Rancher turned vegan or vegetarian turned rancher?
Which was a featured speaker at this year's largest national conference on animal advocacy, and why?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

July 27, 2007

Project for the New American Carnivore
From Lyman to Niman in 10 Short Years

By James LaVeck and Jenny Stein

In 1997, while attending our first national animal advocacy conference in Washington DC, we were surprised to find that one of the speakers was a former cattle rancher. His name was Howard Lyman, and not only was he now a vegan, but he had publicly renounced the exploitation of animals and dedicated the rest of his life to sharing with the world the lessons he had learned about ethical eating, environmental sanity, and peaceful grassroots activism. His message, along with that of several other people we heard at that conference, inspired us to change our own diets and join the movement for nonviolence and animal rights.

Now, ten years later, another conference is happening in our nation’s capital. While several of the speakers and supporters remain the same, this year’s most publicized animal protection conference [ http://www.takingactionforanimals.com/assets/pdfs/tafa_program_2007.pdf ] will not be featuring any cattlemen gone vegan. Instead, it will be putting on the podium a multi-million dollar rancher, a pig farmer, a turkey farmer, and others known for talking of compassion and animal welfare while at the same time profiting from their unapologetic killing of animals.

Now, ten years later, a well-known animal sanctuary, as well as organizations that are the public face of animal advocacy in the United States, have partnered with members of the meat industry to develop “new and improved” standards for the exploitation of animals, and to actively promote consumption of products such as “cage-free” eggs and “animal compassionate” veal.

Now, ten years later, veganism, once widely understood within our movement to be a moral and ethical imperative, a commitment to not participate in the exploitation of others nor to cooperate with those who do, is rapidly being reduced to a mere “lifestyle choice,” a “tool,” to be selectively used as a means to an end. Similarly, the concept of animal rights, once widely understood to represent a zero-tolerance policy on the exploitation of animals, has become so diluted and degraded, as we shall later see, so as to be comfortably invoked by those who butcher thousands of baby cows and lambs every week.

For us, and for many other activists we have spoken with over these last months, this turn of events has been equal parts disturbing and bewildering. For some it has even been the cause of despair. There is a sense that the movement we have given our lives to is being cynically co-opted and transformed into a caricature of itself.