Philosophical Vegan Forum

I'm vegan.

Here to educate plant-based dieters(liberals) on the difference of actually being vegan (supporting animal liberation) and supporting the animal ag industry through mock meat companies like Gardein, Beyond, Impossible, Boca etc.

Feel free to ask me any questions.

Hello aph0t1c, welcome to the forum.
What inspired you to go vegan? Are you someone who views mock meat companies such as Gardein or Tofurky as examples of 'plant based capitalism'?

Feel free to start a thread or respond to any that interest you.

Hey aph0t1c - how did you learn about the influence animal agriculture has on plant-based meat/dairy alternatives?

Tofurky is actually not involved in the animal AG, but Gardein certainly is. (See Pinnacle Foods)

All I did was google who owned the companies to discover these things. It started around the time of seeing that Tyson Foods was a main investor of Beyond initially, and I found that particularly sickening.

And to answer the rest of that question.

I was raised vegetarian and I always thought the idea of eating animal products was disgusting.

I've been vegan for almost 11 years now, 11 years this November.

Even if you take a cynical view of these companies and capitalism, you'd have to believe that these corporations would never allow animal agriculture to end if they did not also own the meat alternative sector. Now that these companies are invested in both, they'll continue to get rich as the world goes vegan and animal ag. is ended, thus they will not stand in the way of veganism. In fact, meat alternatives are probably more profitable, so they have every reason to support the end of animal ag.

Do you have an answer to that explaining your internal contradiction? What aspect of ethical veganism must oppose these companies remaining rich? Remember, they're not *people* who arguably deserve to be punished because "justice", they're mindless corporations that don't have feelings and act only to maximize profit. Nothing in veganism demands a kind of revenge to see e.g. McDonald's bankrupt. I know it may not be as cathartic to imagine a world in which these same companies still rule the market despite their sordid pasts, but as long as they're no longer doing the bad thing wanting to burn them down for emotional reasons is very irrational. You can look up lists of companies that are still rich today and profited from slavery too.

It may be an issue for human beings not getting what's coming to them (though even that is usually a very bad argument), but in ethical terms it doesn't matter at all what companies are dominating the industry and serving non-meat food as long as animals are no longer being tortured and killed for human enjoyment.