The vegan purity test
This article is a bit different. I’m not writing this for non-vegans who are here to learn about or make fun of vegans. This one is written for vegans to help start a conversation regarding one of the main sources of infighting.
I want to start off by reminding everyone that veganism is a binary yes or no. There are no degrees of veganism. Being vegan is like being pregnant, either you are or you aren’t. You can’t be a little bit pregnant, and you can’t be a little bit or mostly vegan. Someone who eats “mostly vegan” isn’t vegan, they’re just someone who eats an omnivore diet and has reduced their consumption of animal products. Just like if someone only killed people occasionally, we wouldn’t call them a “mostly non-murderer”, we’d call them what they are; a murderer. So it’s important to remember this when discussing veganism, especially in the context of this article.
Let’s also recap accidents versus intent. If you find out that you accidentally ingested an animal product, you’re still vegan, because it was unintentional. But if you intentionally do so, like for example if you have a “cheat day” or just decide that you really want a dairy cheese pizza, then you’re not vegan. Intent matters. The same goes for someone who finds out that the laundry detergent they’ve been using for 5 years isn’t vegan; it doesn‘t mean they aren’t vegan or they’re a bad vegan since it was unintentional. We live in a non-vegan world where humans cannot help themselves from exploiting animals in every way imaginable. When these things happen, we take this new information and learn from it (in this case find a new laundry detergent), and we move forward. Keep this context in mind as you read the article.
The “Vegan Purity Test”, which is a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy, is one of the biggest causes of infighting I see within the community.
There are things that are objectively vegan and not vegan:
Objectively vegan - eating a carrot from your garden
Objectively not vegan - cutting a chicken’s head off and eating it
However, there are other things that are not so black and white. There are many shades of gray, and things that each person has to decide for themselves. This is where each person has to determine what “least harm” means to them.
It’s up to each person to make the decision of where their own personal line is drawn, and know there is no right or wrong answer within this gray area. Of course, this should go without saying, but you have to ensure that this line remains true to veganism and is not a way to “cheat” or be disingenuous with your beliefs.
Let me give you some examples of what I mean:
Some vegans won’t eat Impossible products because they performed animal testing which resulted in about 188 animal deaths (note: there are no official numbers for this, but this is the best guess from everything I’ve read) across 1-2 tests done in the past. These same vegans will buy (for example) spaghetti sauce from companies like Ragu or Prego which kills thousands if not tens of thousands (maybe more?) of animals a year for their meat and dairy sauces, or rice from Uncle Ben’s which kill similar numbers of chickens for their chicken rice, or vegetable soup from Campbell’s which kill countless chickens for their chicken noodle soup, any of the other numerous other examples like this. To them, the line is drawn at animal testing, which is a perfectly acceptable and understandable line for them to draw for themselves. Animal testing is an abhorrent process and no animal on earth should have to go through that. However, I have seen individuals with these beliefs chastise others for eating Impossible, even though the ones buying Impossible will not buy foods from big corporate food companies like Ragu because they sell meat sauces with require the death of so many animals.
Which is more vegan? (I am not here to give you an answer, which is the point of this article, as there is no universal right or wrong answer):
Don’t buy Impossible (who killed 188 animals in the past) and buy Ragu (who actively kills thousands or tens of thousands or more animals each and every year) - this means you’re a person who supports thousands to tens of thousands or more deaths, but one who is taking a hard line against animal testing.
Buy Impossible (who killed 188 animals in the past) but do not buy Ragu (who actively kills thousands or tens of thousands or more animals each and every year) - this means you’re a person who supports “only” 188 deaths, but not taking a hard-line stance against animal testing.
Objectively speaking, Impossible is orders of magnitude “least harm” when you look solely at the total number of animal deaths when compared to Ragu or Prego. But maybe to you “least harm” isn’t raw numbers, it has to do more with the philosophy and industry behind animal testing, and it’s the cause you’re passionate about. You see animal testing as worse because of the additional pain and suffering that these animals go through, and you see it as even more unnecessary because they’re not even being killed for food. Also in the case of Impossible, it appears to have been voluntary and not FDA-mandated, which makes it worse. So for you, never supporting Impossible is a hard-line stance as what they did was unconscionable. I get that, and other vegans get that too, but just remember that other vegans are equally or more so appalled that companies like Ragu and Prego kill thousands or tens of thousands or more animals a year for meat and dairy sauces, and many vegans have no problems giving them their money. So again, it’s everyone's personal line to draw.
