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Veganism: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Veganism
In November 1944, a quiet revolution began in a small room in Leicester, England, when Donald Watson and a group of fellow vegetarians decided to stop calling themselves vegetarians. They needed a new name to distinguish their practice from the mainstream movement that still accepted milk and eggs. Watson, the secretary of the Leicester branch of the Vegetarian Society, coined the word vegan by taking the first three letters of vegetarian and the last two, creating a term that marked the beginning and end of the old label. This single word would eventually define a global movement that rejects all forms of animal exploitation, from food to clothing to entertainment. The first issue of The Vegan News, the newsletter Watson launched to spread the word, attracted over 100 letters, including one from the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw, who resolved to give up eggs and dairy after reading it. The group held their first meeting at the Attic Club on 144 High Holborn in London, attended by Watson, Elsie B. Shrigley, Fay K. Henderson, Alfred Hy Haffenden, Paul Spencer, and Bernard Drake, with Mme Pataleewa observing. By November 1945, the newsletter had 500 subscribers and changed its name to The Vegan, publishing recipes and a trade list of animal-free products like toothpastes, shoe polishes, and glue. The Vegan Society soon made clear that it rejected the use of animals for any purpose, not only in diet. In 1947, Watson wrote that the vegan renounces it as superstitious that human life depends upon the exploitation of creatures whose feelings are much the same as our own. From 1948, The Vegans front page read: Advocating living without exploitation, and in 1951, the Society published its definition of veganism as the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals.
Ancient Roots And Modern Movements
The practice of abstaining from animal products has deep historical roots that predate the word vegan by millennia. Early vegetarians can be traced back to the Indus Valley civilization between 3300 and 1300 BCE in the Indian subcontinent, particularly in northern and western ancient India. Prominent figures such as the Indian philosophers Parshavnatha, Mahavira, Acharya Kundakunda, Umaswati, Samantabhadra, and Valluvar, as well as the Indian emperors Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka, embraced vegetarianism. One of the earliest known vegans was the Arab poet al-Ma'arri, famous for his poem I No Longer Steal From Nature, which argued against the consumption of animal products. Another vegan who predated the term was English philosopher Lewis Gompertz, who argued that if humans deserve justice, then so do animals. In the 19th century, vegetarianism established itself as a significant movement in Britain and the United States. In 1813, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published A Vindication of Natural Diet, advocating abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors, and in 1815, William Lambe, a London physician, said that his water and vegetable diet could cure anything from tuberculosis to acne. Sylvester Graham's meatless Graham diet, mostly fruit, vegetables, water, and bread made at home with stoneground flour, became popular as a health remedy in the 1830s in the United States. The first known vegan cookbook was Asenath Nicholson's Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians, published in 1849. Several vegan communities were established around this time, including Amos Bronson Alcott's Temple School in 1834 and Fruitlands in 1844 in Massachusetts, and James Pierrepont Greaves' Concordium, a vegan community at Alcott House on Ham Common, in 1838. In 1910, C. W. Daniel published an early vegan cookbook, Rupert H. Wheldon's No Animal Food: Two Essays and 100 Recipes. The consumption of milk and eggs became a battleground over the following decades within the Vegetarian Society, with regular discussions in the Vegetarian Messenger. During a visit to London in 1931, Mahatma Gandhi, who had joined the Vegetarian Society's executive committee when he lived in London from 1888 to 1891, gave a speech to the Society arguing that it ought to promote a meat-free diet as a matter of morality, not health. Lacto-vegetarians acknowledged the ethical consistency of the vegan position but regarded a vegan diet as impracticable and were concerned that it might be an impediment to spreading vegetarianism if vegans found themselves unable to participate in social circles where no non-animal food was available. This became the predominant view of the Vegetarian Society, which in 1935 stated: The lacto-vegetarians, on the whole, do not defend the practice of consuming the dairy products except on the ground of expediency.
When and where was the word vegan coined by Donald Watson?
Donald Watson coined the word vegan in November 1944 in a small room in Leicester, England. He created the term by taking the first three letters of vegetarian and the last two to distinguish his group from mainstream vegetarians who accepted milk and eggs.
