VEGAN THE NEW ETHICS OF EATING
An Interview with Author Erik Marcus by Claudette Vaughan

Erik Marcus is the author of Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating. He has spoken to audiences in over 100 cities in the US and Canada. His articles have appeared in Vegetarian Times, Salon Magazine, In These Times, and numerous other publications. Erik also publishes the Vegan.com website, which is a top web destination for information about vegan lifestyles.

“A vegan diet is most in harmony with our bodies needs, our innate sense of compassion, and our ability to survive on earth. Moving to a plant based diet is comparatively easy and it opens the door to a gentler, healthier, and happier way of being.” - Erik Marcus from Vegan The New Ethics of Eating

Abolitionist: Vegan The New Ethics of Eating had a profound effect on me when it was first published back in 1998. What’s been the response from others to your book Erik?

Erik Marcus: I've lost track of the number of people who've told me the book inspired them to switch to a vegan diet. Anytime somebody tells me that I end up smiling for the rest of the day.

But even more important than that is when I can inspire somebody to not just eat differently, but to take action against the meat industry. I'm always thrilled to hear that my writing has encouraged people to get more active on behalf of farmed animals. In my recent work I've tried to show just how vulnerable animal agriculture is to activist efforts.

Veganism has so many positives. Name us some of yours Erik?

For me, the main appeal to veganism has to do with the suffering and slaughter the diet prevents. After writing Vegan The New Ethics of Eating I found out that there is an extensive amount of heart disease in my family. So it's nice that on top of its ethical advantages, a vegan diet makes great sense for people like me who want to address their elevated genetic risk of heart disease or cancer.

What do you see as inimical to a vegan's progress, Erik?

The number one thing a new vegan can do wrong is to think that veganism involves making some kind of a big effort to give up certain foods. In reality, it's all about making a daily effort to discover

delicious new vegan foods. Veganism is not a sacrifice, but rather a slow steady effort to add more and more great foods into your diet. Over time your diet becomes increasingly varied and delicious, and those non-vegan foods you grew up eating get pushed to the margins.

People who view veganism as being all about making a major sacrifice invariably have an unnecessarily hard time sticking with this diet.

How does one address travelling and remaining a strict vegan?

I'm lazy so I don't always pack or prepare for long trips the way I should. Fortunately, I'm one of those people who can comfortably go most of a day without eating. At least in the United States, I think the only time it's ever hard being a vegan is when you're spending the day flying. Airports are clearly meat-eating America's final great holdout. But even that's starting to change.

As far as traveling by land, it gets easier year-by-year. I've been to rural towns right in the heart of cattle country and invariably find soymilk available in their supermarkets.

Veganism is about having one's eyes wide open to animal suffering and speaking a new language. What’s your definition?

I'm revolted by even a speck of animal products and don't want any of that stuff in my food. And when making purchases, whether of food or clothing or cosmetics, I go out of my way to make sure that animal agriculture doesn't get a penny of my money.

Veganism has the potential to dramatically change the world we live in. It can be the catalyst for a conscious metamorphous. Not an easy task considering what humans have done to the world. What is your worldview?

My worldview is that you can save a couple thousand animals over your lifetime by being vegan, but you can save more than a million by being an effective activist. If we can get a few thousand people thinking in these terms, and getting busy doing activism that strips away animal agriculture's core assets, the industry as we know it will cease to exist.

The late Henry Spira was a visionary animal rights activist and a personal mentor of yours. Did you ever meet him and how did his activism affect you personally?

I knew him for the last five years or so of his life, and went to visit him on my frequent trips to New York City. He helped me to realise that animal activists need not be freaks...they can be remarkably effective people who consistently say things in step with public sentiment.

How do you yourself teach lifestyle change for newcomers to veganism aside from your books?

Well, I do my weekly podcast on Vegan.com, which often features cooking segments from some of the best cookbook authors in the movement. And I'll soon be blogging each day at the site as well, and many of these entries will contain links to great new food ideas. But really, my main effort is in getting people who are already vegan off the sidelines, and engaging them in activism against the industry.

Tell us about your other book, Meat Market.

We've got tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who oppose animal agriculture sufficiently that they would never knowingly include a molecule of non-vegan foods in their diets. Yet very few of these people are active in farmed animal protection in any serious way. It's not that these folks don't care -- clearly they do, or they would never have become vegan. The problem is that most vegans have little idea of where to get started, and what opportunities exist for taking action against the industry.

So in Meat Market I set about systematically figuring out where animal agriculture is weakest and most vulnerable, and this information in turn points to what sort of tasks can be of greatest benefit to farmed animals.

Also in Meat Market I analyze the animal rights, animal welfare, and the vegetarian movements. These are all important movements but I show why there's little chance that any one of these movements could topple animal agriculture. So I propose a fourth movement, called Dismantlement, which is designed from the ground up to get rid of this industry. Thousands of activists throughout North America have already read the book, and I'm continually hearing about people being inspired to take on dismantlement-oriented activities. A shift in the animal protection movement's direction isn't going to happen overnight, but early signs are encouraging.

In Chapter 10 on the killing business of animals can you relay for us here what you wrote about?

I'd prefer to point you to the epilog of Meat Market, where we meet an egg farm owner who allows almost a million birds to starve, and another poultry farm owner who -- during a disease outbreak -- decides to run his birds, while fully conscious, through a wood chipper. Both of these men admitted to what they did, but neither were punished in any way by the legal system.

As long as we have commodity-oriented animal agriculture, it's inevitable that atrocities like these will occur. But fortunately, there are activist strategies emerging against which animal agriculture is powerless. It's my greatest desire to inspire people to use these strategies against the industry. Anybody who cares and who works hard can easily keep more than a million animals out of the slaughterhouse.