Ethical vegan’s beliefs ‘are like a religion’
ETHICAL veganism could be given the status of a religion in an employment tribunal, which heard claims that it is more than just a lifestyle choice.
Jordi Casamitjana, an ethical vegan, has claimed that he was fired by the League Against Cruel Sports after raising concerns that its pension fund was being invested in companies involved in animal testing. He said that the charity’s decision to dismiss him was because of his philosophical belief in ethical veganism. Ethical vegans exclude all forms of animal exploitation by not eating meat, not wearing clothes made of wool or leather and not using products tested on animals. Mr Casamitjana’s lawyers said ethical veganism “comfortably” satisfied the criteria to be classed as a philosophical or religious belief, meaning it would be protected under the Equality Act 2010. But the League Against Cruel Sports said it “fairly dismissed” Mr Casamitjana for gross misconduct and linking the move to veganism was “factually wrong”.
One of the most striking features of life these days is the way that groups, ideas and people which formerly inhabited the loony fringes of society have moved into its very centre. And, aside from the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps the crowning example of this cultural sleight of hand is veganism.
Its proponents used to quietly munch their pulses and plants, muttering about saving bees from the pains of honey production, in the small number of restaurants set aside for them. No longer. As the age of identity politics has taken hold, vegans have managed to carve for themselves a space of political zealotry around which the rest of us must tread ever more lightly.
Some even want official protection for their dreary credo. A sacked vegan worker has launched a case against the League Against Cruel Sports, claiming that his dismissal was the result of discrimination against his ethics of eating. The League roundly denies anti-vegan discrimination, but an employment tribunal will meet next March with an unprecedented hearing on whether veganism counts as a “philosophical” belief, and therefore should be on the list of legally protected characteristics, like gender, sexuality, disability and … religion.
It would be absurd to prevent anyone – meateater, vegetarian or otherwise – from having a good scoff at the humourless pieties of their vegan friends. Nonetheless, the lentil evangelists are indeed behaving with the divine certainty of a religious cult.
There are new rules against blasphemy. Yesterday it emerged that some of the English language’s most succulent phrases – “bringing home the bacon”, “taking a bull by the horns”, “putting all your eggs in one basket” and “killing two birds with one stone” – could be purged under a veganite crackdown on anti-animal idiom. According to Shareena Hamzah, of Swansea University’s literature department: “If veganism forces us to confront the realities of food’s origins, then this increased awareness will undoubtedly be reflected in our language and literature.”
The witch hunts and denunciations will no doubt follow. Given how strenuously we’ve all had to rethink our vocabulary concerning gender, sexuality and Empire in order to avoid stoning by the virtual court of Twitter, surely the next step will be that we are “forced to confront” the evils of cheese by veganite social media mobs. Not that it makes the sound of being “forced” to do anything – let alone think about the “realities” of double cream – any nicer.
There is the joyless obsession with purity. Refraining from all that is properly tasty is near enough the closest to an ethic of bodily mortification and asceticism that modern humans can come to these days. The religion of the plant even has its own persecution myth. For some reason, vegans seem to think we might be laughing at them.
In a secular world, perhaps it’s no wonder that people are regrouping under new headings in order to find comradeship and meaning. If only they could do so with a little more self-awareness and humour. It seems that, for some people, the attainment of unprecedented moral and physical liberty has offered us too much freedom and too much choice. You can’t, it appears, have your cake and eat it – unless, of course, it’s dairy-free.