Who were the early historical figures who practiced veganism before the term existed?
Early vegans include the Arab poet al-Ma'arri and the English philosopher Lewis Gompertz who argued for animal justice. The practice also has roots in the Indus Valley civilization between 3300 and 1300 BCE and includes figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Indian philosophers such as Parshavnatha and Mahavira.
What do major health organizations say about the safety of vegan diets for children and pregnant women?
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and Dietitians of Canada claim that well-planned vegan diets are appropriate for all life stages including pregnancy and lactation. The German Society for Nutrition holds that a vegan diet can be healthful for healthy adults but does not recommend it for vulnerable groups like children or pregnant women without professional advice.
How does veganism impact the environment according to recent scientific studies?
A 2018 study found that global adoption of plant-exclusive diets would reduce agricultural land use by 76 percent and cut total global greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent. A 2023 study published in Nature Food found that a vegan diet reduces emissions, water pollution, and land use by 75 percent while reducing the destruction of wildlife by 66 percent.
Which countries have legal protections for ethical veganism in employment and public services?
The United Kingdom ruled in 2020 that the Equality Act 2010 protects ethical veganism as a belief. Portugal requires public administration canteens and cafeterias to offer at least one vegan option at every meal starting in 2017. Ontario ruled in 2023 that veganism is not a protected belief under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Who pioneered feminist veganism and what is its central argument?
Feminist veganism was pioneered by scholar Carol J. Adams with her 1990 book The Sexual Politics of Meat. The central argument is that there is a connection between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals, viewing meat eating as the ultimate capitalist product.
The scientific understanding of veganism has evolved from early health reformers to modern medical consensus. In the 1960s and 1970s, a vegetarian food movement emerged as part of the counterculture in the United States that focused on concerns about diet, the environment, and a distrust of food producers, leading to increasing interest in organic gardening. One of the most influential vegetarian books of that time was Frances Moore Lappé's 1971 Diet for a Small Planet, which sold more than three million copies and suggested getting off the top of the food chain. The following decades saw research by a group of scientists and doctors in the U.S., including Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, Neal D. Barnard, John A. McDougall, Michael Greger, and biochemist T. Colin Campbell, who argued that diets based on animal fat and animal protein, such as the Western pattern diet, were unhealthy. They produced a series of books that recommend vegan or vegetarian diets, including McDougall's The McDougall Plan in 1983, John Robbins's Diet for a New America in 1987, which associated meat eating with environmental damage, and Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease in 1990. In 2003, two major North American dietitians' associations claimed that well-planned vegan diets were suitable for all life stages. This was followed by the film Earthlings in 2005, Campbell's The China Study in 2005, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin's Skinny Bitch in 2005, Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals in 2009, and the film Forks Over Knives in 2011. A Cochrane review of randomized controlled trials found that there is currently insufficient information to draw conclusions about the effects of vegan dietary interventions on cardiovascular disease risk factors. A meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies concluded that vegan diets are associated with reduced risk of ischemic heart disease, but no clear association was found for cardiovascular disease and stroke. There is tentative evidence of an association between vegan diets and reduced risk of cancer. Vegans may be at risk of low bone mineral density. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and Dietitians of Canada claim that properly planned vegetarian or vegan diets are appropriate for all life stages, including pregnancy and lactation. The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council similarly believe a well-planned vegan diet is viable for any age, as does the British Dietetic Association. The German Society for Nutrition cautioned against a vegan diet for pregnant women, breastfeeding women, babies, children, and adolescents. The position of the Canadian Pediatric Society is that well-planned vegetarian and vegan diets with appropriate attention to specific nutrient components can provide a healthy alternative lifestyle at all stages of fetal, infant, child and adolescent growth. It is recommended that attention should be given to nutrient intake, particularly protein, vitamins B12 and D, essential fatty acids, iron, zinc, and calcium. As of 2024, the German Society for Nutrition holds that for healthy adults a vegan diet can be healthful, when B12 is supplemented and the diet is well-planned so that critical nutrients are provided. Because data is lacking, the German Society for Nutrition does not recommend for or against vegan diets for vulnerable groups like children, young people, elderly and pregnant or breastfeeding women. If individuals in these groups decide for a vegan diet, they are suggested to seek professional advice, as planning the diet in these cases is complex and irreversible consequences cannot be ruled out, when the diet is not well planned. The German Society for Nutrition highlights that a vegan diet is exceptionally environmental friendly and can reduce greenhouse gases by about 70 to 80 percent, while having other environmental benefits, too. As of 2022, 45 percent of government nutritional guidelines discuss vegan meat or milk alternatives, or both.
