“They want us to be just like California,” Ted Cruz exclaims of Texas liberals, “right down to tofu and silicon and dyed hair!” A certain disgraced conservative TV pastor invokes firearms when imagining that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might “try to take [his] cows away.” Trump deadpans that, under Democratic leadership, "Cows are out . . . they don’t want cows." Mike Pence cries out to cheers and applause, “We're not going to let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America's meat!"
The political talking point that Democrats want to take away Americans’ meat—spoiler alert, most don’t—references the climate-diet link. Many climate scientists now recognize that animal proteins have a high carbon footprint and environmental impact, while their production makes pandemics more likely. Researchers increasingly specify that humanity must dramatically reduce both its fossil fuel and livestock consumption to meet climate targets and avoid depleting the planet’s available land and resources. While certain Democratic leaders—some of whom are indeed vegan—want to reform animal production methods, even the most progressive of climate policies ignores the science urging animal-to-plant protein shifts. Fashioning policies that encourage plant-forward diets remains “politically toxic,” even for Democrats—and the reasons go deeper than dietary choice.
Despite Democratic leaders’ general disinclination to strongly support vegan agendas, the vast majority of people who eat plant-based diets do lean politically left. Research links plant-based diets to the liberal-left and excessive meat-eating to the conservative-right. Liberals are far more likely to eschew meat and dairy, while conservatives attempting to do so often feel“socially unsupported.” A deeper dive, however, reveals darker connections. Research finds that humans who condone dominance within social hierarchies may especially relish their freedom to exploit animals, while considering more egalitarian, plant-based diets as a cultural threat. Echoing similar research findings, one study reveals that people who use common rationales to justify meat consumption “are more tolerant of social inequality,” while critical theory connects animal exploitation to “other forms of social power, mass violence, and domination.” If elective human-animal violence is, per activist Ashley Capps, “fundamentally incompatible with social justice and moral progress,” then progressives logically embrace veganism…right?
Even among the left, veganism largely remains an unpopular ethical stance and dietary choice.Contrary to their tofu-pushing reputations—and purported interests in equality and justice—many leftists seem to spend far more energy pushing back against veganism than meat and dairy consumption. A 2011 Journal of Social Philosophy article notes that although often associated with other “social justice struggles,” animal liberation is largely “a progressive cause that is shunned by other progresive movements.” More recently, journalist Peter Franklin marvels at“the hostility that vegans get from their ‘own side’—i.e. other youngish, hipsterish, Left-leaning individuals,” whom blogger Evan Anderson notes often “despise vegans” and “disavow veganism.” Despite—or perhaps because of—the vegan liberal snowflake archetype that has plagued the left in various forms for decades, many leftists vehemently disassociate themselves from veganism.
Animal advocates have long tried to diagnose why so many leftists reject veganism even though animal and ecological protection aligns with leftist ideologies. Beyond diet and lifestyle preferences, writes philosopher Will Kymlicka, the notion of recognizing animals’ rights challenges "a central philosophical pillar of left politics" called humanism, which distinguishes human matters from those of all others. Under humanism, explains Kymlicka, highlighting the plights of animals appears to diminish those of oppressed humans—even as the left otherwise rejects characterizing justice struggles as zero-sum. Historian James McWilliams pondered in 2012 whether veganism’s increasing popularity would cause liberals to feel “exposed as violators not only of animals rights, but of their own deeply held values.” Animal justice advocacy has since gained considerable traction, perhaps unsurprisingly since “crucial elements of the contemporary progressive agenda all overlap with the issue of animal rights,”according to journalist Emily Atkin. Confronting their treatments of animals is, in Atkins’ words, increasingly “inescapable” for the liberal-left. While a minority of leftists, like activist Iye Bako, respond by deciding that veganism is indeed “morally aligned with [their] stance[s] on consistent anti-oppression and justice,” most do not alter their animal-related views or choices—instead maintaining contradictory positions that may cause cognitive dissonance. Rather than merging justice-oriented causes, many liberals seem intent on maintaining the moral exclusion of animals.
While the conservative tendency is to reinforce meat-eating as a form of dominance (a.k.a. “I love cows; they’re delicious!”), many non-vegan liberals frame veganism itself as oppressive. Rather than directly defending animal exploitation, liberals instead typically invoke a social justice or environmental issue that a pro-animal position presumably overlooks or even exacerbates; this formula regularly goes viral on Twitter, where vegans are implicated for everything from exploitative farm labor to deforestation. Leftists often denigrate or dismiss veganism for being overly white and inherently racist, classist, ableist, privileged, capitalist, colonialist, anti-indigenous, environmentally devastating, or otherwise problematic. Columbia University lecturer Christopher Sebastian refers to such discourse as “evasive maneuvering” around the core progressive idea that “participating in institutional violence against any marginalized group”—including exploited animals—“is wrong.” Activists like blogger Abhijit XVX note that insisting on an entirely human-centric understanding of social justice overlooks how human and animal oppression intersect. Other advocates point to sentientism as an upgraded version of humanism that expands moral consideration to both human and non-human animals. While cultural imperialism and other problematic frameworks are undeniably reproduced by some animal (and, ahem, human) advocacy, models like Black veganism and the Food Empowerment Project offer alternatives. Regardless of how humans, on the right or left, defend animal exploitation, its cross-species ramifications are becoming increasingly apparent.
