Food fight over veganism: diet choice or lifestyle? If lifestyle, whose?

(Beth Clifton collage)

Yes,  a plant-based diet is vegan.  So is living in Las Vegas.

            SARASOTA, Florida––Is veganism,  by dictionary definition the state of being vegan,  a diet or a lifestyle?

If veganism means or at least implies a lifestyle,  as the “vegan police” would have it in trying to enforce strict boundaries to all things vegan,  does it require anything more than not eating or wearing animal products and byproducts?

Does “vegan” really differ at all from “plant-based” in any reasonable sense of either term?

Mercy for Animals president Leah Garces.

Bloody food fight

Escalating for at least a decade,  the bloodiest of all food fights among the often uncoordinated left and right arms of the vegan police recently exploded into the open––again––in a May 2,  2024 manifesto cosigned by fifteen vegan militants who collectively argued that vegans have an “intersectional” obligation,  simply by dint of being vegan,  to oppose the Israeli war against Hamas.

Of course the manifesto,  whose authors included Mercy for Animals president Leah Garcés and PETA science policy advisor Shriya Swaminathan,  never actually mentioned Hamas.

Neither did the authors address or even dance gingerly around the question of what on earth might constitute “intersectionality” between veganism and Islamism,  an extreme branch of Islam which holds as a central tenet a purported ethical obligation to perform public sacrifice of sheep,  goats,  camels,  cattle,  and chickens on religious occasions.

Other contributions to charity,  accepted elsewhere in Islam for centuries,  among Islamists are considered blasphemous.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Intersections” & October 7,  2024

The “vegan” manifesto in question also avoided such other “intersectional” questions as defense of Gazan culturally encouraged and celebrated mass rape and murder of Israeli women on October 7,  2023;  killing tens of thousands of farmed animals on the same day,  chiefly by burning kibbutz poultry and dairy barns;  and the reality that openly “LGBTQ” people in Gaza,  under Hamas,  are summarily shot.

The authors of that “vegan” manifesto appear to have been channeling,  and were perhaps inspired by,  a blatantly anti-Semitic screed entitled “Vegan Killers: Israeli Vegan-Washing and the Manipulation of Morality,”  by one Shawndeez Davari Jadali,  identified as “research assistant, Islamophobia Studies Journal,  U.C. Berkeley,”  posted to the world a decade ago on December 19,  2014.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Exclusionism is not vegan

Davari argued that,  “It is incumbent upon intersectional liberationists to ensure that Israeli vegan-washing has no room in the animal rights movement.”

Historically,  animal advocacy,  including vegan advocacy,  has been perhaps the only “intersection” of ethnicities,  religions,  philosophies,  and other warring persuasions where at least in theory all are welcome.

ANIMALS 24-7 has documented and detailed in many articles how mainstream humane organizations have overlooked and even excised from humane history the major contributions of Jewish,  Islamic,  and African-American leaders,  especially,  and have traced the origins of the western humane tradition to Asian cultural origins;  but we have yet to discover any other instances of even the most blatantly racist animal advocacy spokespersons,  in any part of the world,  asserting that there is no room in the animal cause for anyone sharing the creed “Be kind to animals.”

Donald Watson with 1944 first edition of The Vegan News.  (Facebook photo)

Donald Watson

The focal question here,  however,  is not the intolerance of one specific small segment within the vegan sector of animal advocacy,  but rather the accuracy of the interpretation of “vegan” that those particular vegans,  along with many others,  assert with self-righteous furious fervor is the only true and faithful version thereof.

Such claims typically hark back to,  but do not accurately echo,  the definitions and beliefs advanced by Vegan Society founder Donald Watson,  who coined the term “vegan” in 1944,  and for sixty-one years helped to advance it into general recognition.

Along the way Watson is often said to have attached much to being “vegan” that is now claimed to be part of a “vegan” lifestyle or philosophy,  even when it inherently has little or nothing to do with not exploiting animals,  and even though Watson himself did not insist that other vegans had to do and believe exactly what he did.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Veganism began with a pig

Donald Watson,  33 when he started the Vegan Society,  died at age 95 on November 16, 2005 at his home in Cumbria,  northern England.