The Ethics Of Exploitation
Ethical veganism is based on opposition to speciesism, the assignment of value to individuals based on species membership alone. Divisions within animal rights theory include the utilitarian, protectionist approach, which pursues improved conditions for animals, and the rights-based abolitionism, which seeks to end human ownership of non-humans. Abolitionists argue that protectionism serves only to make the public feel that animal use can be morally unproblematic, the happy meat position. A common argument used while advocating for ethical veganism is the argument from marginal cases, which presents the idea that if negative rights are prescribed to human infants, cognitively and/or physically disabled humans, then by logical extension, animals should also be granted the same negative rights as no morally relevant characteristics exist between animals and marginal-case human beings. Donald Watson, co-founder of The Vegan Society, asked why he was an ethical vegan, replied, If an open-minded, honest person pursues a course long enough, and listens to all the criticisms, and in one's own mind can satisfactorily meet all the criticisms against that idea, sooner or later one's resistance against what one sees as evil tradition has to be discarded. Of bloodsports, he has said that to kill creatures for fun must be the very dregs and that vivisection and animal experimentation is probably the cruelest of all Man's attack on the rest of Creation. He has also said, vegetarianism, whilst being a necessary stepping-stone between meat eating and veganism, is only a stepping-stone. Alex Hershaft, co-founder of the Farm Animal Rights Movement and Holocaust survivor, says he was always bothered by the idea of hitting a beautiful, living, innocent animal over the head, cutting him up into pieces, then shoving the pieces into his mouth and that his experiences in the Nazi Holocaust allowed him to empathize with the conditions of animals in factory farms, auction yards, and slaughterhouses because he knows firsthand what it's like to be treated like a worthless object. Several animal rights activists, including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gary Yourofsky and Karen Davis, have compared the cruel treatment of animals in CAFOs and slaughterhouses to the Holocaust. Law professor Gary Francione, an abolitionist, argues that all sentient beings should have the right not to be treated as property, and that veganism must be the baseline for anyone who believes that non-humans have intrinsic moral value. Philosopher Tom Regan, also a rights theorist, argues that animals possess value as subjects-of-a-life, because they have beliefs, desires, memory and the ability to initiate action in pursuit of goals. The right of subjects-of-a-life not to be harmed can be overridden by other moral principles, but Regan argues that pleasure, convenience and the economic interests of farmers are not weighty enough. Philosopher Peter Singer, a protectionist and utilitarian, argues that there is no moral or logical justification for failing to count animal suffering as a consequence when making decisions, and that killing animals should be rejected unless necessary for survival. Despite this, he writes that ethical thinking can be sensitive to circumstances and that he is not too concerned about trivial infractions. An argument by Bruce Friedrich, also a protectionist, holds that strict veganism harms animals because it focuses on personal purity rather than encouraging people to give up whatever animal products they can. For Francione, this is similar to arguing that, because human-rights abuses can never be eliminated, we should not defend human rights in situations we control. By failing to ask a server whether something contains animal products, we reinforce that the moral rights of animals are a matter of convenience, he argues. He concludes from this that the protectionist position fails on its own consequentialist terms. Philosopher Val Plumwood maintained that ethical veganism is subtly human-centred, an example of what she called human/nature dualism, because it views humanity as separate from the rest of nature. Ethical vegans want to admit non-humans into the category that deserves special protection rather than recognize the ecological embeddedness of all. David Pearce, a transhumanist philosopher, has argued that humanity has a hedonistic imperative not merely to avoid cruelty to animals caused by humans but also to redesign the global ecosystem such that wild animal suffering in nature ceases to exist. In pursuit of abolishing suffering, Pearce promotes predation elimination among animals and the cross-species global analogue of the welfare state. Fertility regulation could maintain herbivore populations at sustainable levels, a more civilised and compassionate policy option than famine, predation, and disease. The increasing number of vegans and vegetarians in the transhumanism movement has been attributed in part to Pearce's influence. A growing political philosophy that incorporates veganism as part of its