For this page, I don't provide a detailed list of internal links. There are simply two sections:

Section A contains a general examination of veganism. Many of the arguments are established ones, although the context is  new.
Section B. Here, I concentrate on objections to veganism which are not commonly given. The tone of this section is much more abrasive in parts.

See also the page:

Animal welfare: arrest and activism

I think that the criticisms I make are fair but my appreciation for individual vegans is real. There are vegans I've known or know of - ones connected with the anti-factory farming organization Compassion in World Farming, for instance - who are very impressive, very able - and very likeable. Recently, I read Martin Balluch's page 'A brief history of Austria's current campaign to ban battery cages' on the United Poulty Concerns site,
http://www.upc-online.org/battery_hens/51804austria.htm

This is more than a history, but a record of persistent, determined, altogether admirable humane work by an outstanding vegan and his fellow-activists.

But the dedication of many vegans is misdirected and shouldn't be admired at all. One vegan who came to my attention not long ago attended an interview for a job. As he doesn't have anything to do with leather, he declined the invitation from the interviewer to sit on a leather sofa. He claimed that he'd hurt his leg and remained standing during the interview. He didn't get the job.

If many vegans show dedication in working to reduce animal cruelty, many vegans show absolutely no interest in specific reforms. My page on bullfighting includes a section on foie gras and the cruelties inflicted on ducks and geese in its production. with a link to a harrowing film on the subject, where the narrator is the actor Roger Moore. He writes about the subject in a piece in 'The Daily Mail,' ' ...  after I had done a little research into the methods of foie gras production, I knew I had to find time to try to stop this barbaric trade which shames everyone who connives to keep it going, by eating the stuff, serving it or stocking it in their grocery shops.' 

The first comment after the piece comes from a vegan called 'Ged:'

'It is bizarre logic to complain about cruelty to animals whilst eating meat and wearing animal skins. The only consistent way is to be vegan.'

It's Ged's opinion which is bizarre. The chances of the world becoming vegan in a matter of decades or centuries or longer are vanishingly small - surely, non-existent. In the meantime, whilst vegans like Ged are waiting for the vegan utopia, is it a matter of indifference if specific abuses of animals go unreformed? Is it a matter of indifference if specific shops and restaurants go on selling foie gras or not?

Similarly, there are vegans whose response to bullfighting isn't to take part in action to abolish the bullfight but simply to repeat the mantra 'Go vegan!' As long as animals are slaughtered for food (and leather) then slaughter methods have to be as humane as possible, by a set of comprehensive regulations and enforcing the regulations. The European Union has been working decisively to achieve this objective. Vegans who don't care if slaughter methods are regulated or unregulated, if animals are slaughtered instantaneously or by long-drawn out and painful methods, because animals shouldn't be slaughtered at all, are living in an unreal world.

Section A

I've been a vegetarian for over 30 years and active in the field of animal welfare for a significant part of that time. A significant number of vegans are prominent in the field of animal welfare. Why is it that I've never become a vegan? Is it weakness? A defective understanding of animal welfare? An inability to follow vegan reasoning? When vegans explain this reasoning, you usually sense that this is their moment, their chance to impart superior insights, their chance to establish their role as superior people. I argue later that vegans are far from having superior insights.

Still, vegan reasoning, which distinguishes vegans from lesser beings such as non-vegan vegetarians, has some force. Dairy products - cream, butter, cheese - can only be obtained if the cows or other female animals are made pregnant again and again. The calves or other offspring are removed so that humans can make use of the milk. These animals usually come to a bad end, such as the short and unenviable life of a veal calf, or the male calves which are killed soon after birth. Chickens don't go on laying eggs in quantity until the end of their natural lives. After not much more than a year, egg production drops and the chicken goes to slaughter. So, allegedly, vegetarians who eat dairy products and eggs are no better than meat-eaters, or not much better.

But already, there are difficulties for the vegan. There's the notorious difficulty of vitamin B12. This vitamin, essential for health, is found in more than adequate amounts in animal products (including dairy products and eggs) but not in plant products. In practice, vegans take supplements, the products of chemical factories, or should do. Many don't. The advice given in 'The Vegan Cookbook' is irresponsible: '...if you plan to be exclusively vegan on a permanent basis, it's probably better to be safe than sorry and take a vitamin B12 supplement. Even though you probably won't actually need it, it won't do you any harm!'