Most vegans will agree that buying Beyond Burgers are ok because they’re “Certified Vegan”. However, did you know that Beyond regularly buys dead cow flesh hamburgers to perform “sensory experiments” in-house? They have people do taste and texture comparisons of their products to cow burgers and detail the differences. Beyond says this helps make their products look, taste, and feel more like real meat (side note: gross). Does that really sound vegan to you? Vegan.org, the organization that certified them, says that yes. That’s because they only certify the products themselves, not the companies and their practices. Even so, some vegans say that they don’t want to give their money to a company that buys dead cow meat. Then there are others who see it as utilitarian that Beyond buys cow meat as a means to an end to improve Beyond products, because it means more cow lives get saved. Who is right? Only you can decide.
Some vegans want to support fast food and other restaurants that come out with new vegan options. They do this in order to show that there’s demand, so that companies will continue to add more vegan options. Other vegans feel that it’s wrong to give their money to animal-exploiting companies that are just capitalizing and profiting on vegans, because they don’t care about us or the animals at all. I don’t think you’ll find many (if any) who will claim that Taco Bell and Burger King secretly care and want to save animals’ lives, as we all know it’s obviously just a money grab. But the counterpoint is that if we show these companies there is demand, then maybe they will offer more vegan options, then eventually that means fewer animal options, which means animal lives are saved. That’s the hope anyway. So again, there is no right or wrong answer here for veganism as a whole, there is only a right or wrong answer here for you.
Much of the sugar, at least in the US, is passed through carbon particles (or bone char), the electrically-charred bones of livestock animals, to remove any impurities and to whiten the appearance. The resulting product is completely free of any bone whatsoever, even on a chemical level, so the sugar itself is 100% animal-free. Your first instinct may be to think “well of course that’s not vegan", but consider that the vegetables and grains we buy were mostly likely covered in animal DNA from feces and blood at one point during the harvesting process. Is that different, or the same? There is no universal right or wrong answer here, that’s up to you to decide.
Palm oil is a vegan product in and of itself (it contains no animal ingredients), but likely was harvested using animal exploitation. So is it vegan if the product itself contains no animal ingredients, but not vegan if the method for harvesting it involves exploitation? And if it’s not vegan, how do you know if your food involved animal exploitation? And if there was exploitation, how much and what kind? Where do you draw the line? That’s your decision to make.
The vegetables and grains we buy cause animal deaths, a grim reality we are all too well aware of. It’s orders of magnitude less death than a meat eater’s diet, but it’s far from zero. Additionally, organic foods are grown with fertilizer consisting of animal manure and blood. This means that every time we buy our food, our money goes to companies that are profiting by killing animals when they plant and harvest our food. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that 10 companies make most of the food that we buy. So not only are we paying companies that kill animals while growing our food, but we are also funding their parent companies who sell animal products. We can’t seem to escape giving our money to animal exploiters (see image below).
There are countless other examples like this.
Now a non-vegan might read everything on this page and say “see, it’s impossible to truly be vegan, so why even try!” I’d argue that they’d be missing the point. That line of thinking is called the Nirvana Fallacy, which I talk about in more detail in my article about animal crop deaths. You can read the entire article or the example in there about child slave labor for the full explanation, but at a high level it goes like this; just about every civilized person in the world would say they’re 100% against child slave labor, however the device you’re reading this on most likely contains rare earth minerals mined by child slaves. That doesn’t mean we say “it’s impossible to be against child slave labor so why even try!” It just means that the world is a very complex place where it’s simply impossible to avoid all forms of human and animal exploitation. So the best we can do is to avoid it as far as is possible and practicable. Being against child slave labor and owning a cell phone doesn’t mean you’re a hypocrite, just like being a vegan and doing the best you can to avoid animal exploitation while also acknowledging that it’s impossible to avoid it entirely doesn’t make you a hypocrite. So please don’t hold veganism up to an unrealistic standard that you don’t hold anything else up against.