revolutionary praxis is veganarchism, which seeks total abolition or total liberation for all animals, including humans. Veganarchists identify the state as unnecessary and harmful to animals, both human and non-human, and advocate for the adoption of veganism in a stateless society. The term was popularized in 1995 by Brian A. Dominick's pamphlet Animal Liberation and Social Revolution, described as a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perspective on veganism. Direct action is a common practice among veganarchists and anarchists generally, with groups like the Animal Liberation Front, the Animal Rights Militia, the Justice Department and Revolutionary Cells , Animal Liberation Brigade often engaging in such activities, sometimes criminally, to further their goals. Steven Best, animal rights activist and professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso, advocates this approach, and has been critical of vegan activists like Francione for supporting animal liberation but not total liberation, which would include not only opposition to the property status of animals but also a serious critique of capitalism, the state, property relations, and commodification dynamics in general. In particular, he criticizes the focus on the simplistic and apolitical Go Vegan message directed mainly to wealthy Western audiences, while ignoring people of colour, the working class and the poor, especially in the developing world, noting that for every person who becomes vegan, a thousand flesh eaters arise in China, India and Indonesia. The faith in the singular efficacy of conjectural education and moral persuasion, Best writes, is no substitute for direct action, mass confrontation, civil disobedience, alliance politics, and struggle for radical change. Donald Watson has said he respects the people enormously who do it, believing that it's the most direct and quick way to achieve their ends. Sociologist David Nibert of Wittenberg University posits that any movement towards global justice would necessitate not only the abolition of animal exploitation, particularly as a food source for humans, but also transitioning towards a socioeconomic alternative to the capitalist system, both of which dovetail into what he calls the animal-industrial complex. Some vegans also embrace the philosophy of anti-natalism, as they see the two as complementary in terms of harm reduction to animals and the environment. Vegan social psychologist Melanie Joy described the ideology in which people support the use and consumption of animal products as carnism, as a sort of opposite to veganism. The Vegan Society has written, by extension, veganism promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans. Many ethical vegans and vegan organizations cite the poor working conditions of slaughterhouse workers as a reason to reject animal products. The first vegan activist, Donald Watson, has asked, If these butchers and vivisectors weren't there, could we perform the acts that they are doing? And, if we couldn't, we have no right to expect them to do it on our behalf. Full stop! That simply compounds the issue. It means that we're not just exploiting animals; we're exploiting human beings.
The Environmental Imperative
Environmental vegans focus on conservation, rejecting the use of animal products on the premise that fishing, hunting, trapping and farming, particularly factory farming, are environmentally unsustainable. According to a 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, Livestock's Long Shadow, around 26 percent of the planet's terrestrial surface is devoted to livestock grazing. The report also concluded that livestock farming, mostly of cows, chickens and pigs, affects the air, land, soil, water, biodiversity and climate change. Livestock consumed 1,174 million tonnes of food in 2002, including 7.6 million tonnes of fishmeal and 670 million tonnes of cereals, one-third of the global cereal harvest. The roots, vegetables and pulses are mostly cassava, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, plantain, peas, and beans. Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society called pigs and chicken major aquatic predators, because livestock eat 40 percent of the fish that are caught. A 2010 UN report, Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production, argued that animal products in general require more resources and cause higher emissions than plant-based alternatives. It proposed a move away from animal products to reduce environmental damage. A 2015 study determined that significant biodiversity loss can be attributed to the growing demand for meat, a significant driver of deforestation and habitat destruction, with species-rich habitats converted to agriculture for livestock production. A 2017 World Wildlife Fund study found that 60 percent of biodiversity loss can be attributed to the vast scale of feed crop cultivation needed to rear tens of billions of farm animals, which puts enormous strain on natural resources, resulting in extensive loss of lands and species. In 2017, 15,364 world scientists signed a