Tom Sanders, Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at King's College, London:

'Despite being warned that the lack of vitamin B12 is a problem, it seems that many vegans don’t heed the dietary advice seriously and follow their own pet nostrum, thinking they will adapt to a diet deficient in vitamin B12. Our research has shown that about one third of vegans have worryingly low intakes of vitamin B12, which puts them at an increased risk of damaging their spinal cord and brain as well as increasing the risk of stroke and cancer. Vegan mothers who do not take vitamin B12 risk causing brain damage in the babies they breastfeed.'

Any notion of veganism as a 'natural diet' is out of the question. A vegan diet requires supplements, and is only possible with the aid of scientific and technological advance.

Taste is subjective, but not, I think entirely subjective. Each of the human senses can be given richer, more complex, more rewarding, more significant experiences or ones which are much poorer. The ears can be given a piece with rhythmic subtlety or rhythmic intensity or a monotonously repeated rhythm, rich or subtle or varied harmony rather than hackneyed harmony.

It seems obvious enough that the sense of taste can be given richer and more complex tastes, such as the farmhouse cheeses of England and other countries - or something which is is lacking in interesting and complex taste that it amounts to a debased product. The method of production is very often linked with taste. The product of a chemical factory, where hydrogenation of oils is achieved by chemical engineering and not traditional skills , has a taste inferior to the traditional product. Nobody with any taste which is even slightly developed could maintain, I think, that vegan margarine offers anything like the same taste as butter. So, a product which is 'ethically pure' is inferior in taste.

Vegans have their substitute for butter, a substitute for milk, soya milk, and a substitute too for eggs in many recipes, such as the powdered soya product which can be substituted for eggs. Vegans tend to attach very great importance to soya products. This is fine if the vegan lives in a hot climate, such as the southern United States, but the soya bean isn't a practical crop in this country. It's possible to grow one or two varieties when summers are hotter than average, but otherwise no. Very many vegans rely on imported soya beans and soya bean products, products that consume many, many 'food miles.' I grow a large proportion of the vegetables and fruit that I eat, within a very short distance of the house. I don't keep chickens, but eggs are available from hens kept very near to here. Dairy cows are kept not much further away, and milk from those cows is readily available. For me, a non-vegan diet makes use of local products, which make no excessive demands on the earth's resources. A vegan diet would be dependent on factories and on crops grown at a very great distance. A gain in terms of animal welfare would be contrasted with severe disadvantages. As a general principle, people should feed themselves from sources which are near at hand rather than very distant. I accept this principle voluntarily, just as most African villagers accept it by force of necessity.

It's perfectly true, as vegans maintain, that a plant-based diet generally makes far less demands than a diet based upon meat, dairy products and eggs, but vegans rarely address the complication that marginal land which it would be difficult or impossible to use for crops can be used for animal products.

This page gives a sustained criticism of vegans and veganism by a vegetarian. I have some respect for veganism - their rejection of dairy products has some validity - but my dislike for the limitations of vegans is greater. Veganism turns out to have the most extensive ramifications - linkages - and to involve matters of intellectual integrity, of survival and defence. A main reason for including a page on Veganism and other approaches to cooking and eating, such as French cookery, which I also criticize here, is that they offer interesting illustrations of {theme} theory. (These are explained on other pages, such as the Introduction to {theme} theory and the General Glossary.)

By using {theme} theory, we can avoid partial approaches. We try to use approaches which are systematic and which exclude no factors which are relevant, so that we are more likely to be fair-minded. An adequate ((survey)) includes all the factors which are relevant and significant to an issue. Before going on, I give a ((survey)) of human diet, as I see it, giving the factors which should be included. . Later, there can be {ordering}, the attempt to distinguish the more important from the less important. What should be included in the ((survey)) is contentious but {ordering} is more contentious still.

Vegans tend to use factor isolation, concentrating attention on one factor, or a very few factors. It's necessary to apply {restriction} as sparingly as possible. Vegans concentrate attention particularly on the ethical factors involved in eating, such as the ethical objections to using dairy products. They minimize another factor, the nutritional inadequacy of a vegan diet (the issue of vitamin B12).

