The Whys of Mainstreaming Veganism, pt. 1

For decades now the animal rights movement has been working on a single model of activism that essentially consists of using protest and pressure to convince those who run the animal exploitation industries to change the way they operate. It is now time for many in our movement to switch onto a new track, that of mainstreaming veganism. This new focus of activism will seem strange to many of those who are used to the old methods of protest, but if we want to move into the next stage of animal activism it is absolutely necessary that we have a large and growing vegan population that is fully integrated into our society. What I am talking about here is an ancillary to animal rights; vegan rights.

Vegan rights encompasses a plethora of issues; allowing students dissection choice, allowing vegan students and parents equal subsidies on school provided meals, providing the same government subsidies to vegan industries as are provided to the beef and dairy industries, forcing insurance companies to take account of the risks of meat eating as they do for smoking, making sure that concession stands in public venues have adequate vegan options, etc. In short, there is no reason that it should be harder to be vegan than to be a meat eater, and it is time for us to make a "vegan equal" world a reality.

I still think that protest and pressure tactics have a place in our movement, and will continue to be useful tools for the forseeable future, but there is no greater tool for the animal rights movement than convincing large numbers of people to become vegans. The greatest fear, and motivation for change, in any industry is that the public will stop buying their products. Industries that exploit animals will change their behavior if enough people say "I've had enough, I'm going to adopt a vegan lifestyle."

However, we can not hope to convince large numbers of people to adopt a vegan lifestyle when we have government entities all the way from federal agencies down to local school boards working to make the individual choice of veganism diffficult, if not imposssible, to implement.