Mindful of the suffering caused by the dairy industry, I am considering cutting cheese out of my otherwise mostly-vegan diet.

The problem: vegan cheese substitutes are very expensive, perhaps twice as expensive or more than the real thing. I am not ready at this stage to cut out cheese (real or faux) altogether. So do I pay through the nose for the luxury vegan version, or do I continue to eat inexpensive real cheese and divert the money saved to Vegan Outreach (for example)? Alan Dawrst has written on his site about how incredibly cost effective even a small donation to Vegan Outreach can be -- saving animals from potentially many years of factory farming. Over the course of a year, diverting money spent on vegan luxuries could potentially convert 30+ people to veganism.

Of course, this ignores the fact that it is good to create a market for vegan food (in order to bring the price down and make it easier to become a vegan) plus it is important to act as an example to others. Any thoughts?

I get the impression that, if you donate to Vegan Outreach, they'll convert more people than your example ever will.

I'm not sure about the economics of it, but I think the amount you increase the quantity produced of fake cheese (and with it, decrease the the quantity produced of real cheese) by buying it yourself is significantly less than you just not buying cheese. In other words, if you start buying fake cheese, it's total market will have an expected increase of something like 1.1 people. I think you're better off just donating the money to Vegan Outreach.

DanielLC wrote:I get the impression that, if you donate to Vegan Outreach, they'll convert more people than your example ever will.

To elaborate this point, anyone converted by Vegan Outreach could set a good example anyway!

And they'll also increase the market for vegan food.

I guess that just means that it boils down to whether or not you're going to convert at least one person. So, just donate the money.

On the other hand, a (reluctantly?) converted vegan mightn't be as persuasive as Spindoctor.

Furthermore, you'd want to go through the detail of Alan's article. I've had a very breif look. Here's Alan's bottom line:

In other words, a single dollar donated to Vegan Outreach is expected to prevent between 100 days and 51 years of suffering on a factory farm.

I gather he estimates that 5 individuals are converted to veganism per 200 brochures. Somewhere between 30% and 100% of them stay vegan. Those that stay vegan save animals' lives for a couple of decades on average, when in vitro meat apparently starts to take over.

As I've said, I haven't looked at the detail of his essay, but surely more realistic estimates would be:
1/200 converted
sustained, on average, for 1 year. (a few sustain it for a lifetime, but most keep up veganism for a few months tops. Alan, then, could be out by a factor of a hundred...

Furthermore, might vegan outreach alienate some of the general public?

I think Alan is too complacent about the numbers he feeds into that essay. When I read it and fed in my own guesstimates of the undiscussed factors (in a post somewhere around here that I can dig out if you want to assess it) it seemed quite plausible that Vegan Outreach could be 2000 times less efficient than he concluded.

Also, part of the reason vegan alternatives are so expensive is that the industry is so small. By buying vegan products you're pushing down their cost, and giving them more flexibility to advertise, etc

There is also the very real risk that the money saved on the vegan substitute cheese won't actually get diverted to Vegan Outreach. I may have that intention now but in practice it may well not happen without careful monitoring -- it's perhaps more likely I will just pick a donation figure out of the air (which may not differ much from what I would have given anyway).

I faced the same kind of dilemma with street children in Cambodia -- kids will hawk paperbacks around the tourist areas of Phnom Penh, hoping to offload them for $1-$2 each. An expat told me that selling several books helps them pay for that week's schooling (not sure how true that is). Peter Singer's position on begging is that he saves up the money he would have given to street people and donates it to Oxfam in a lump sum at the end of the year. I am satisfied that Singer has the organisational nous to arrange this. Can't say the same for myself.

(Ninja'd) But as I already pointed out, if you convert people, they'll buy vegan products and push down their cost.

One more thought...there's could also be something to be said for hard boundaries, not fuzzy ones.

I'm thinking here of the Gary Francione animal rights/animal abolitionist approach. For them, über-strict veganism is the "moral baseline", to the extent that when they mention Vegan Outreach they use scare quotes around the 'Vegan' [I still haven't worked that out -- I think it's because they dare to suggest that omnivores can work their way towards veganism gradually by cutting out meat/dairy?]. Francione gleefully castigates Singer for daring to call himself a vegan when he admits to sometimes eating dairy-based ghee in Indian curries at a restaurant.

In spite of my differences with that approach, it has some strategic benefits I think. Like setting hard boundaries -- no dairy cheese, full stop. Living by that rule of thumb may mean lots of reckless spending on Soy Chreeze...but it also makes eating and shopping clear, simple and uncompromising. Whereas there's a strong potential for a slippery slope if you allow vegans to indulge in a kind of carbon-offset scheme with their cheese-eating. They might fall off the wagon. It also threatens the intellectual coherence of the vegan movement (since most people don't think like utilitarians).