An adequate ((survey)) of eating would include, I think, these factors. The numbering of these factors has nothing to do with {ordering}, from most important to least important. This isn't a complete list, I claim.

(1) Nutritional adequacy. A diet should provide all the components needed for health (such as vitamin B12) in adequate amounts.
(2) Taste. Eating is, or should be, one of the pleasurable activities of life. It can provide richer, more interesting, more complex or more interesting experiences or ones which are bland or even unpleasant. Vitamins can be obtained by means of supplements, which are devoid of pleasure, or obtained in full as part of an enjoyable experience.
(3) Sustainability. Eating should not make excessive demands on fossil fuels and other resources which are limited in supply.
(4) Cost. This is a factor which is crucial for many people, less so or of no account to others.
(5) Human welfare. Eating should not cause avoidable suffering to humans, such as slavery or child labour.
(6) Animal welfare. Eating should not cause avoidable suffering to animals.

Veganism is at its strongest as regards animal welfare. Some forms of cookery give this factor little consideration or none at all. Traditional French cookery is an example. Factor (2), taste, is overwhelmingly important and if animal welfare is considered, it is only because poor welfare standards may lead to a product with inferior taste. Traditional French cookery is surely based on a defective survey.

Hence products such as foie gras, the production of which ignores any suffering of the ducks or geese. A shocking example of an {ordering} giving vastly more importance to (2) than (6) from the Southwest of France: 'it was discovered that the birds [ortolans] could be fattened faster if they were blinded so that their attention did not wander from the matter in hand.' (From 'French Regional Cooking' by Anne Willan.)

There are wider surveys than surveys which simply list the factors involved in cooking and eating, such as surveys which list cooking and eating as one factor in the many factors which are involved in human life. Cooking and eating can be given disproportionate importance. People who are single-mindedly making original contributions to quantum mechanics, pure mathematics or literature may reduce eating to a primitive level, to sandwiches or even plain bread. People who are devoted to fine cooking and eating may be deficient in other areas of sensibility.

Eating and cooking, whilst very important, should not be disproportionate in importance. Time given to cooking and eating is time not given to other activities. Two hours devoted to the exacting application of French cooking techniques - and these do interest me - is two hours not devoted to - to give an incomplete list - humanitarian activism, gardening, helping and sympathizing with someone, attempting to help oneself, watching the exultant swooping of swifts in the summer sky, listening to Mozart opera. (Although it would be possible to listen to the opera and to cook, doing justice to the opera demands concentration which should be as complete as possible.) To treat cooking and eating, simple-mindedly, as all-important is to ignore factorization and to practise factor isolation.

The books 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking,' are written by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child (Volume 1) and Beck and Child (Volume 2) are books on ambitious French cooking technique which I own, and representative. and are wonderfully thorough, and I've learnt a great deal from them, for their thoroughness and attention to detail in explaining technique rather than for most of their recipes. (A large proportion of the recipes are non-vegetarian.) Jonathan Meads, in his delightful 'Incest and Morris Dancing' (which is largely made up of restaurant reviews and incisive observations on cooking) praises them highly: 'a technical manual which should be the set text of every British catering college but isn't because it demand rigour and discipline and fanatical attention.'

The thoroughness of these two volumes is wonderful but over-the-top all too often. They give to cooking and eating disproportionate time and importance. The instructions for 'Plain French Bread' seem more appropriate for Advanced French Bread: 'Count on a minimum of 6 1/2 hours to 7 hours from the time you start the dough to the time it is ready for the oven...' Perhaps this is not the best example of the books' extreme approach - a large proportion of the 7 hours is waiting time, and can be used for any number of other activities. All the same, there are so many instances in the books of unnecessary complication and of a disregard of time. Even people whose main interest lies in cooking have other claims upon their attention, very compelling and forceful claims. This is to give thought to the importance of a single area of life in life as a whole.

Section B

There seems to me to be a strong linkage between veganism and views of the world which are bizarre, ridiculous, indefensible and completely impractical. If the world were to become almost vegan, there would be gain for dairy calves but a catastrophic loss for human rationality and the elementary instinct of self preservation. Robustness, strength, toughness, sometimes ruthlessness - these will always be needed to defend important values. The pretence that civilized values require only the gentlest and most peaceable people to protect them is surely an untruth.