Humans of all political persuasions resist taking animal liberation seriously because many subconsciously subscribe to the concept of speciesism. Defined as the assumption of human superiority over all other forms of life, speciesism prompts humans to exploit animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and other purposes. Illustrating the prevalence of this implicit bias, 95 percent of Americans consume animal meat and dairy. Speciesism spans across cultures, but has uniquely defining implications in the United States—where expansive colonial land acquisition for the still predominant rearing of livestock and an iconic regard for the “cowboy” are central to American identity. Romanticized through the lens of speciesism, meat is widely celebrated as a symbol of shared American values without regard for the cascade of ongoing consequences resulting from introducing domesticated animals and insects to North America. Ranking animals “below” humans, per speciesism, not only catastrophically impacts farmed animals, wild animals, and the environment, but also alters how humans relate to one another. Multiple studies find that speciesism shows the same properties as other forms of prejudice and so makes people more likely to “otherize” human beings similarly to how they do animals; ending dehumanization may therefore require dismantling the starting assumption that animals are inferior to humans. Many people never consciously identify their stance on animal exploitation—even or perhaps especially when that stance is morally inconsistent—and rather simply default to lifelong social and dietary norms. With so much of America’s identity wrapped up in speciesism, stoking fears regarding our beloved cheeseburgers easily hits bipartisan nerves.
Many right-wing politicians unabashedly support even the most egregious methods of farming and otherwise dominating animals. Left-wing politicians, despite otherwise championing climate science and social justice, largely enable or reinforce dominant attitudes toward animals, too. While Cory Booker is vegan, his avoidance of a strong pro-animal message appears to leave Americans largely nonplussed rather than compelled to act. Fellow vegan Tulsi Gabbard also seems careful not to implicate speciesism—but is nonetheless called “un-American” after tweeting about her family’s meatless Thanksgiving—and while Al Gore reportedly also eats plant-based, even he omits the livestock-climate link from his 2017 Inconvenient Truth sequel. Elizabeth Warren maintains that reducing meat consumption is a trivial distraction from, rather than a necessary complement to, decreasing reliance on fossil fuels. As Jane Sanders explains, her husband Bernie Sanders—a heavy meat-eater until experiencing recent health setbacks—disagrees with ending “animal production;” the female Sanders cites the traditionalist logic that “Americans like to eat beef, they like to eat pork, they like bacon.” (Ya think?) Several other Democrats’ diets, including those of Julián Castro, Andrew Yang, and especially Kamala Harris, appear to contradict their espoused political views. Joe Biden does not seem to have ever mentioned plant-based diets. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition policy director Eric Deeble tells the media that agricultural transformation “does not appear to be a high priority for either potential administration.” If author Carol J. Adams is correct in asserting that “food choices offer a way to fight Trump and the rise of the repressive and regressive values,” then Democrats appear to have largely missed the memo.
When Democrats do address the livestock-climate link, they tread carefully by focusing on animal production reform without articulating how it would radically alter dietary patterns. The Green New Deal proposal’s mere mention of “farting cows” garnered widespread backlash, and a modified reference to “emissions from cows” was deleted from the proposal altogether following input from Frank Mitloehner, a known livestock industry-funded scientist. Ocasio-Cortez further reassured the public that the proposed policy would not “force everybody to go vegan or anything crazy like that.” While Booker’s proposed Farm System Reform Act would by 2040 phase out factory farming, which many liberals say that they dislike, raising animals outdoors spread out over more land (which trades off some environmental impacts for others), rather than in close confinement, could require Americans to eat 90 percent less meat. This reality is belied by common assertions like Beto O’Rourke’s that more “responsible” farming does not require people to “fundamentally change how we eat or what we eat.” By pushing to reform farming while brushing off the need for meaningful dietary changes, Democrats—either deliberately or otherwise—are obscuring the science calling for substantial shifts to plant-based diets.
If the left is coming for anyone’s cows, it is likely just to move them to greener pastures before eating them. Regardless, increasing animals’ welfare and eating them less frequently are entirely different than liberating animals from needless human exploitation altogether. Perhaps what policy analyst Devinder Sharma calls humanity’s “very slow” realization “that a reduction in meat consumption is what is ideal for the world to survive”is owed to humans’ widespread belief in a species hierarchy that is only reinforced by meat-eating. By joining much of the right in rejecting the vegan viewpoint—despite favoring more ostensibly justice-centered rationales for doing so—leftists may be further muting the scientifically-validated links between speciesism and human-animal exploitation, ecological destruction, biosecurity breakdown, and bigotry of all forms. “The exploitation of animals by humans,”writes Democratic New York City Council candidate Chris Sosa, “is a stunning example of progressive deference to the normalcy of oppression.” As the stakes (sorry, folks) grow higher for the planet and all Earthlings, Republicans will likely keep claiming that the libs are coming for Americans’ meat. Perhaps it is time for the left to live up to its progressive reputation.