Vegans must consider humanity, too

I’ve been a vegan since my sophomore year of high school. This means I do not eat any animal products, including meat, fish, dairy and eggs. It also means I avoid wearing animal products, such as leather, I try to avoid companies that test on animals and I don’t fund puppy mills, circuses or breeders. I am proud of my lifestyle and I believe most people would be doing the world a great service by adopting it.

That being said, I have found myself up in arms with much of the rest of the vegan community. This conflict stems from the fact that so many have become so engulfed in the fight for animal liberation, they seem to forget that humans, too, are living breathing creatures. Even those who only purchase animal-free, plant-based products are not living a cruelty-free lifestyle. There is human suffering, too.

I believe in contextualizing veganism not just in terms of animal welfare, but global welfare. This means taking care of the environment. This means pursuing fair trade products. It means checking that what you buy and consume is sourced ethically, and that it does not use slave labor or child labor or outsource work to sweatshops.

It astounds me to see my fellow vegans lament animals in cages, but ignore the human children trapped in cages at the border. I see them condemn the wholesale slaughter of farm animals and then turn a blind eye to the concentration camps killing Uighur Muslims in China. I see them compare modern day agriculture to slavery and the Holocaust with no regard to how those comparisons may harm the very people at the center of these historical atrocities.

I am a vegan because I believe in living empathetically, compassionately and sustainably. While all vegans are not guilty of these follies, many are. In doing so, they violate the very pillars of cruelty-free living which they claim to embody.

To me, veganism is not just a dietary choice or a way of buying goods. It means being anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-classism, anti-fascism and anti-violence. It means fighting systems of oppression which seek to harm or exploit all living creatures. Being vegan means rejecting a society that tells us humans that we must harm others to survive. But universal liberation will not come from a narrow-minded view of what peace and compassion entails.

Sarah Emily Baum is a sophomore journalism and public policy major with bylines in Teen Vogue, HuffPost and the New York Times. Find her on Twitter @SarahEmilyBaum.