warning to humanity calling for, among other things, promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods. A 2018 study found that global adoption of plant-exclusive diets would reduce agricultural land use by 76 percent, 3.1 billion hectares, an area the size of Africa, and cut total global greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent. Half of this emissions reduction came from avoided emissions from animal production including methane and nitrous oxide, and half from trees re-growing on abandoned farmlands that remove carbon dioxide from the air. The authors conclude that avoiding meat and dairy is the single biggest way to reduce one's impact on Earth. The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found that industrial agriculture and overfishing are the primary drivers of the extinction crisis, with the meat and dairy industries having a substantial impact. On the 8th of August 2019, the IPCC released a summary of the 2019 special report which asserted that a shift towards plant-exclusive diets would help to mitigate and adapt to climate change. A 2022 study found that for high-income nations alone 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide could be removed from the air by the end of the century through a shift to plant-exclusive diets and re-wilding of farmlands. The researchers coined the term double climate dividend to describe the effect that re-wilding after a diet shift can have. But they note: We don't have to be purist about this, even just cutting animal intake would be helpful. If half of the public in richer regions cut half the animal products in their diets, you're still talking about a massive opportunity in environmental outcomes and public health. A 2023 study published in Nature Food found that a vegan diet vastly decreases the impact on the environment from food production, such as reducing emissions, water pollution and land use by 75 percent, reducing the destruction of wildlife by 66 percent and the usage of water by 54 percent.
The Global Spread And Cultural Shift
The vegan diet became increasingly mainstream in the 2010s, especially in the latter half. The Economist declared 2019 the year of the vegan. Chain restaurants began marking vegan items on their menus and supermarkets improved their selection of vegan-processed food. The global mock-meat market increased by 18 percent between 2005 and 2010, and in the U.S. by eight percent between 2012 and 2015, to 553 million dollars a year. The Vegetarian Butcher, the first known vegetarian butcher shop, selling mock meats, opened in the Netherlands in 2010, while America's first vegan butcher, the Herbivorous Butcher, opened in Minneapolis in 2016. Since 2017, more than 12,500 chain restaurant locations have begun offering Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods products, including Carl's Jr. outlets offering Beyond Burgers and Burger King outlets serving Impossible Whoppers. Plant-derived meat sales in the U.S. grew 37 percent between 2017 and 2019. In 2011, Europe's first vegan supermarkets appeared in Germany: Veganz in Berlin and Vegilicious in Dortmund. In 2013, the Oktoberfest in Munich, traditionally a meat-heavy event, offered vegan dishes for the first time in its 200-year history. By 2016, 49 percent of Americans were drinking plant milk, and 91 percent still drank dairy milk. In the U.K., the plant milk market increased by 155 percent in two years, from 36 million litres, 63 million imperial pints, in 2011 to 92 million, 162 million imperial pints, in 2013. There was a 185 percent increase in new vegan products between 2012 and 2016 in the U.K. In 2017, the United States School Nutrition Association found 14 percent of school districts across the country were serving vegan school meals compared to 11.5 percent of schools offering vegan lunch in 2016. In total, the largest share of vegan consumers globally currently reside in Asia Pacific with nine percent of people following a vegan diet. In 2017, veganism rose in popularity in Hong Kong and China, particularly among millennials. China's vegan market was estimated to rise by more than 17 percent between 2015 and 2020, which is expected to be the fastest growth rate internationally in that period. This exceeds the projected growth in the second and third fastest-growing vegan markets internationally in the same period, the United Arab Emirates, 10.6 percent, and Australia, 9.6 percent, respectively. In 2018, Jacy Reese Anthis's book The End of Animal Farming argued that veganism will completely replace animal-based food by 2100. The book was featured in The Guardian, The New Republic, and Forbes, among other newspapers and magazines. The growth of schools serving vegan school meals has increased in recent years with the lunches added by Los Angeles, California in 2018, Portland, Maine in 2019, and New York City in 2022. In January 2021, 582,538 people from 209 countries and territories signed up for Veganuary, breaking the previous year's record of 400,000. That month, ONA in France became the first vegan restaurant in the country to receive