead of embracing the discomfort your shield yourself.
In deciding to engage you don’t need to pursue the highest shock approach, which is the one that worked for me. A good alternative to witnessing animal suffering is to connect with animals at sanctuaries. Meeting them on that ground has the advantage of highlighting the individuality of species commonly imagined as undifferentiated flocks. We get to see that each animal is unique: they are someone, not something. And because they are rescued, they carry their stories with them, in the way they act and in their scars.
(Me visiting Goats of Anarchy, a New Jersey sanctuary that rescues and cares for disabled goats who need prosthetic limbs, as well as hundreds of other farm animals. The small white goat on the left is Willow, featured with her sister Bambi in one of GoA's videos, which you can watch here. The bigger goat on the right is Ansel the Destroyer, a big favorite with everyone. You will see why he is called that in this episode from the Dodo.)
A second alternative to direct witnessing is to engage with mediated reporting. In the 10-minute video below Peter Singer (the author of Animal Liberation) speaks to the camera while summing up the conditions of animal agriculture and his vision for the future. There is footage of factory farming, but it is curated in ways that make it easier to digest:
Ultimately, if you sense that only the impact of more direct witnessing can shake complacency for you, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) offers the following 60-second cut of factory farming footage. Be advised that it is very graphic. At the same time, what it shows is standard procedure that has been documented to be widely practiced internationally. This industry is regulated by minimal welfare standards that are weakly enforced. The courage to see with your eyes what they have no choice but to endure may enable you to finally listen to yourself and get past the impasse.
So much for avoidance. I turn now to three other obstacles that commonly stand in the way of change.
Futility
Another common obstacle for people interested in quitting meat is a sense of futility. Can individuals really impact such a massive system as modern animal agriculture? A helpful way to think about this is to remember that we already do. Our individual purchases make up the global demand for animal products. The money we pay today funds the production of meat, eggs, and dairy tomorrow. The vast tracts of land, the heavy use of water, the sheds for billions of animals—all of that is the compound effect of the meals we have a few times a day. Different meals would have a different impact.
Rather than wondering whether we can make a difference, it is accordingly better to ask what kind of difference we would like to make. Increasingly there are options. Many of us can afford to support industries that do not exploit animals. Plant-based food is growing globally, thanks to the rising number of individuals who can choose and do choose to eat a meatless diet. This is a promising trend that none of us can promote alone, but which only grows if more of us become part of it. That’s how we cause impact.
In addition, our individual actions are not like atoms that only touch one another at the point of global demand. We live in networks where example matters. I found it easier to become a vegetarian after I made vegetarian friends. They illustrated, for me, that there is life beyond meat. Time with them revealed new things I came to like (brussels sprouts, oyster mushrooms, seitan, tempeh, falafel). In turn, time with me has led my omnivorous friends to try new things, first from a spirit of camaraderie, but then because they genuinely liked them. Living a life without meat—or dairy, or eggs—makes that life more imaginable, more appealing, and more normal for others, who then carry that normalcy into their own spaces.
Finally, impact is not the only measure that counts. Living a life that matches your principles is a goal worthy of pursuit.
Clean and partial breaks
I turn now to a major impediment for people considering vegetarianism or veganism: the fear of the clean break. The word “never” has tremendous weight with us. To never eat your favorite dishes again is too much of an ask for many people. Framed this way, quitting meat (or dairy, or eggs) looks like a renunciation, a perpetual self-sacrifice.
Getting past this hurdle requires a different mindset. You don’t need to go all in all at once, nor do you need to think of it as renouncing what you like. Instead, try to approach the change as an expansion of your options, an opportunity to discover new favorites. At the grocery store, spend time on the shelves you usually skip, and bring home a couple of new items each time. You will not like all of it—I dislike tofu to this day—but you will be surprised by how good many of the options are. (Did you know that Oreos are vegan?) Incorporate the best items regularly into your meals, and they will feel just like that—meals that you enjoy.
Approaching plant-based food as exploration rather than a loss makes change easier. Many vegans begin that way. You may never make a total break, but the partial break has its value too. By merely incorporating plant-based food into our consumption habits, we stimulate these industries: we help to make that food more widely available, more affordable, more varied, and more flavorful.
If the clean break is too difficult, there is an alternative goal you can adopt: to make the break easier for the people coming after us. Younger generations growing up amidst more options, where plant-based food is normal, will feel less dependency on animal products and will be better equipped to further reduce our reliance on them.
Arguments
One last obstacle I would like to discuss is that posed by arguments in favor of meat eating. There are many: we eat meat because it is nutritive; we like it; we are omnivores; it is convenient; animals are raised for it; there are humane farms; and the list continues.
Some of these arguments deserve serious consideration. Let me mention one: not everybody has access to better food options. Food deserts in the United States overlap with poor public transportation, so that people living in those areas have to walk for hours to access healthier food. The conditions are not in place for them to avoid meat. This, of course, is not a justification of the meat industry: it is a sign that our food system also has human victims. I discuss many other signs in the second half of the essay.
Other arguments for consuming animal products have less to stand on. There are contexts in which it is important to engage with them (for detailed analyses see this book by Ed Winters). In our personal lives, however, they have the effect of weakening our resolve, just because they are so omnipresent.
Yet the reason we consume animal products is not that we have been argued into it. It is a socialization process. We come into a world not of our making and are initiated into various practices (like eating certain animals but not others, or wearing certain clothes but not others) before we are able to have a stance on them. The arguments come later, when we realize that behaviors we long took for granted are being called into question. Since our identity is so entangled with these behaviors, we may feel personally under attack. The arguments we gravitate towards are rarely the ones that push us to change; they are the ones that allow us to be at peace with our lifestyles. The social psychologist Melanie Joy discusses these self-defense mechanisms in a book entitled Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. She has coined a term for the invisible belief system that make us feel attached to eating animals: carnism.
Because carnistic arguments work primarily as post-facto justifications, they have appeal less because of their content than because of their function: they provide reassurance and self-validation. To question their content only attracts more arguments, which in turn demand more energy.
A better way to move past such arguments is to question the comfort they offer. They solace humans who want to retain their habits, but they do nothing for the victims. If you’ve read this far, it is because you are inclined to overcome that indifference. When encountering carnistic arguments, try to keep the animals in the picture. Justifying meat eating because we like it becomes harder when we see the sentient being who gives up their life for it. Breaking the cycle of avoidance is, again, the best way to nourish the inclination you already have.
Most of what I’ve said so far has been focused on concern about animals. But there are different reasons for quitting meat, such as health concerns or the impact of farming on climate change. I address them in the second section of this essay, where I turn to how our food choices can be a form of activism, impacting issues we do not normally associate with our diets.
For now, I hope this section has incentivized you to nourish the wish for change you already have. In that spirit, let me close with an inspiring story that may help you connect with the individuals behind the walls designed to keep them invisible. This is a 6-minute animated biopic telling the story of Matilda, a sow living in an English sanctuary after bravely escaping a farm to give birth to ten piglets:
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