It's wrong to think of vegans as pure and unsullied, even if ineffectual. Many vegans may be ineffectual, but they can be dishonest when it comes to promoting veganism or defending veganism - or so limited as to be unaware of what they're doing.

The more I consider vegans and veganism, the more I'm convinced that an important and unexpected factor has to be considered: the people eating the diet, their view of the world. It needs explanation, of course, one which will make it even more clear that cooking and eating are not at all simple activities but have complex linkages with our values: cooking and eating should not have very strong linkages with views of the world which are based on dishonesty or laziness.

Veganism is heavily dependent on advanced industrial methods. Leather and wool are replaced with synthetic materials, manufactured from crude oil products. There seems to be no awareness of this dependence amongst vegans and certainly no gratitude for the people who manufacture and operate the advanced drilling equipment, the oil refinery equipment, the oil tankers, the chemical engineers, mechanical engineers and organic chemists without whom vegans would have to go barefoot or face winter wearing only footwear made of plant products. The soya products which many or most vegans eat in this country are from a plant which is marginal in the climate of this  country and which can't be grown commercially. They have to be imported, requiring  transportation which depends upon different oil products and the complex facilities of modern ports. These few references do no justice at all, of course, to the complexity of modern technology.

Non-vegans are just as dependent upon modern technology as vegans, but the attitude of non-vegans to technology is more likely to be an honest one than that of vegans. To vegans, the worth of a person is heavily bound up with veganism. Is the organic chemist or the oil refinery worker a vegan? No? Then the typical vegan feeling of superiority is the likely response.

To give now some concrete evidence: 'The Vegan Cookbook' by Alan Wakeman and Gordon Baskerville is at first sight a book with a straightforward aim, to present vegan cooking and recipes for vegan cooking. It's published by Faber and Faber, a company with an immense (and thoroughly deserved) reputation. In Appendix 2, 'Seven Reasons to be Vegan,' we find that Reason No. 7, the so-called 'Spiritual' gives arguments which may be 'spiritual' but are otherwise beneath contempt. In the New Testament, Jesus gives not the least sign of advocating veganism or vegetarianism either. The well known parable of the loaves and the fishes (Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapter 15) would seem to anyone but a dishonest vegetarian or vegan to involve acceptance or approval of the eating of fish.

The Vegan Cookbook quotes from an extraordinary, and extraordinarily obscure, apocryphal gospel in a desperate - surely cynical - attempt to claim Jesus as a vegan. They quote from the so-called 'The Gospel of the Holy Twelve:' 'The fruit of the trees and the seeds and of the herbs alone do I partake, and these are changed by the spirit into my flesh and blood.' They make the comment 'It would seem that the Jesus in this apocryphal gospel is advocating veganism.'

Next, I turn to the book 'Being Vegan' by 'Joanne Stepaniak, M.S.Ed.' (Including the writer's qualifications in a book may be justifiable but it's sometimes an attempt to give legitimacy to contents which are more than usually stupid - as in this case, I think.) It's subtitled 'Living with Conscience, Conviction and Compassion.' The dedication: 'This book is dedicated to all seekers of the compassionate way of life and to everyone who entrusted to me their questions and concerns about vegan living. I wish all of you goodness and peace as you travel the compassionate path.' For some remarks of mine on 'compassion' and its complexities, please click here. I've every reason to think, from my survey of the field, that the opinions of this book are representative. The book has the advantage that Vegan lunacy is expressed in a very concise form.

Some examples. 'Q' refers to the original question, 'A' to the answer of Ms Stepaniak.

Q. I am a vegetarian and want to know why, in the Bible, God tells people to make animal sacrifices and that animals are for them to eat.
A. One of the earliest passages in the Bible that censures the eating of animal flesh is in the following excerpt from Genesis 1:29:

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

['Meat' as a translation for the Hebrew word doesn't refer to the flesh of an animal but to anything which can be eaten. To interpret this as God's 'censuring' of the eating of animal flesh is breathtaking in its audacity and intellectual shamelessness.] Ms Stepaniak makes no attempt to answer the question: why did God (allegedly) tell people to make animal sacrifices, and on so many occasions? She does make an appeal to the Bible's 'historical context and rich symbolism,'

The vegan objections of Ms Stepaniak to 'Guide Dogs for the Blind' (Great Britain) or 'Seeing-Eye Dogs' (United States):

A. Utilizing animals to fulfil human needs is in conflict with basic vegan tenets. Despite the benefit to certain groups of people, from a vegan perspective, the use of seeing-eye dogs would appear to be insupportable. Nevertheless, because seeing-eye dogs present a unique solution to a challenging problem for which no alternatives presently exist, a conclusive vegan opinion may be impossible.'

