A Vegan Future? A Polemic
Guest posting by Gregor Wellow
It is one of the curiosities of modern life that the people who speak most loudly about “liberating” animals are usually the ones who have never had to depend on one. The vegan, like so many well‑meaning reformers, begins with a sentimental picture of the cow as a sort of pastoral invalid, a creature whose chief desire is to be left alone in a meadow, preferably organic, and whose only misfortune is the existence of farmers. This is a view that could only be held by someone who has never mucked out a cowshed.
The truth is that the vegan’s cow is as imaginary as the socialist’s proletariat or the fascist’s nation: a convenient fiction. Real cows are the product of ten thousand years of human labour. They are not wild animals waiting to be “returned” to nature; they are domestic creatures whose very survival depends on the people who feed them, shelter them, and, yes, milk them. To speak of “animal liberation” in this context is like speaking of “liberating” a bicycle from its owner. The bicycle, if left to its own devices, will simply rust.
Veganism thrives in societies where the business of living has been hidden behind supermarket glass. It is a philosophy of abundance, not scarcity. Only a well‑fed person can afford to moralise about the ethics of butter. The labourer who has risen at five in the morning to milk a cow does not have the luxury of debating whether milk is “exploitative.” He knows only that the cow must be milked, the children must be fed, and the rent must be paid. The vegan’s moral universe begins where his labour ends.
There is also something faintly authoritarian in the vegan’s insistence that his diet is not merely a preference but a moral imperative. Every moral crusade begins with personal virtue and ends with public enforcement. Today it is “I choose not to eat meat.” Tomorrow it is “You must not eat meat.” The logic is as predictable as a government circular. Once you have declared a thing immoral, you cannot rest until it is illegal.
And yet the vegan imagines himself a rebel. He believes he is striking a blow against cruelty, when in fact he is participating in the oldest bourgeois pastime: the pursuit of purity. It is the same impulse that once led people to abstain from alcohol, or dancing, or laughter. The vegan does not eat meat for the same reason the Victorian did not show his ankles - not because it does any good, but because it makes him feel clean.
The real obscenity is not that people drink milk, but that millions of people have been taught to feel guilty for doing so. The cow does not care whether her milk is consumed by a calf or a child. She cares only that she is fed, watered, and treated with the ordinary decency that any working creature deserves. The vegan, in his zeal to save her, forgets that she is not a symbol but an animal, and that animals, unlike ideologues, do not thrive on theory.
In the end, veganism is not a revolt against cruelty but a revolt against reality. It is the refusal to accept that life feeds on life, that comfort is purchased by labour, and that the world is too complex to be purified by diet. It is a philosophy for people who believe that the world can be made kinder by rearranging the contents of their plates.
If the vegans ever succeed in abolishing the dairy cow, they will discover too late that they have not liberated her. They have merely abolished her.
Guest posting by Gregor Wellow
It is one of the curiosities of modern life that the people who speak most loudly about “liberating” animals are usually the ones who have never had to depend on one. The vegan, like so many well‑meaning reformers, begins with a sentimental picture of the cow as a sort of pastoral invalid, a creature whose chief desire is to be left alone in a meadow, preferably organic, and whose only misfortune is the existence of farmers. This is a view that could only be held by someone who has never mucked out a cowshed.
The truth is that the vegan’s cow is as imaginary as the socialist’s proletariat or the fascist’s nation: a convenient fiction. Real cows are the product of ten thousand years of human labour. They are not wild animals waiting to be “returned” to nature; they are domestic creatures whose very survival depends on the people who feed them, shelter them, and, yes, milk them. To speak of “animal liberation” in this context is like speaking of “liberating” a bicycle from its owner. The bicycle, if left to its own devices, will simply rust.
Veganism thrives in societies where the business of living has been hidden behind supermarket glass. It is a philosophy of abundance, not scarcity. Only a well‑fed person can afford to moralise about the ethics of butter. The labourer who has risen at five in the morning to milk a cow does not have the luxury of debating whether milk is “exploitative.” He knows only that the cow must be milked, the children must be fed, and the rent must be paid. The vegan’s moral universe begins where his labour ends.
There is also something faintly authoritarian in the vegan’s insistence that his diet is not merely a preference but a moral imperative. Every moral crusade begins with personal virtue and ends with public enforcement. Today it is “I choose not to eat meat.” Tomorrow it is “You must not eat meat.” The logic is as predictable as a government circular. Once you have declared a thing immoral, you cannot rest until it is illegal.
And yet the vegan imagines himself a rebel. He believes he is striking a blow against cruelty, when in fact he is participating in the oldest bourgeois pastime: the pursuit of purity. It is the same impulse that once led people to abstain from alcohol, or dancing, or laughter. The vegan does not eat meat for the same reason the Victorian did not show his ankles - not because it does any good, but because it makes him feel clean.
The real obscenity is not that people drink milk, but that millions of people have been taught to feel guilty for doing so. The cow does not care whether her milk is consumed by a calf or a child. She cares only that she is fed, watered, and treated with the ordinary decency that any working creature deserves. The vegan, in his zeal to save her, forgets that she is not a symbol but an animal, and that animals, unlike ideologues, do not thrive on theory.
In the end, veganism is not a revolt against cruelty but a revolt against reality. It is the refusal to accept that life feeds on life, that comfort is purchased by labour, and that the world is too complex to be purified by diet. It is a philosophy for people who believe that the world can be made kinder by rearranging the contents of their plates.
If the vegans ever succeed in abolishing the dairy cow, they will discover too late that they have not liberated her. They have merely abolished her.
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