Born in Mexborough,  Yorkshire,  the son of a school headmaster in a mining community,  Donald Watson spent much of his childhood on a farm “run by his much-loved Uncle George,”  recalled his London Times obituary.

There,  at age 14 in 1924,  the London Times obituary continued,  Donald Watson “was shocked to see his uncle direct the slaughter of a pig.  The pig’s screams remained with him ever after.”

Wrote Donald Watson,   “I decided that farms and uncles had to be reassessed:  the idyllic scene was nothing more than death row,  where every creature’s days were numbered.”

Dorothy & Donald Watson on their wedding day.
(Beth Clifton collage)

New Year’s resolution

Then and there Donald Watson became a vegetarian,  making a New Year’s resolution to never again eat meat.

A year later Donald Watson left school,  was apprenticed to a family joinery firm,  joinery being a specialized branch of carpentry,  and became a joinery teacher at age twenty.

Teaching in the city of Leicester,  Donald Watson became active in the Leicester Vegetarian Society.

Like most vegetarians at the time,  for whom health concerns were the primary motivation for not eating meat,  Donald Watson did not smoke or consume alcohol,  and avoided foods that he believed might have been contaminated by pesticides

(Beth Clifton collage)

Gave up dairy products in 1942

He gave up consuming dairy products 18 years after become a vegetarian,  in 1942,  with England three years into World War II and milk rationing.

English citizens were at the time urged to leave dairy products for children,  who were believed to need milk for healthy growth.

While abandoning dairy consumption in Donald Watson’s case may well have been entirely a conscientious decision motivated by concern for animals,  he certainly was not alone at the time in giving up milk,  and might have been nudged along by participation in the war effort.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Conscientious objector

Often mentioned is that Donald Watson not only became a vegetarian early in life, but also convinced his elder brother and younger sister to join him in vegetarianism,  and that all three registered as conscientious objectors during World War II.

For this reason the Watsons have sometimes been suspected of sharing sympathies with the Nazis openly espoused early in the Third Reich by the Royal SPCA,  and the American Humane Association,  for passing a series of “humane laws” which banned kosher slaughter and forbade Jews from keeping dogs.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Donald Watson supported the war effort

Much was also made of the purported vegetarianism of members of the Nazi high command,  including Adolph Hitler,  who was never actually vegetarian at all.

(See Hitler:  Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover,  by Rynn Berry)

Further,  the leading voice for pesticide-free agriculture in England at the time was Jorian Jenks,  who doubled as secretary of the Soil Association and of the British Union of Fascists.

But Donald Watson,  as corresponding secretary for the London Vegetarian Society by then,  was well aware that the Nazis upon taking power in Germany had promptly liquidated the formerly numerous independent German vegetarian organizations.

Donald Watson made clear in a late-life interview that he and his family fully supported the war effort,  and made clear as well his appreciation of friends and acquaintances who had actively fought Hitler,  some at cost of their lives.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“They were exterminating the Jews”

“Vegetarians, and vegans,”  Watson explained,  “found ourselves placed in a dreadful position at the beginning of the war.  We were faced with an evil regime that was executing people who didn’t fully agree with the Nazi philosophy.  They were exterminating the Jews by the million.

“And we had to decide whether to fight in the only way that seemed practical,  to fight this evil,  and overcome it in the hope that something better would result,  although it never had from previous wars.  And my own feeling was that,  if I enroll,  and I’m allotted to any branch of the Services,  I immediately become liable to military law.  Suppose they direct me to work in a slaughterhouse?  Or anywhere else,  where I’m expected to conform to orders from above.

(Beth Clifton collage)

In Auxiliary Fire Service

“What do I do?

“After much thought,  for right or wrong,  I became a conscientious objector.  My terms for being given this privilege,  which it was,  of course,  was that my salary as a teacher was reduced to two pounds a week––the pay of the lowest-serving member of the Forces,  who were, of course,  fed and clothed.  My night school pay was stopped too,  because the Leicester City Council said that the terms were that I mustn’t have more than two pounds a week.