a Michelin star. That year, 79 more vegan restaurants around the world received Michelin stars. At the end of the year, a poll conducted by The Guardian showed that a new high of 36 percent of the British public were interested in veganism. The prevalence of veganism differs wildly per country and region and a minority everywhere. Vegans account for about 9 percent of the population in both India and Mexico, and about 2 percent in many developed Western countries. The city with the most vegan restaurants per resident in 2021 according to data collected from HappyCow was Chiang Mai, Thailand, followed by Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, Phuket, Thailand, Tel Aviv, Israel, and Lisbon, Portugal. The U.S. market for vegan food was valued at 3.9 billion dollars in 2017 and at 8.1 billion dollars in 2023. One out of 10 Americans over 18 consider themselves vegan or vegetarian as of January 2022. A study comparing personality traits of vegans, vegetarians and omnivores found that vegans were higher in openness and agreeableness than omnivores. Based on a survey of 8 thousand vegans in the US in 2013, relatively many people eating a plant based diet are women, almost 4 out of 5, with fewer men, about 1 out of 5. A study published in 2017 on a smaller sample found similar numbers on gender. In some countries, vegans have some rights to meals and legal protections against discrimination. In the United Kingdom, an employment tribunal ruled in 2020 that the Equality Act 2010 protects ethical veganism, a belief it defined as veganism that extends beyond diet to all areas of life and is motivated by a concern for animals. For example, prisoners who are vegan must be given a vegan meal with enough nutrients to sustain a healthy life and should also be given appropriate clothing, toiletries etc., and not expected to do work violating their vegan beliefs. In Portugal, starting in 2017, public administration canteens and cafeterias such as schools, prisons and social services must offer at least one vegan option at every meal. In Ontario, a province of Canada, veganism was ruled to not be a protected belief in 2023. This follows earlier analyses that ethical veganism became protected under the Ontario Human Rights Code, following a 2015 update to legal guidance by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The earlier position was guidance and for a judge or tribunal to decide on a case-by-case basis. The German police sometimes provides on-duty staff with food. After not being provided a vegan option in this context, a vegan employee has been granted an additional food allowance. By the 2010s, social media sites like Instagram became prominent in the promotion of veganism, more than a fad, with people trying to change the world by being vegan as stated by various media outlets. The vegan veto vote happens when a mixed group of non-vegan and vegans dine out together and the vegans in the group veto restaurants with few vegan options and steer the group to a restaurant with many vegan menu items. Restaurants report that adding more vegan items increases their business. Journalist Avery Yale Kamila reported that Maine restaurants were using the vegan veto vote to fill restaurant seats in the slow winter months.
The Philosophy Of Identity And Resistance
Feminist veganism is a leading activist and scholar of animal rights, pioneered by Carol J. Adams. Her premier work, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, published in 1990, noted the relationship between feminism and meat consumption. Since its release, Adams has published several other works, including essays, books, and keynote addresses. In one of her speeches, Why feminist-vegan now?, adapted from her original address at the Minding Animals conference in Newcastle, Australia in 2009, she said, the idea that there was a connection between feminism and vegetarianism came to me in October 1974. Other authors have echoed Adams's ideas and expanded on them. Feminist scholar Angella Duvnjak wrote in Joining the Dots: Some Reflections on Feminist-Vegan Political Practice and Choice in 2011 that she was met with opposition when she pointed out the connection between feminist and vegan ideals, even though the connection seemed more than obvious to her and other scholars. One of the central concepts that animates feminist veganism is the idea that there is a connection between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals. For example, Marjorie Spiegal compared the consumption or servitude of animals for human gain to slavery. This connection is further mirrored by feminist vegan writers like Carrie Hamilton, who wrote that violent rapists sometimes exhibit behavior that seems to be patterned on the mutilation of animals, suggesting there is a parallel between rape and animal cruelty. Feminist veganism also relates to feminist thought through the common critique of the capitalist means of production. In an interview, Carol J. Adams highlighted meat eating as the ultimate capitalist product, because it takes so much to make the product, it uses up so many