[Comment: I would think that no 'seeing-eye' dogs are mistreated, except in very rare cases. How dare you make the blind and partially sighted feel guilty? There are ethical objections which are vanishingly small or non-existent. This is surely one of them. It would have been far better if you'd never so much as mentioned this issue.]

Q. I invited my friend to the movies, but he says he can't go because he is strictly vegan...

A. Photographic film and movie film contain several layers of gelatin, which are an integral part of the film's chemistry. Gelaptin is the protein derived from the bones, cartilage, tendons, skin, and other tissue of steer, calves, or pigs. Film is not the other communication medium that uses animal products. For instance, book glue is manufactured from collacenous materials made from animal hides or bones. Therefore the vast majority of books are not vegan.

The rest of the answer is surprisingly conciliatory: working towards 'ending the source of materials for the by-products market' rather than an outright boycott of films and most books. Stradivarius and the other makers of violins, violas, cellos and double basses who used animal-based glue and gut strings, made from the intestines of sheep, at a time when there were no alternatives at all, are people who have contributed immeasurably to civilization. Similarly for book-makers. To treat their work with disdain is shocking.

Q. Should vegans have children?
A. ...there can be no definitive answer to this question. [the answer is long but many, many objections are made to having children and there's a stress upon the alternatives to having children.]

Vegan compassion

Few groups make as much mention of compassion as vegans. Their are obvious benefits for their sense of self-esteem: the highest beings are the compassionate beings. More quotes from Joanne Stepaniak's 'Being Vegan,' which is subtitled 'Living with Conscience, Conviction, and Compassion' and dedicated to 'all seekers of the compassionate way of life...'

'...the gift of veganism. It is a guide for compassionate living. It is the path of honoring our roots, our planet, all life, and ourselves.'
'As a guide for vegan living, the American Vegan Society delineates six pillars of the compassionate way.

'Not taking care of oneself is not fully practicing compassion, which in turn means not truly honoring the aim of vegan principles.' [This is part of an answer to a question about a woman with 'a number of serious medical conditions' and who 'adamantly refuses even to consult with a physician because she is certain that all medications contain animal products or have been tested on animals.]

The title of Chapter 2, 'Relationships,' has the sub-title 'Sowing seeds of compassion.'

'...since vegan principles strongly advocate lifting the social veils of oppression, there is more incentive and opportunity for vegans to grow in their compassion.'

One more quotation, a very significant one, I think, so I put it in bold. After explaining my claim that 'veganism is a psychosis (2)' I resume my discussion of the indebtedness of compassion to human achievement, in particular scientific and technological achievement.

'Compassion, according to vegan principles, accords no hierarchy of lesser or greater value to any living being. To vegans, all life is equally precious...Essentially all the problems facing both humans and animals today have been created by people. In addressing these concerns, vegans choose to help the most needy and defenseless, those who have no resources to counter our assaults.'

The view espoused in the quotation above is sometimes given in the form All species are equal. Consistent following of this view would make continued human life impossible. Crops can only be grown by killing the weed species which compete with them. Without favouring some species, such as wheat and potato, and killing others, such as weeds, there would be no crop and humanity would starve. The charitable explanation is that this can't possibly be intended. Killing weeds must surely be excluded.

Are pests to be included or excluded? Given the devastating attacks of pests on crops, winch may leave the grower with nothing, is it permissible to use only barrier methods of protecting crops against slugs, rabbits, deer, pigeons, caterpillars and the rest? In the case of slugs, they're almost impossible to implement effectively.

But the formulation leaves no room for alternatives. This vegan does argue - well, not argue, but state dogmatically - that all life is equally precious, and the conclusion which can be drawn from that is that humans have no more right to survive than weeds, slugs, rats, tapeworms, malaria parasites, all the parasites that make the tropics so deadly, or even the T.B. bacillus. The compassionate vegan, according to these principles, has to be just as compassionate to tapeworms, malaria parasites and the T.B. bacillus as to the patient. This is surely deranged thinking.