“I was also in the Auxiliary Fire Service,  where, two days a week,  I had to go down and spend the night at the Granby Halls,  in my full fireman’s regalia,  in case we had a bombing raid.  Fortunately we didn’t.”

Vegan Society cofounder Elsie Shrigley.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Founding the Vegan Society

By 1944 Donald Watson realized that so many people in England had given up meat,  milk,  and eggs that it was possible to form a society,  emulative of the London Vegetarian Society in structure,  to encourage those people to continue a diet free of use of animal products and byproducts even after the war,  when meat,  milk,  and eggs might again become readily available.

Continuing for several more years as corresponding secretary for the London Vegetarian Society,  Donald Watson also assembled the 25-member committee that became the Vegan Society,  publishing the first 12-page edition of The Vegan News,  subtitled the “quarterly magazine of the non-dairy vegetarians,”  in November 1944.

As paper was also strictly rationed at the time,  this was no small undertaking.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Consider carefully what our group should be called”

“We should all consider carefully what our group, and our magazine,  and ourselves,  shall be called,”  Watson editorialized.

“’Non-dairy’ has become established as a generally understood colloquialism,”  Watson acknowledged, “but like ‘non-lacto’ it is too negative.  Moreover it does not imply that we are opposed to the use of eggs as food.  We need a name that suggests what we do eat,  and if possible one that conveys the idea that even with all animal foods taboo,  Nature still offers us a bewildering assortment from which to choose.

“’Vegetarian’ and ‘Fruitarian’ are already associated with societies that allow the ‘fruits'(!) of cows and fowls,  therefore it seems we must make a new and appropriate word.

“As this first issue of our periodical had to be named,”  Watson wrote,  “I have used the title ‘The Vegan News.’  Should we adopt this,  our diet will soon become known as a VEGAN diet,  and we should aspire to the rank of VEGANS.  Members’ suggestions will be welcomed.

“The virtue of having a short title is best known to those of us who,  as secretaries of vegetarian societies have to type or write the word vegetarian thousands of times a year!”

Donald Watson.

Definition of “vegan” came in 1949

That seems to clarify the origin and intentions of the use of the word “vegan,”  but not entirely.

As the History page at VeganSociety.com adds,  “Although the vegan diet was defined early on it was as late as 1949 before Leslie J Cross pointed out that the society lacked a definition of veganism.  He suggested ‘[t]he principle of the emancipation of animals from exploitation by man.’   This is later clarified as “to seek an end to the use of animals by man for food,  commodities, work,  hunting,  vivisection,  and by all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man.”

Relocating to Keswick,  where he taught for 23 years,  Donald Watson remained active in the Vegan Society for the rest of his life.

However,  more interested in growing organic vegetables and in nature appreciation than in activism in his later years,  Watson left the Vegan Society leadership largely to others.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Watson never claimed to have originated veganism

Of note is that Donald Watson never claimed to have originated “veganism” as a diet,  cause,  creed,  or movement;  just the word and the Vegan Society itself,  with much help from his friends.

Neither did Donald Watson ever claim to exclusively own the term “vegan.”

The practice of veganism by spiritual leaders goes back at least as far as the Indus valley civilization of 3300-1300 BCE,  ancestral to Hinduism,  Buddhism,  and Jainism.

The earliest vegan who left a specific record of his diet and explained it in terms of practicing compassion for animals may have been the Islamic Arab poet Al-Ma’arri (973-1057CE).

Dugald Semple lived for years in a caravan.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Dugald Semple

Donald Watson in the November 1944 first edition of The Vegan News acknowledged the leadership of Dugald Semple (1884-1964),  an eccentric Scot who “adopted a diet of nuts,  fruit,  cereals and vegetables” circa 1905,  Semple recalled circa 1963.

Dugald Semple by 1907 was actively advocating a diet from which “not only is flesh and meat omitted,  but also the animal products milk and eggs.”

Dugald Semple further advocated against cooking food,  though he was not strictly a “raw foodist.”

Dugald Semple.