So why am I talking about all the ways animals are exploited for a vegan diet? It’s not to dissuade you or make it seem like being vegan is a losing battle, nor is it for us to debate which ones are vegan or not. As I said before, there are no right or wrong answers to these scenarios, because we don’t live in a vegan world. The point of this article is just to explain that other than the obvious “the product does not contain animal DNA”, it’s a personal decision as to what is acceptable to you or not. Remember, it is literally impossible to live a life without doing any harm, and veganism doesn’t claim to cause zero harm. Veganism is about doing everything “as far as is possible and practicable” to exclude animal exploitation.
We have to remember that “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, but to also be sure not to use that as an excuse to just do whatever we want, and yet also to remember that if we tried to avoid all exploitation, we’d starve to death. And if we’re dead, who will fight for animal liberation?
About the only way to eat a diet with no animal harm and death would be if you had your own massive organic pesticide-free backyard greenhouse garden to grow all your own food, but that is of course not “possible and practicable”, at least not for most of us. The Dutch have actually mastered this, and hopefully one day the rest of the world will catch on.
The final point I want to bring up is that we need to stop conflating vegan products, vegan companies, and veganism itself. Let me try to explain:
Vegan food (AKA plant-based food): food that does not contain any animal ingredients whatsoever. Example: fruits, vegetables, grains, plant-based meats and cheeses that are devoid of any animal ingredients
Vegan company: a company that aligns with vegan values, makes vegan food, and does so in a vegan way. Example: This may just be my personal opinion, but I honestly don’t know if many (any?) actually exist.
Beyond is “Certified Vegan”, but I just learned while doing research for this article that “Certified Vegan” is only for products, not entire companies: “Please note that Vegan Action can only certify individual products. We DO NOT certify: whole companies, manufacturers, distributors, kitchens, restaurants, food trucks, people, farms, organizations, websites or products that contain human-derived ingredients.”
The Vegan Society’s “Vegan Trademark” is also only for individual products, not entire companies.
Veganism: “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude - as far as is possible and practicable - all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals." - The Vegan Society
Why the distinction? Because we have to learn to stop lumping them altogether as one. Food itself is vegan even if it’s not made by a vegan company nor planted/harvested/produced in a way that aligns with veganism. The food itself is separate from the company, but it is YOUR PERSONAL DECISION to decide where the line is drawn as to what is and is not considered true to the definition of veganism FOR YOU.
Side note: This was originally a Facebook comment I made on someone else’s post, which I then turned into this website article. Literally, the point of it was to explain that there is no right or wrong all-encompassing answer for everyone, as it’s a gray area. But back when it was just a Facebook comment, one person kept getting stuck on the Impossible thing, even accusing me of “supporting animal testing.” So here is where I stand; I abhor and am adamantly against all forms of animal testing and I do not buy anything that has been tested on an animal, period. Everything in my house is both vegan and cruelty-free. But I do recognize that Impossible was put in an impossible (pun intended) situation with GRAS testing, since even though the FDA didn’t require them to do the testing and they did it voluntarily, the FDA most likely wouldn’t have approved it without that testing. I’m also a utilitarian at heart (I will pull the hypothetical train lever to kill 1 person to save 5 people, each and every time, but I’m also a misanthrope so that may also skew my opinion on that). As much as I do not condone the killing of those 500 animals, I cannot wonder how many orders of magnitude more animal lives have been saved because of their murders. I also have some cognitive dissonance because there are virtually no all-vegan food brands here, so many of the food products I buy (sauces, rice, beans, cereals, frozen foods, plant-based meats, etc.) come from companies like Ragu or Uncle Ben’s or Kellogg’s that kill thousands (millions?) of animals a year. I of course always buy a vegan brand if one exists, but that isn’t an option for so many products. So I’m giving my money to companies that profit from slaughtering animals. But, I have to eat, or I die, right?
I also want to point out that Impossible doesn’t test on animals anymore. Why is that important? Because many of the health and beauty products that we as vegans buy that are certified cruelty free now, are from companies that used to perform testing on animals. But then they stopped doing so, and now we buy them. So if we are ok buying toothpaste and shampoo from companies that tested on animals for years or even decades and then stopped, why are we not ok with buying from Impossible who performed animal testing 2-3 times, and most likely will never do so again? Again, there is no right or wrong answer for anyone, it’s just something to think about.