resources. This extensive use of resources for meat production is discouraged in favor of using that productive capacity for other food products that have a less detrimental impact on the environment. In the U.S., Black veganism is a social and political philosophy as well as a diet. It connects the use of nonhuman animals with other social justice concerns such as racism, and with the lasting effects of slavery, such as the subsistence diets of enslaved people enduring as familial and cultural food traditions. Dietary changes caused by the Great Migration also meant former farmers, who had previously been able to grow or forage vegetables, became reliant on processed foods. According to Oakland activist AshEL Eldridge, the movement is about the Black community reclaiming its food sovereignty and decolonizing Black Americans' diet. According to Shah, the area where most vegans of colour feel the greatest rift with mainstream veganism is in its failure to recognize the intersectionality with other social justice issues, such as food access. Streams within a number of religious traditions encourage veganism, sometimes on ethical or environmental grounds. Scholars have especially noted the growth in the 21st century of Jewish veganism, as well as Jain veganism. Some religious interpretations, such as Christian vegetarianism, Hindu vegetarianism, and Buddhist vegetarianism, also recommend or mandate a vegan diet. Donald Watson argued, If Jesus were alive today, he'd be an itinerant vegan propagandist instead of an itinerant preacher of those days, spreading the message of compassion, which, as I see it, is the only useful part of what religion has to offer and, sad as it seems, I doubt if we have to enroll our priest as a member of the Vegan Society. In 2021, vegan climate activist Greta Thunberg called for more vegan food production and consumption worldwide. Parties like Tierschutzpartei in Germany and PACMA in Spain have pro-vegan agendas. They cooperate via Animal Politics EU. In the European Union, meat producers and vegans debate whether vegan food products should be allowed to use terms like sausages or burgers. The EU bans labeling vegan products with dairy-related words like almond milk, a rule instated in 2017. Six countries in Europe apply higher value-added tax, VAT, rates to vegan plant milk than to cow milk, which pro-vegan activists have called discrimination. Multiple symbols have been developed to represent veganism. Several are used on consumer packaging, including the Vegan Society trademark and the Vegan Action logo, to indicate products without animal-derived ingredients. Various symbols may also be used by members of the vegan community to represent their identity and in the course of animal rights activism, such as a vegan flag. Veganism is often misrepresented in media. Some argue that veganism has been dismissed in news media, or that clickbait culture often portrays feminists and vegans as irrational extremists. This is because in Western societies meat-based diets are the norm, with those who avoid meat still representing a small minority, more women than men as vegan and vegetarian, and women being under-represented in the mass media, the latter influencing more to be vegetarians. Others have noted those who are vegetarian and vegan are met with acceptance, tolerance, or hostility after they divulge they are vegetarian or vegan. There are a number of vegan stereotypes, including claims they hate meat-eaters, are always hungry, weak, angry, or moralistic. The hatred of vegans has been termed as vegaphobia by some individuals. In 2019, Farhad Manjoo stated that preachy vegans are something of a myth and argued that in pop culture, and generally, it is still widely acceptable to make fun of vegans. Often vegan or vegetarian characters are portrayed as fringe characters, although other novels cast them as protagonists or encourage people to become vegetarians or vegans. Some have argued that there are more vegan cookbooks than vegan literature. There are also books that introduce vegan identity to children, or encourage people to write for animals. Bruce Banner in Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, as well as Karolina Dean in Runaways, who is also known as Lucy in the Sky or L.S.D., are vegans. The latter is a lesbian, a vegan, and an ardent animal lover committed to a life completely free of meat and dairy. Jessica Cruz / Green Lantern, a lead character in the animated series DC Super Hero Girls, is not only pacifist but also a vegan and environmentalist, Although Faust calls her a vegetarian, Cruz has expressed she is a vegan multiple times. For instance, she says in the episode Retreat that she is vegan and eats plants for breakfast, resulting in her becoming friends with Pam Isley. She often professes her commitment to the environment and plant-exclusive meals. The series City of Ghosts featured a chef, Sonya, who runs a vegan cafe in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Draculaura in Monster High has also been called one of the very few outspoken vegan cartoon characters out there.