Fortunately, Joanne Stepaniak's derangement is lessened, although not very much, by some contradictions and hypocrisy: 'Infrequently, it is necessary to eradicate insects to preserve our health or safety...' and to eradicate fleas, 'humane solutions are often insufficient and more forceful methods must be employed.' This means, I think, killing, although she wouldn't like readers to think that she's advocating killing. By using this phrasing, she thinks that her reputation for complete non-violence towards animals, all animals, will be preserved intact.

The word 'infrequently' is worrying. This is someone, obviously, who can only view reality from the perspective of life in modern America where most but not all threats from other species have already been eliminated (by forceful measures against those species.) This leads me to a general statement, which applies to other viewpoints, and not just this vegan one:

This view, like some other views, originates in the pampered life which many people enjoy in a prosperous modern society. In a harsher context, the ridiculousness of these views would be obvious at once. Depressingly, in harsher societies, ridiculous views of reality, of a different kind, are common too.

This is far from doing justice to the ridiculousness of the quotation from Ms Stepaniak in the quotation above. There's also this: 'Essentially all the problems facing both humans and animals today have been created by people.' (My emphasis.)

One 'problem' which hasn't been caused by 'people:' the problem of disease organisms. From Paul Harrison's 'Inside the third world:' The incidence of illness in the poor countries is on a scaled quite unimaginable to the ...westerner. Threadworms infest one billion people, trachoma and hookworms afflict half a billion each. One survey in Tanzania found less than one person in a hundred who was free of parasites...' The list of tropical parasites and tropical diseases is very long, of course. It would include leprosy, bilharzia, sleeping sickness and the biggest source of sickness and premature death, malaria, also spread by a parasite. And later, 'Disease organisms have evolved side by side with human beings. In their fight for survival they have adapted themselves to the ecology of their chosen prey, Man.' The 'problems' caused by parasites are to do with the evolution of parasites, not people. There has been success in reducing the problem but not eliminating it. In the case of malaria, by the manufacture of drugs (which has required immense scientific creativity and technological skill), by the manufacture of mosquito nets, and other measures.

And another 'problem,' which has a linkage with the previous one, since water contains so many pathogens and drinking unsafe water is still the largest avoidable source of ill-health and death. Again, reduced, and often solved, by humans. Again, the provision of clean drinking water has made immense demands on human ingenuity, often requiring large-scale works of civil engineering, not just to make reservoirs but to construct the sewers which take away human waste. I'm completely familiar with other ways of dealing with human waste, such as composting and reed beds, and completely familiar too with their difficulties, their impracticality for large populations.

Another 'problem' which hasn't been created by 'people:' the harsh Malthusian laws which dictate that in nature, there are many births but far fewer can survive, as a result of starvation, diseases or other causes, still apply to a large extent in the third world. It's 'people' who have solved it in America and other societies, again by the exercise of immense scientific and technological ingenuity, by artificial methods of contraception.

And other problems too which owe nothing to people, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. It isn't possible to prevent these, but people are able to forecast hurricanes, by sophisticated monitoring and computer techniques, so that populations can be moved away from the path of a hurricane (by vehicles designed and manufactured by human ingenuity). In the wake of a disaster, helicopters will often be essential, and other vehicles always essential, to transport the injured, to transport emergency food and hospital supplies. These, of course, are further products of human ingenuity and include anaesthetics, antibiotics, bandages - there is such a thing as 'natural healing,' but, to say the least, it requires supplementing.

Of the problems facing humanity, or which have faced humanity, war is one of the worst, and humanity's responsibility for war is total. There is no evading this.

What of the problems of pollution from vehicles and industry? Vehicles are needed to service industry, and for many other purposes. The example above, the use of vehicles for relief operations after a natural disaster, is just one example of the benefits of polluting vehicles. As for industry, vegans of all people have perhaps most cause to be grateful to modern industry. Vegans are very dependent on industry, particularly the petro-chemical industry. I haven't come across a single instance of a vegan showing any gratitude at all for the industrial products which allow vegans to maintain their feeling of moral superiority. This ingratitude I really do consider beyond the pale. Just consider the facts. I return to Joanne Stepaniak's book for a formulation of the vegan position, but her formulation is completely representative.