“Vegetarianism is not merely a matter of food reform”

Becoming a conscientious objector at age 32 in 1916,  midway through World War I,  Dugald Semple argued at the 1938 10th World Vegetarian Congress, held in Oslo,  Norway,  that “Vegetarianism is not merely a matter of food reform – it is a philosophy of life,  and war will only cease when we cease to live as beasts of prey…The killing of human beings is akin to the killing of animals and so the exploiting of animal life leads to the selfish exploitation of human beings.”

Initially scheduled to have been held in Bulgaria,  the 10th World Vegetarian Congress was relocated to Oslo in response to anticipated Nazi annexation of Austria and invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland.  No German or Austrian speakers took part.

Dugald Semple.

Rejected Nazi invitation

According to the August 1938 edition of The Vegetarian Messenger,  published from Manchester,  England,  “It was intimated that an invitation to hold the Congress in 1940 had been received from the German government, but in view of the fact that there was no society from Germany in the [World Vegetarian] Union at the present time,  and of the difficulties of local organization under such circumstances,  it was felt that the Congress could not see its way to accept the invitation.”

On a motion from Dugald Semple,  the 10th World Vegetarian Congress “adopted a resolution “calling upon all peoples and their governments to maintain and work for peace.”

Rukmini Devi Arundale.
(Beth Clifton collage)

1957 statement for animal rights

Nearly 20 years later,  in 1957,  at the 15th World Vegetarian Congress,  hosted by dancer and activist Rukmini Devi Arundale,  held in separate sessions in Mumbai,  Delhi,  Kolkata,  and Chennai,  India,  Dugald Semple remarked,  “What a tragedy it would be if Mother India was to become estranged from her sympathy with the rights of animals,  which although it may have been carried to extremes,  nevertheless has been a noble example to the flesh-eating and vivisecting nations of the West.”

Dugald Semple and his protégé Donald Watson were both eventually self-defined vegans,  proto-animal rights advocates,  conscientious objectors,  would-be agricultural reformers,  anti-vivisectionists,  and peace activists,  albeit peace activists who had no use for either Nazis or totalitarians of any other stripe.

Donald Watson.  (Vegan Society photo.)

Definition stretched

But it is not evident that either Semple or Watson extended to their definition of veganism any sort of political or philosophical exclusivity going beyond simply not eating animals and animal byproducts.

“With the increasing popularity of veganism,  however,”  observed Mark Hawthorne for VegNews on December 27,  2022,   has come what Hawthorne termed “an even more holistic and compassionate approach to defining what a vegan is.

“There is a growing movement,”  Hawthorne wrote,  “that believes that the unity of suffering connects species,  races,  genders,  classes,  and religions in a very tangible way—that the exploitation of animals is intrinsically linked to the oppression of humans in its many forms (such as racism,  sexism,  ableism,  and sizeism).  For those within this movement,  being vegan means advocating for and amplifying the voices of marginalized people as well as animals.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Redefining “vegan”

This,  however,  risks redefining “vegan” to an extent that neither Semple nor Watson could ever have recognized,  perhaps most obviously in their decades of advocating veganism and physical fitness in opposition to obesity.

Neither,  for example,  would have acknowledged any sort of ethnic privilege to kill animals in the name of preserving religious or cultural tradition,  or gender-based exemption from criticism.

The term “vegan” as Donald Watson meant it to be used first crossed over into mainstream print when syndicated columnists E.V. Durling in 1953 and William Brady, M.D., in 1955 explained that, in Brady’s words, a vegan “is a vegetarian who excludes from his diet not just meat,  fish,  and fowl,  but also milk,  butter,  cheese,  and eggs.”

But this was scarcely the first mainstream use of “Vegan,” long a headline abbreviation for anyone or anything from Las Vegas.

Merritt & Beth Clifton with Henry the rooster.

For decades there were frequent Vegan crimes,  circuses,  rodeos,  and political conventions,  involving at times thousands of Vegans.

Likely none of them actually practiced veganism in any form.  But that scarcely means they were not entitled to their own use and understanding of the word,  not exclusive of any others.

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