In a related point, I think Gary Francione and his lobby may have a point when it comes to criticising Singer on veganism. In many of the recent interviews I've seem him give on this, he's taken a very hands-off, Yoda-esque "do or not do" position on veganism. He'll say vegetarian is good, choosing free-range is good if you want to keep eating meat, and yeah become a vegan if you can manage it. His messages on ethical eating are so damn pussyfied that you could watch a Singer interview and come away thinking you were saving the world just because you chose the free-range scrambled eggs at the cafe. I think he needs to get back to his old-school, moral compass approach -- bold and uncompromising -- "by eating meat and dairy you personally make a major contribution to animal suffering". It was that kind of conversation that won me over. Whereas, as the Francione mob says, his more palatable offerings of late kind of add to the general impression that being a vegan is a rather out-there practice only to be attempted by extremist ascetics.

About the general problem
This is an interesting and important question. In the most extreme theoretical cases it could even have radical implications. If the differences in magnitudes of expected utility from donating to a cause and eating vegan oneself (including talking to others about it, being a role model, etc) are big enough it could even be justified to go on eating meat. There is always some cost (initial or continous), in time, money or willpower to making a change in one's life. The crucial factors here (except the utility comparision) one's ability to divert different types of resources to different ends.

The specific question: Private consumption among utilitarians
Spindoctor, I agree with your original reasoning, DanieLC and RyanCarey. At least for someone who is a member of the utilitarian minority it seems better to spend the money on an effective cause like Vegan Outreach, rather than on more costsome cheese-substitutes. Of course, as has been pointed out, this assumes the money won't be spent in some non-utilitarian way.

One way to ensure that the money is spent the right way would be to keep a strict budget, including categories like food, necessities, utilitarian causes, and fun. With such a budget the cheese choice would manifest itself as the question whether resources should be moved from the utilitarian category to the food category or not. Such a strict budget could also help to avoid the risk of a slippery slope.

Rhetorics

On the other hand, a (reluctantly?) converted vegan mightn't be as persuasive as Spindoctor.

Probably only a small fraction of one's persuasiveness depends on whether one eats vegan cheese or not. And with out good evidence we cannot even sure if not eating vegan cheese will make a positive or negative contribution to one's persuasiveness. Strictness might persuade some, but it may also frighten others. To know which effect is bigger we need quantitative data.

Effectiveness of vegan outreach?
The question here shouldn't be whether VO is more effective, but whether there is *any* utilitarian cause that is more cost-effective (for example, investing in in-vitro meat research). This also includes the alternative of investing (link?) the money and waiting for knowledge about what the best cause would be while letting the money grow. So to be the favoured utilitarian alternative spending money on veganism for oneself would have to trump all possible ways of spending money for the rest of one's (utilitarian) lifetime.

In fact, after looking at some statistics of veganism and vegetarianism I'd say that the future looks pretty bleak if it really would be the case that changing private consumption would be the best way of using utilitarian resources. That is, from the statistics I've seen it seems like the increase of veganism/vegetarianism has been small if not non-existent the last 15 years. Furthermore, in the same time meat-consumption in the world has increased radically.

Spindoctor, I don't think hard-line vegans are doing anyone any favours. You're right that their messages are coherent. 'slavery is wrong' is coherent and effective in today's western societies for example. For another example, 'god is a delusion' is a fairly coherent argument, but is it persuasive? I think the 'meat is murder' line does not sell vegetarianism well at all. It might 'energise the support-base' for veganism but it's not the message that you want to broadcast to the masses. What you want to broadcast to the masses is surely something more like this: http://www.meatfreemondays.co.uk/. Try cutting meat out of your diet for one day per week. See what it does for your health, your budget and the environment!

Jesper Östman wrote:One way to ensure that the money is spent the right way would be to keep a strict budget

I think this is key.

Jesper Östman wrote:In fact, after looking at some statistics of veganism and vegetarianism I'd say that the future looks pretty bleak if it really would be the case that changing private consumption would be the best way of using utilitarian resources. That is, from the statistics I've seen it seems like the increase of veganism/vegetarianism has been small if not non-existent the last 15 years. Furthermore, in the same time meat-consumption in the world has increased radically.

Jesper perhaps some public promotion of awareness such as Peter Singer's writing is supposed to influence millions, but I don't think Vegan outreach is aiming for that sort of response. You would want to poll the particular university at which vegan outreach campaigned. If, as you say, the popularity of veganism is stable, that's perfectly compatible with the idea that Vegan outreach is cost-effective. Veganism could still be dwindling but doing better than would otherwise be the case, thanks to vegan outreach.