'The leather industry is virtually reliant on the meat and dairy industries for a continual supply of animal parts for its raw materials.' So, vegans should not use leather for footwear and other purposes.

'The purchase of wool supports the annual slaughter of millions of lambs and sheep for meat. Essentially all wool is a slaughterhouse product.'

Other products which should also be rejected by vegans include silk (discussed in the book) and down, as a filling for sleeping bags and insulated clothing (which isn't discussed.)

It may be possible to wear sandals made from plant material in a hot climate, but not in cold conditions. In general, the vegan substitutes for these materials, artificial fibres and other materials, require, necessarily, the most complex industrial processes - necessarily polluting processes - with crude oil as the starting material in most cases.

Evidence that avoidance of leather can have a cost. From Paul Harrison's 'Inside the Third World:' Buying western technology with little thought for its effects on employment has been a bad deal for the Third World...Thi International Labour Office economist Keith Marsden quotes the appalling but characteristic case of a country where a new plastic shoe industry was set up. Two expensive plastic injection machines were set up. The PVC material for the shoes also had to be imported. The factory employed a total of forty workers, who turned out some one and a half million pairs of plastic sandals a year. They sold well, because at 2 dollars a pair they were no dearer than cheap leather ones, but lasted much longer. They soon supplanted leather shoes on the market, and made a fat profit for the manufacturer and decent wages for the workers. Meanwhile the five thousand artisans who used to make the leather shoes found their business drying up and were finally flung onto the human scrapheap, together with their suppliers of leather, hand tools, eyelets, lining, laces and lasts. Overall result: forty jobs gained, perhaps eight thousand jobs lost. Import bills increased (the leather used to be supplied locally). Inequality and poverty given another boost.' And, it could be added, a sustainable resource replaced by materials from a non-renewable resource. Vegans, of course, will give more weighting to the replacement of a slaughterhouse product than to any of these considerations.

It was impossible to be a vegan before the advent of modern science and technology, at least in a temperate or cold climate. There was no substitute for wool (or furs) for insulation, or leather for footwear - and for many other uses. The springs of coaches were made of leather, the primitive hoses used for fire-fighting were made out of leather. Non-vegan products were essential for any life other than one which was 'nasty, brutish and short.'

There's a tendency only to examine closely and to criticize systems of belief where there's a danger of the believer causing death and destruction, as in the case of some Moslem fundamentalists. I'd suggest as a worthy model to be emulated the best intellectual achievements of ancient Athens, and the ethos of 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' Critical, fair-minded examination of beliefs and views of the world is desirable, whether the beliefs and views are those of violent or non-violent people. Vegans are generally non-violent and pose no threat at all to the physical safety of a society, although not all. The killer of the Dutch politician P. Fortune was a vegan.

I do think that potentially - and only potentially - vegans are dangerous people. Vegans may speculate, in their unrealistic moments - or their even more unrealistic moments - about what life would be like if vegans became the majority, or if everyone became vegan. They would regard it as the beginning of an era of compassion, peace and harmony. I don't think so. This is to overlook the need for specific skills and expertise, in such areas as finance and public health. Vegan views are at variance with some of the skills needed for the survival of a state and there could never be such a thing as a vegan utopia.

In various places in this site, I argue that to focus attention on matters such as survival, economic factors and health is to give an inadequate survey of human life and that the most remarkable thing about human life is the human mind, which includes the capacity for intellectual achievement, artistry, the achievements of human personality such as compassion. Vegans, of course, have no monopoly of compassion.

The sixth of the 'pillars of the compassionate way' put forward by the American Vegan Society (quoted in Ms Stepaniak's book) is 'Advancement of understanding and truth.'

On paper, by spinning out words, anything can be proposed and almost anything can be achieved, but a respect for reality - often harsh - makes so many claims impossible. Vegans, like many other victims of an ideology, are adept at wishful thinking, are more at home in the world of illusions than of reality. Whether this view is accepted or not, if you disagree with the next claim, please contact me, giving names and supporting evidence:

There have been, and are, no very great vegan scientists, engineers, mathematicians, poets, novelists, composers, dramatists, philosophers. There have been very few vegetarian ones either. Most of them have been carnivorous.