Having said this, I agree with your other point. It's not about vegan outreach compared with vegan cheese. It's about the best charity utilitarianism has to offer compared with vegan cheese.

Buy the more expensive veg. When Peak Oil hits you will find that in most places meat and dairy will production will cease so many people will become vegitarian whether they want to or not.

That just means Vegan Outreach is pointless. It doesn't mean there aren't better charities.

Also, I think they'll just use meat that uses less petroleum. For example, grazing cattle rather then corn-fed. They don't require the petroleum for moving the corn to the cattle, or even for growing the corn.

RyanCarey, I agree that the hard-line vegan lobby get their messaging completely wrong. Freak-outs over trace ingredients and telling people that an egg is a "chicken's period" just tags them as nutters in most people's eyes.

I'm not advocating that. But I do think there's a place for AR proponents to talk in a calm, compelling reasoned way about the moral implications of factory farming. Singer has a unique ability to do this -- he's converted hundreds of thousands to veg*nism by talking gently but directly about the ethics of food. Seems like a dubious tactical decision for him to adopt a more laissez-faire tone now when his former approach was so incredibly effective.

The AR movement really needs two quite distinct messages for two different demographics. One, the Meat-Free Mondays approach, should aim to get committed meat-eaters to reduce their consumption incrementally, largely for health or environmental reasons. The other quite different campaign focuses on animal suffering and aims to create ethical veg*ns.

DanielLC wrote:That just means Vegan Outreach is pointless. It doesn't mean there aren't better charities.

Also, I think they'll just use meat that uses less petroleum. For example, grazing cattle rather then corn-fed. They don't require the petroleum for moving the corn to the cattle, or even for growing the corn.

But in a world where we will have to make serious cuts in ALL greenhouse gases, have serious shoratges in water and hav to maximise land use, dairy and meat aren't going to be on the list even if grass feed. & even if it is grass feed the production will so low that prices will too high for all but the mega rich and personally I don't see any reason why they should have something that adds to the climate problem when the overwhelming majority will be left out.

spindoctor wrote:I'm thinking here of the Gary Francione animal rights/animal abolitionist approach. For them, über-strict veganism is the "moral baseline", to the extent that when they mention Vegan Outreach they use scare quotes around the 'Vegan' [I still haven't worked that out -- I think it's because they dare to suggest that omnivores can work their way towards veganism gradually by cutting out meat/dairy?].

Francione suggests:

"Similarly, I have suggested that people who are intransigent about going vegan immediately but who want to go vegan try going vegan for a day, and the try doing that a few days later, etc., until all 7 days are vegan.

In this sense, I would have no objection to “Vegan Mondays” (or whatever day) if it were made clear that this was: (1) in recognition of the ethical imperative that we cannot justify animal use; and (2) just one step toward complete veganism. "

http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/vegan-mondays/


Francione attacks Vegan Outreach, but for its utilitarian approach and for its leaflet "Even if you like meat", where it defends to eat less animal products.

I promote veganism (and not lacto-ovo-vegetarianism nor "free range") because I think it contributes to carry people to an anti-speciesist position. More anti-speciesism in the society makes more easy to reduce the suffering of all the animals (including wild animals). I think veganism is a way of reducing suffering, not a "moral baseline".

I think Vegan Outreach is the most cost effective organization now in USA, because they get more people is worried about suffering. But I think a non-speciesist charity for the reduction of suffering in the world (including suffering of "farm animals" and wild animals) would be far better. There is no a charity like this for now, and charities like GiveWell are just worried for humans. Suffering is suffering at the margin of species.

I think a non-speciesist charity for the reduction of suffering in the world (including suffering of "farm animals" and wild animals) would be far better. There is no a charity like this for now, and charities like GiveWell are just worried for humans.

Do you know Charity International? I don't know specifics about what they do, but they're a charity specifically focussed on utilitarian goals, which probably means reducing suffering (although they might also do existential risk reduction, which you might not be so interested in).

The launch of the international section of Charity is planned somewhere in the coming months. More specific information will be given then.

Do you have much to do with them? I was thinking of approaching them and asking if they'd be interested in cross-linking, or even just having a sub-forum on here.

I guess I do since I'm a member. I'll be going back to Sweden in january and could discuss this with the board then. But if you want some quick action, feel free to e-mail Ludvig sooner.

Could you send me his email on Facebook? I don't think it's on the English version of the site...

spindoctor, as far as worrying about cheese specifically, I would point out the relative low impact of dairy products, as mentioned in this reply. Even if cheese had a higher impact, however, I agree that saving the money to donate is the better option -- though as I mentioned here, there might be better alternatives than Vegan Outreach for helping (wild) animals.